Afraid of Perceptions

The good news included the fact that the unemployment rate for the United States dipped below 9%. Something like 220,000 new jobs created in one month showed signs that we were, at long last, digging out of this difficult period of economic struggle. The corresponding bad news was that I heard one economist say that it would take years for our job rates to return to what we assume acceptable – 4% or less unemployment.

While the national unemployment rate dipped below 9%, the rate in Georgia was still above 10%. Our rates for foreclosure on homes remain near the top in the nation and we keep being told that the value of our homes will continue to decrease until the foreclosure story runs its course. That’s not very encouraging for a guy about to enter the decade of his 60s, the last decade that most people participate in the “full-employment” phase of life.

But that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the fact that our unemployment rate seems unmovable and I don’t see a lot happening that will change that. The cold, hard facts of life remain just as constant: a minimum wage job in our culture won’t provide anything close to a reasonable livelihood. Such wages hardly cover the cost of health insurance – which of course means that most people in those jobs end up with no health insurance and we simply end up adding energy to the endless cycle of dependency, poor health care, and ultimately higher taxes. Those higher taxes motivate us to elect men and women to Congress who promise to drastically cut government spending, only to realize upon arrival that cutting spending is much easier to promise than to actually do.

In Georgia – but I suspect this is true in most places – it appears that two very challenging problems rise to the top like rich cream does in milk from a Guernsey cow. One involves education – and it includes the horrendous dropout rate for high school students and the often equally horrendous inability to read and write competently for many high school graduates. The other involves the problem of single mothers and unwed births. While certainly not an exclusively urban problem, it does seem to have reached nearly pandemic levels in some urban areas.

This is where the challenge of afraid of perceptions enters into the equation. As I’m writing this, I’m wondering whether or not I will have the nerve to post it as a blog entry. It isn’t because I’m afraid that it is untrue, mean spirited, or otherwise inappropriate. It is because when these issues are talked about, we often are perceived to be racists. While it is true that these two problems – education and unwed births – are apparently more serious in urban settings and, at least in our culture, urban settings are more likely to be populated by ethnic minorities, it shouldn’t mean you are a racist if you say “we must find a way to fix this.”

It is also true that to say having children without two parents involved in the birth and raising of that child is not good; to do so often results in the perception that you don’t like babies and are somehow condemning the child for his or her parents’ immoral behavior. But is certainly not a necessary conclusion!

In reality, it seems that to allow my fear of the perception some might cast my way that I am either a racist or baby hater – or both – to cause me to never say “we can do better” actually does make me a racist or baby hater. I know that graduating from high school with such limited verbal and math skills that a person will never get beyond the minimum wage jobs of our culture is a recipe for a life of dependency upon others to eke out an existence. I know that the challenge of raising children is almost more than two engaged parents can manage, one parent alone makes it really challenging. Put those two things together – poor job potential and a child (or children) to take care of – and life is simply a struggle every single day.

I simply can’t take Jesus seriously – love God and love my neighbor as I love myself – and not say “we must find a way to fix this.” To do otherwise makes me less than a disciple should be and makes me guilty of assuming that the life of a plantation slave is appropriate, even 150 years after we began a war among ourselves to declare that it isn’t!

Not one word of this has as its purpose the endorsement of any political party. Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Tea Party, Green Peace, Socialist, Communist, or any other entity I know of has the slightest chance of solving the problem. It is a problem of the heart, and even God’s Law proved to be inadequate in solving heart problems, why would anyone assume government can do better?

What if the church rose to the occasion and declared “we must fix this problem.” No one congregation, no matter how well meaning, could actually pull that off by itself, but churches – followers of Jesus – who take seriously the call of Jesus to go and make disciples might actually pull of the miracle of our age. Our reluctance probably is a result of lots of things – the lack of knowhow, lack or resources, frustration with previously tried programs, and, and this is the one I think is most serious – we don’t want our talk about the problem to let people perceive us to be racists.

One of the things that always creates renewed interest on my part in Jesus is that He wasn’t afraid of perceptions and He marched out into His culture and turned things upside down as He created a right-side up opportunity. Our culture is upside down right now – we are quite comfortable in letting poor education and poor moral behavior pass right in front of us without a word being said. “Let the Legislature fix it” or “Let the Congress fix it” – all the while demanding that our taxes be lowered, not raised.

I think Jesus might want to turn that upside down and say, “Let the church make disciples and fix it!”