LineUp

2011-05-06T16:28:00.001-07:00

You think you're something? All that?

You're not.

To prove it, get an appointment at Kaiser Permanente.

Say your elbow hurts. Mine did.

First you have to get the appointment. That will take a while. Never go in person — not if you want to stay employed. Call. Automation will be frustrating (Press 1) But realize that even if you get to a human being that might help you find a time to meet a doctor, your conversation will be monitored for quality control purposes; and it will sound like it. The person talking to you is human — you're pretty sure — but like a machine. Efficient, bloodless, courteous but curt. I was tempted to ask the person who came on the line with me something about their life — their age, where they went to school, what they ate for lunch, but I might have gotten them fired. No nonsense.

I got a call from a robot three days before my appointment telling me, in that slow, methodical robot syntax, who I'd be meeting with. The connection went bad just at the moment I was told my doctor's name. Turns out that wasn't who met with me anyway.

I got there 15 minutes early, as instructed by the robot, and walked into what looked like a big open room; it wasn't big. Or open. It was packed with people. And most of them were younger than 30 — with a few elderly exceptions. There was a line beginning right at the door with flat, black plastic feet on a rubberized walkway indicating where I was to step on my way to the end of the mat and the desk where I was to check in. That means you pay money and prove you're really who you say you are with a photo I.D. — and a Kaiser card that the robotic human being behind the counter swipes into a computer to call up your name and number and records. Your name sort of matters. The number matters more — all the numbers.

Keep in mind, nobody in this entire process has shown any concern for how sick you are, how disabled, whether you're near death. (The robot does give you instructions that if you need to see a doctor because you are, in fact, dying that you should bypass all the robotics and just go to the emergency room. There are robotic human beings there, but there are more of them on any given day —though my wife has learned you have to pick your times carefully. One night she told me she was really in pain and needed to see a doctor. I told her to go at 7 p.m. even though — smart woman that she is — she said she'd wait until 10 p.m. She sat in the waiting room until 10 p.m.)

After the robotic person takes your money and verifies who you are, you go sit in a room with chairs that are very close together, but you can tell someone has done calculations as to how close is too close. It's all very efficient. Nobody has to climb over anybody else — but nearly.

Somebody emerges from a locked door every 10-15 minutes or so and calls a name. Somebody seated next to me yelled, "What?" at one person who emerged from a door across the room. The person repeated the name.

After a while, someone opens the door and says my first name then begins wrestling with the pronunciation of my last name; as she begins, I'm on my feet and headed over.

The key to success in this environment is to be robotic. It's how it's all done anyway. You can't let it get to you. The plasticity, the pre-fabrication, the efficiency in the face of disease, sorrow, dread, even terror — none of it must register on your face. Stifled emotion is the best route. You can't get angry (though I can tell by the looks I get from nurses and even doctors, that some do); you can't laugh. The absurdity will not find shared humor with anyone — well, mostly no one — in this place. Even when you're sitting there for hours. Even when they seat you in a room next to an X-ray machine and make you contort your body to take pictures in just the right way — the robotic way.

"Raise the table," somebody says from a back room. Zing. A moment of glimmering humanity. Someone with more experience is looking through the little window and compassion and logic combine. The older X-ray tech wants to spare me a sore shoulder trying to get the picture this younger tech thinks she needs. MMMMMMMM. The table lowers and I can turn my hand backwards as commanded. Is it compassion or is it another efficiency?

You can't show emotion even when they're asking you things like "Do you exercise?" And when you say yes, they ask "How many days a week?" The temptation is to engage them in conversation. But that's what humans do.

"Would you like to know my mileage each week?" you want to ask. "Want to know my minutes per mile? Does it matter if I'm doing hill repeats and sprint surges 2-3 times a week? Do you want to know how many days I'm lifting and what my reps are on what weights? Does it matter if I cross-train?"

To do that would be an annoyance.

The question isn't coming from them. It's coming from someone in a cubicle — maybe several cubicles — in the Virginia office complex. The cubicle people (trained to act like robots) are assigned to risk management in this health organization. Research by a study group some years past found a statistical probability of less expense (higher profit margin) from enrollees that had a certain number of hours per week of physical exercise. Bam. Make that policy for the entire national organization. It messes up the research to get detailed about what kind of exercise that is for what body density and whether the weight involved is muscle mass or not.

It makes me wonder what they say to the 300 lb. guys (or gals) who waddle in and perch on the chair and the blood pressure cuff barely goes around their arm — and they smell like cigarette smoke.

The PR campaign says they want people to thrive (See the pictures? People are smiling.) The word "thrive" is code for "not costing us money."

I get seated in an examining room and a doctor comes in and apologizes for how long it's taken. He figures out I need physical therapy for my sore elbow. He prescribes it. He also tells me cortisone shots might be needed — but they'd like not to have to do that. (Costs money. Remember, this is about cost efficiency.) He says I'll get a band to put around my forearm that will help.

Then he leaves.

I'm taken to another room.

The nurse puts all the data in the computer and she says someone will be coming in to help me with the arm band.

At this point, humor almost enters the equation.

A burly guy comes in wearing the scrubs that all nurses and doctors wear but I can tell he's not a doctor. He asks me where it hurts and I tell him. He grins. Tennis elbow on the outside, golf elbow on the inside. He puts it on me and explains how to tighten it up. It's almost as if he sees the inanity of my waiting for him to come in and show me what I could have figured out by opening the box and reading the directions.

"Any questions?" he asks, looking bored and a little amused.

Yes, I have one. Do I wear it at night?

He stops smiling.

"I don't have authorization — I'm not a provider. Uh, let me go ask."

He goes and finds the apologetic doctor. And it takes a few minutes.

"I got your answer," he says. "You don't wear it at night. Give it a rest."

He looks relieved and he's back to his still bored and a little bit amused self.

He points the way out of the labrynth of hallways to the main lobby.

The crowds have thinned out now. Nobody's standing on the plastic feet leading to the front desks with the debit card readers.

You walk out into the vaulted main hallway and realize how truly tangential how you feel is to this whole process.

The best way to get better is to find a way never to have to come back here.

2010-03-21T20:33:00.001-07:00

His name is Jie.

It's the name he uses at Starbucks when he orders a drink — no smiling, no blinking. He makes the barista pronounce it back to him.

He's a Ph.D student in Economics at the University of California-Riverside. And he's learning about the United States by degrees. He's been here since last August.

I got his name from an organization that seeks people to practice English with visiting internationals at universities. And I'm learning more from him than he is from me.

Jie is from northern China, where they speak a type of Chinese that isn't spoken in all parts of that vast nation. In fact, he says, there many variations of spoken Chinese and he's amused at Americans who think it's all the same. Actually, a lot about Americans amuses him.

Greetings are funny right now — like "wussup?" He said that one stumps him. Should he say "good?" or maybe "yes?" He paused to ask my advice. I told him it's actually not a question. It's a figure of speech. But the proper response is to act like it's a question; but don't try to answer it. Just say, "not much."

He nodded, pausing, and I could tell he was taking mental notes.

Jie lives in an apartment with another Chinese student who is also studying doctorate-level economics. Ming-Ming is his name. And apparently he's brilliant — highest grades among new Ph.D students in his incoming class. In fact anything Ming-Ming does, he attacks with a vengeance, Jie says. It could have something to do with the fact that his right hand was injured when he was a newborn. It's a small, thin stump that's visible just outside the cuff of shirts he wears. Maybe kids teased him when he was young; maybe family made an issue of it. But it would appear that he's taken every opportunity to show he's capable of whatever comes along.

Jie said in a recent class session, a prof had noticed Ming-Ming's hand and had asked if Ming-Ming needed accomodation of some kind. The question angered Ming-Ming and he told the prof that he could write faster and better with his left hand than most people could with their right. Jie said he'd learned not to ask Ming-Ming if he needed help — with anything. If Ming-Ming needed it (and mostly he didn't) he'd ask.

I took Jie to Wal-Mart today. He said he needed to buy furniture. He said he'd considered taking it on the bus with him but decided it would be too awkward. He knew we had a van because we'd used it to take him to a Chinese grocery store once. (He'd called it "China Town" so we'd loaded up the van with my teenagers who love authentic Chinese food. Turns out it was just a plaza in Pasadena where a Chinese grocery and some boutiques were clustered.) I didn't hesitate. I was trying to build Jie's trust.

When we got to the store, I found out what Jie wanted was bookshelves. They were in a 4-ft box that weighed probably 80 lbs. I suddenly understood why hefting it to a bus stop would have been hard. He also wanted to exchange some headphones for ones that fit better. He'd gotten a defective pair. To make the exchange, he had to endure bad directions from a clerk, then had to wait in a fairly long line of people at the customer service desk. I noticed how cash register people treated Jie like a child when they heard his pronunciation of English.

In the van, Jie asked how my family was and I told him. He asked, in particular, about my 16 year-old daughter. I told him she was in love — with a baseball player at school who had just worked up the nerve to ask me if she could be his girlfriend. I told Jie I was waiting to chat with the boy after his team practice in a few days. Jie said he wished he'd had a Dad who had talks like that with him when he was young. In China, he said, the concept of dating wasn't practiced much. Arranged marriages were more common. He said it gloomily.

As we headed back to his apartment, he handed me a box of tea. It was Chinese tea specifically designed to lower cholesterol. He remembered that I was working on that.

When I dropped him off, I stopped in the apartment for a moment to say goodbye and he apologized for the mess. It smelled like rain had gotten in some windows and mold had set in. There were food-covered plates all over the kitchen table, pots and pans were on the reddish-stained stove with food caked on them. Our feet stuck to the floor as we walked. Jie said they'd not had time to clean up much (or eat, actually) over the last couple weeks. But they would now, he said.

As I was leaving, Jie got a call from his roommate who said he wouldn't be home for supper. Jie said he would make something for himself. He hadn't bothered to turn the lights on inside and it looked dark in the twilight. I shook his hand as we parted and it occurred to me that we were becoming friends. But it would be a friendship slowly earned.

The quiet of the evening was broken by soft music and a woman's laughter from an apartment in the vicinity of Jie's.

2010-01-26T19:24:00.000-08:00

There's nothing quite so clarifying as to walk into an emergency room shortly after midnight, twice in two weeks, and sit on a plastic chair waiting for testy, tired medical staff to care for one's spouse.

The world of emergency rooms is a world of desperation — of tired children's cries, of adult moans and groans, of near-death experiences, of police action and of after-effects of the violence police seek to quell. The world of dark streets gives way here to the dull green glare of fluorescent bulbs, scuffed linoleum, scarred doorways, gurgling tubes and beeping, blinking machines. No one here will ask why (though they want to know). They do what they can to help with the pain. But the wounds they see are so often self-inflicted — results of rage, stupidity, naivete, illusions of immortality in the young and those who should act their age.

Here death comes. And here the healthy should beware. For the burden of proof is on the patient to prove she is not a careless, mindless piece of flesh waiting for the next needle, the next numerical mandate. Sickness floats in the air like a vapor. All is sterile, but not clean.

Speak slowly, clearly and with command of medical terminology in this place, or risk long hours of confusing waits for answers you knew before you arrived. Earn respect, and you'll get it; demand it — in loud tones, and with profanity (for the indignities of this place can make one profoundly angry) and you risk longer waits than those who are merely inarticulate.

2009-01-19T09:44:00.000-08:00

Slate called it painful. The oozing coverage of the crowds and parties in Washington, D.C. had hit the max.

Yes, this is a momentous occasion. But skeptical journalists long for substance. They're saying "Show me."

Sure, we have the first African-American in the presidency. And he actually has ties to Africa. He's half-Caucasian. He's a gifted orator and, from what we saw in the election race, a very smart guy. Not just lawyer smart, but people smart. And clean — so far. For someone to come out of Illinois politics (with real ties to slimy Chicago precinct activity) and show no signs of taint, Rod Blagojevich notwithstanding, is no small feat.

But things are too dark for journalists to abide the parties for long. I'm glad those hoses in Birmingham are history. Mississippi's not burning anymore, not in the same way anyhow. But to move forward by looking in the rearview mirror is dangerous.

Our pastor prayed for Barack Obama Sunday. I hope pastors and priests were doing so all over this country and around the world. I hope they continue. This inauguration has the world's attention, because "firsts" that involve both race and political shifting get noticed. Political groundswells like this are common in other countries — not so much here. But people forget how uncomfortable change is. Oh, how we like our routines.

Journalists who are smart know that you cover the unusual. They should be making the obligatory parallels. The Lincoln Memorial speeches. The Reflecting Pool and the crowds. Lincoln and his Bible. Kennedy, his youth, and his faith. Martin and his dream. FDR and the recovery.

It would be surprising for the coverage not to look like this. But what I dread is the likely headlines coming in the next 100 days. Clinton — also an orator and a very shrewd politician — pulled off some amazing economic and international relations coups. Fast. And they stuck, for the most part. But his were different times: recent, yet so far away. Steve Jobs was healthy back then. So were Microsoft and Yahoo! and the Big Three. The housing markets were booming. Bernard Madoff was doing great.

The key to Kennedy's success was his ability to bring in good help. There were other factors that nobody really knows now — perhaps related to his last name, probably tied to what was happening elsewhere in the world that the U.S. tapped into. Kruschev pounded his shoe on the table, but deep down one wonders if he liked Kennedy. Will we ever know? We have such a rose-colored perspective of that time.

A lot of people are out of work as these inaguration parties kick into gear. The fear in our nation is something that is affecting not just the economy. It makes people party harder. The same happened in 1930, I suspect. Obama has used the word "hope" a lot, and it is, indeed, audacious in its claims.

But the fix is bigger than what one U.S. president can pull off alone. He's said as much. He's no dummy. But nobody's listening to his cautionary rhetoric. They're too busy throwing confetti — and lining up with their hands out.

In large part, the success of this president will not be related to his skin color or heritage. It will spring from his ability to say "No" to some people and to some things we've all gotten very used to. That's hard to pull off. We like "Yes." The other word makes people mad and is a surefire party-stopper.

This president's success and ultimate legacy will also come from his ability to persuade those around him and in other parts of this world to make some fairly drastic changes in how they do business, trade, even what used to be considered domestic issues like education, health care and the environment. And war. Gaza? Tehran? Kabul? The threat of attack on the U.S. is not gone. But that, too, is not something the U.S. presidency alone can avert. It never has been. How quickly we forget the lessons of history.

And good help is hard to find — moreso when times are tough. Reformers don't make as much money as conformers.

What the celebrants are forgetting is that for all our shock at change in this country, people around the world aren't impressed by all this as we are. They want to know what's in it for them. And we're a tired, much poorer, much weaker nation than we were in the 1940s when FDR was turning things around and gathering alliances around the planet. We're more multicultural than we were in FDR's time — or Martin's time — and we won't even admit it to ourselves.

So we celebrate a new administration. We applaud a man who will likely bring (or oversee) change like we've never experienced before. But I hope the celebrants in Washington will do what they can, when they get home, to help make good change happen. Bread and circuses can't fix what ails a nation or an empire.

Hope brings audacious results only when it can elicit methodical work at the mundane day-to-day tasks of cooperative reform.

There's an unseen level to all of this. And Lincoln, so goes the legend, knew it. Apocryphal or not, the image is compelling of that tall, bearded man kneeling in prayer as the torrents of civil war and economic unrest in this nation raged. There's too much in Lincoln's writings to refute the notion that he had a sense of God's power in the governance of a republic.

Aquinas, quoting Augustine, notes that no ruler will succeed who does not rule his own soul. And the real power of that ruler to bring the people happiness comes not from the trappings of power but from the measure of restraint that ruler shows when tempted toward excess. Happiness and the satisfactions of life, at their core, come from peace with God. A president who knows it will pass this truth on to his people in ways small and large.

May our nation find this truth to be self-evident as this inaugural year unfolds.

Will that bring splashy news coverage? Not like we're seeing this week. But there's something to be said for change that goes deep — deeper than the day-to-day headlines and TV quotes and radio bits. Smart journalists will get that, even if they have to report it from the margins.

I'm ready. And waiting, like everybody else.

2008-09-07T19:50:00.000-07:00

Ledes.

They matter a lot in the work of daily journalism.

And they're hard to do at political conventions — especially near the end.

It's been awhile since I covered presidential candidates. When I last did, Michael Dukakis was the top Democrat on the ticket. But political culture — and the journalism that covers it — doesn't change much over time. You go, you chase people in suits (and pant suits) around a really big convention center, you stand at the doorway of parties (or wait for your interviewee to come out of them), and you anticipate. A lot.

This time it was all happening in the Twin Cities. And the press pool media were listening to a man too many had written off as a serious candidate for president. Now he was there, at the podium, accepting his party's nomination to be the Republican candidate. It was a Thursday night, Sept. 4.

And words seemed to fail them. I know because they used too many. You know the old saw, "If I had more time, I'd have written less."

Sometimes words fail because the writer is way beyond the moment. Sometimes it's the feeling-behind thing. The feeling is intensified by how muscular the scripting police are doing what they do. At this event, one got the impression there was not much wiggle room for reporters. (In all fairness, the same was probably true for the Democrats' convention. Ask National Public Radio.)

Let's just say the national press corps, mentally, had left the building before McCain got to that big podium with the crystal-blue stairs. Maybe I'm wrong. But look at the ledes.

The Associated Press (with two bylines) said "John McCain vowed Thursday night to vanquish the "constant partisan rancor" that grips Washington as he launched his fall campaign for the White House." Okay, that's not all that long a lede, but it took them three grafs to get to the fact that this was a speech aimed at being not what people thought. (McCain's not a scary conservative and he's not a scary liberal, either.) Granted, that's a hard concept to get across. The important thing, I guess, is that David Espo and Robert Furlow got it in by deadline and got to stick a fork in this convention coverage. Long day, longer week.

David Jackson, with USA Today, apparently just as weary, put it this way: "Republican John McCain launched the final phase of his campaign against Barack Obama and of his nearly decade-long quest for the presidency Thursday, trumpeting what he called a record of reform while casting his Democratic rival as a novice unprepared for global leadership." Yow.

In swimming as in running as in political reporting, you know the person's tired when the mechanics fall apart. Here you see it in a verb like "trumpet" and in a word like "vanquish."

By the third graf Jackson does hit on what was probably worth noting — something readers needed reminding of. History is about to happen. We'll have the first black president ever, or the first female VP ever. Change is coming. No matter what. (So don't stop thinking about tomorrow.)

The headline on Jackson's piece (thank you copy editors) put that fact right up top under the flag on page one.

Deadline convention coverage is so hard to do well.

2008-04-30T22:15:00.000-07:00

The following is a letter I sent to the staff of the newspaper for which I'm faculty adviser.

It's the kind of letter I've had to send in the past.

Education for journalism is a journey — one with seemingly limitless adventures. (I do see a kind of predictability in it as the years go on.)

Names have been changed to protect those who, I hope, will do some serious thinking about what they do and how they do it.

Hi Bob,

I'm copying your editors on this because they were part of the decision to run the review you wrote about the Sarah Marshall film.

Let me start by mentioning that I got a call from the president's office this morning about your review. I was told of a parent who had read your piece and had some concerns about the angle you took on this film. (This is a parent who has a daughter attending Biola.)

The concern this parent had with your review was, first of all, that the Chimes paid for you to go see this film. Secondly, he wanted to know how the Chimes selects films to review — was the film making an important statement about life, society, current issues, etc.

He was troubled by what seemed to be an endorsement of this film as a must-see (he noted your five-star notation) — though he apparently missed your fairly pointed warning that this was not a film for everyone.

This is a man who doesn't understand the place of journalism in American society. He also doesn't understand that one student's opinion in a student-run publication doesn't constitute the university's endorsement of either the student's view or the film that student is reviewing.

His question was what separates the journalism of the Chimes — particularly in its film reviews — from the review of the Daily Bruin or the Daily Titan or any other university newspaper on a campus that makes no claim to knowing God.

I defended the Chimes as a publication that uses discernment.

But as I read your review a few more times, and when I saw the trailer on the Chimes' web edition showing (albeit subtly) the full frontal male nudity you described, along with scantily clad women, and flippant depictions of casual sex, I had to pause.

There is a problem here.

It's come up before — actually, on the film review pages.

It has to do with what the Chimes is all about.

The Chimes is a newspaper seeking to be as hard-headed and clear-eyed as any secular publication when it comes to tracking down the hard issues of life and exploring them.

I'm one of the more pushy of our Journalism faculty in this pursuit. What bothers me is that I seem to have been remiss. I've pushed the staff to explore the seamy sides of life, but I apparently haven't conveyed to the staff (and, frankly, I'm not sure you and I have ever met, Bob) that with our exploration of the darkness, there must be light.

We are nothing, our work is pointless — and, actually, a disturbing kind of delusion — if it's not grounded in the person of Christ.

And Christ is nowhere in this review.

Please don't stop reading. I'm not saying you should have woven the Four Spiritual Laws into this review. Nothing so stupid or artificial was what I had in mind.

What I did have in mind was the kind of analysis C.S. Lewis brought to the hard issues of life — sex, hate, pride, selfishness.

Your review, Bob, was too thin.

You gave the false impression that this film had something meaningful to say about human relationships in western society. You didn't point out the dysfunction, the emptiness, the loneliness of pursuing connection with others apart from the holiness of union that we find in Christ.

Film reviews in the Chimes don't have to be theological treatises.

But Biola is not just any school. It's a university that takes seriously the integration of faith and reason. That should go, as well, for the student newspaper that serves it. This review delves into a film using reason, but missed its potential in that regard; it also left readers empty of the faith implications of what these film-makers were saying.

R-rated films are an area of cinematic expression that should be approached cautiously in the Biola community. Students who come here expect a level of spiritual discernment in those entrusted with the media they pay for. As such, the Chimes has a high calling — to do journalism that's not merely factual and contextual, but that infuses its narrative with the presence of God.

I was disappointed in this review. I hope, Bob, that as you and your editors choose films to review that you'll be more judicious in your selection. There are films out there that are more worthy of the Chimes' funding and journalistic attention.

And should you choose a film for review that contains nudity, obscenity, or depictions that denigrate women and the sexuality God created for marriage, that you'll do so only if your review puts all of the above in a Biblical perspective.

And I hope, too, that you'll keep me informed of your decision to run such a review. My job as adviser is to offer advice. Because no one informed me, I had to be informed by the president's office — a blindsiding that helps no one.

2008-04-27T21:46:00.001-07:00

Journalism is not what it used to be.

But then, what is?

Yet the changes happening to American journalism — newspapers in particular — have got some people panicked in sort of a chicken-little-the-sky-is-falling thing.

Try this one on.

In Saturday's Los Angeles Times,one of the biggest stories on the front page had the article starting somewhere in the middle (the lede and first few grafs were missing). Both my sons, neither of whom are avid newspaper readers — not of the front page, anyway — pointed out to me the oddity of what they were seeing. And I smiled.

I was glad they noticed. I told them it's a sign that somebody wasn't paying attention (I suggested heads would roll, but knew inside that probably wouldn't be the case.)

Should I have taken that moment to point this huge error out as a harbinger of a much bigger problem — evidence that the big ship is finally going down?

Look at it! AUGH! Right there in front of us!

Or one might put it in perspective.

Journalism, someone other than Ben Bradlee said, is the first draft of history. (He picked up on it and repeated it famously.)

First drafts are rough. I know. I've been grading stacks of them this semester.

Newspaper journalism, television journalism, radio journalism, blogs, Webzines — if they have any sense of inquiry about them, any desire to be timely, are bound to run into problems (layoffs of copy-editors notwithstanding).

So somebody in the layout area of the Times newsroom had a bad night Friday. Asleep at the switch? Sent the wrong file to the press room?

Nobody 'fessed up in Sunday's paper. I suspect the newsroom got some mail on this over the weekend. Come Monday morning when the non-weekend shift comes in there'll be some pointed dialogue.

But I suggest that the bigger deal in all this is that this newspaper hit the driveways and news-stands Saturday despite its little problem.

In so doing, this newspaper — the big package — did what it's supposed to do. It informed readers in Los Angeles and surrounding regions (like mine) about our world. It got people thinking. Hopefully it got people praying — for Christians are called to be watchful as well as intercessory.

And tomorrow's another deadline.

Will journalists get it right? Probably. And they'll probably run into some snags.

But journalism, bigger than any one front page on a Saturday, will roll forward — or so we should hope in this era of diminishing democracies.

Carpe diem.

2008-04-20T14:44:00.000-07:00

Death is a moment when the world, through its journalism, has traditionally asked the question, as perhaps never before, "Who was this person — really?"

It's an interesting ritual — and an important one — for journalists. News media are devoted to the events that shape our lives — change, disruption, expansion, depletion.

Journalists have been called watchdogs, and when doing their job well, they are. For the journalist in our society is charged with answering the question each of us needs answered as the sun rises (or before it sets): "Am I safe today?"

For the journalist then, death, in some ways, is more important than birth. For it is at death that we as a people pause — for however brief a moment — and take account of what has been, of who has been. And in Western society, we move at a pace so fast as to forget to take the pause that reflects. Death is a natural pause, a breathing in when someone's last breath has gone away.

For some journalists, the question and answers behind the obituary are so enormous that selected staff are assigned the task of preparation — a journalistic version of the Pharaohs' pyramid preparations. Motion begins early, carving and laying stone-by-stone the edifice that will memorialize a man or woman. The words must be right, the research must be thorough. There was a time when obituaries for the great in Western society were an Art, a feature story genre reserved for the best writers.

Nigel Stark in the August, 2005 edition of Journalism Studies, says obituaries are making a comeback in the media of the U.S., Britain and Australia. Begun in 17th century England, they were a kind of in-depth literature in the 1700s, but fell into disfavor through the 1800s and into the 20th century. Yet even in the last generations, obituaries for the most well-known were a kind of artistic history — biography aimed at moments of tribute.

In such obituaries, the greatness of the person determined how early the preparation begins. Obituary spreads are a study in elaborate biography for men such as Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Pope Paul II, and for women such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Mother Teresa.

But obituaries are a limited outlet.

They are subject to the myopia of journalism that forgets the past or hasn't kept faith with the present. (Perhaps this is why, in the last few decades, the memoir has become such a staple of American book publishing. Those with access to a publisher — and such became amazingly simple with the advent of desktop publishing — tell their own life story and we snap these accounts up with a devotedness that's no less than astounding.)

One group that's been too long neglected in news coverage is Christians. Obituaries stand as one symptom of this larger problem in journalism. Obituaries for Christians — even when those Christians are women or men of some note, are too often badly done. Perhaps this is because for many news media outlets, the obituary draws on what used to be known as "clip files" — the collected reporting on a given person.

Christians don't make the news as often as they did before the 1920s. There are complicated reasons for that.

But an example of the phenomenon of neglected coverage of Christians is Clyde Cook, president of Biola University for 25 years beginning in 1982, who died in mid-April shortly after returning from a trip to do a funeral for a Biola alum. His death in his home in Fullerton, California was a moment that in many ways caused Christians across the world to pause in shock. Suddenly, a man they'd relied on for quiet example and leadership was gone.

Editors and journalism faculty are proverbial in their whacking off the word "suddenly" in any new writer's use of the word beside reference to death. Death, grumps the editor, is always sudden.

But we're drawn to the word because the cessation of life is so enormous — so final. We wish we'd had more warning. And in even cases where we've watched someone's life ebb away slowly, the end is still, well, sudden. There's a resonance — an echoing that makes us stop and collect ourselves.

The Los Angeles Times' obituary of Dr. Clyde Cook appeared Saturday morning, April 19 — the day people were departing airplanes in L.A. and pulling into Southern California freeways toward Fullerton and that city's First Evangelical Free Church. Clyde Cook had attended there. I remember. I'd been a visitor one Sunday as a potential hire at Biola to teach Journalism. Someone told me this was his church home. As I ventured into the lobby after the service, someone walked me up to him and introduced me. I'd be meeting with him the next day for the formal interview of a potential faculty member. He greeted me with a firm handshake and encouraged me to consider attending this church. He got a visitor's CD for me off a table and, with those deep blue eyes, encouraged me to feel welcome. It was almost deft, an "aw shucks" kind of moment. I'd known them in Georgia and in Kentucky. And here I was in California feeling it again. But in the Deep South, "aw shucks" could feel empty when it was over. Not with this man. He was there with you in ways few others were; yet he was the kind of leader who had a mind and soul capable of encompassing major portions of the planet.

It was that nuance in Clyde Cook that the L.A. Times missed. The obit, written by Valerie J. Nelson, hit on the usual topics: millions of dollars in endowment raised, thousands more students in the university enrolled, a revamping of the board of trustees and faculty to allow more women in leadership. He had taken steps to bring more ethnic diversity to the campus. He had signed off on change to the university's rules to allow social dancing off-campus by students.

But all of that was not Clyde Cook. It was part of the story, but not all.

What became interesting in this moment of death and reflection was how the Internet became a kind of echo chamber for this man's passing. Where the mainstream journalists lapsed, non-news writers stepped up and provided glimpses of the real story.

Editors of the Chimes Online, the Biola Web publication run by students, got verification of Clyde Cook's death in the hours after his passing and launched a blog soliciting the stories of those who knew loved the man. The outpouring was more than they'd expected.

And the university took notice, cooperating with the student media and furthering the discussion that was erupting all over the world, landing on the computer screens of those who knew him, those who wished they'd known him better, those who loved him.

Perhaps this is as it should be.

Journalists begin the discussion, James Carey once said, and from there, the conversation continues.

Perhaps the future of obituaries — and of all journalism — will be a hearkening back to a time when we gathered in public places and traded stories of one who is gone. On the Internet, we can gather from across space and culture; in that large space, journalism becomes only part of the larger moment that is communication of minds, hearts and souls.

2008-02-24T11:51:00.000-08:00

There's a little sign on an entrance ramp to an inner beltway around Atlanta.

"Keep moving," it says.

It's a command. It's also good advice for life.

Once you've begun entry to this roadway, your slightest hesitation can become deadly for you and those around you. There's no going back. There's only the way forward. And you join the flow of traffic — people in cars and trucks hurtling around the city at speeds mostly illegal. To move is to survive.

On metro Los Angeles freeways, the unofficial rule is that if you blow a tire, you drive on that tire until it's a shredded mass, perhaps down to the rim, until you're off the roadway by the nearest exit ramp. But you don't stop. To do so could kill you.

God calls us to move, to keep moving. When we stop, when we refuse to be part of the rhythms of life, when we remove ourselves from the traffic, we begin to atrophy in our minds, our hearts, our souls.

I'm not speaking of the frantic running of those driven by demons of fear and obsession. That kind of movement leads to a burn-out that's become a proverb in our time. Cars and trucks (and people) that don't know rest, the respite of preventative maintenance, the necessary pauses in the journey, break down.

But given that needed rest, a car is made to be driven. When it sits in a garage or driveway unused, the fluids congeal, the hoses and engine belts and tires dry up, cracking and rotting. A smart driver who has to be away from their car for long periods will ask someone to drive it regularly — keeping it on the road, changing the fluids, rotating or replacing tires, hoses and belts as needed.

So it is with us.

We are called to interaction, to the traffic of person-to-person interaction. The God who is, Himself, the Word — communication of truth and life — calls us to the dialogue that leads souls to Him. It's not formulaic. Yes, we must know His Word, but more than that, we must live it in the journey.

We must move. But in that motion, we will be tested in our resolve to love.

Journey without God as our reason for hope can create in us a conquest mentality like the lonely ones around us. We are not called to join the pack so we can beat the competition. We're called to be part of the flow as an example of what love looks like in motion.

But it's not easy. The writer to the Hebrews (ch. 12) speaks of it in the context of self-discipline. Left to ourselves, we tend to journey badly — with a selfishness that belies the God we serve.

Nobody said it would be easy; we'll not feel entirely successful on any given day.

One day I got on the train with my bicycle and turned to the spot where the bikes must be stored to keep the aisle free. When no bikes are there, a seat folds down and the space can be used by passengers. The unofficial rule is that when bike riders board, those sitting on the fold-down seat are to get up and make room for the bikes.

Usually, no words are necessary. The bicycle appears, and the space vacates. People move. But the unofficial rules of the train are rules of propriety and grace. Some don't know the rules. Others ignore them, riding with the notion that the world will bend to their will. It drives their every interaction.

On this day as I boarded with my bike, a man was sitting on the fold-down seat. He saw me, but didn't move. I asked him if I could put my bike in the space, and he said — loudly — "I'm not getting up. I paid for this seat." I paused and felt the entire train car's eyes on me, there, standing in the aisle holding a bicycle as the train jostled into motion.

I stood in the aisle waiting for the next stop, hoping the train would empty and other seats would become available to free up the bicycle space. I wanted to melt into the floor. All I could do was try not to look as awkward as I felt. People in their seats tried not to stare. Just before entering the train, I'd sensed God's peace and a joy from Him as I'd headed home after a long day. Now that was all gone.

The life-to-life interaction of commuters is a study in human encounter. It can be a revelation of one's soul. People are people in astounding ways when packed together on a freeway, packed onto a bus, or crowded into a train car. Human kindness shines like a beacon in the jostling rush; darkness of human depravity stands out, too, like putrid refuse on the ground.

The man got up before the train had reached the next stop. The man seated next to him got up when the train came to a halt, and I was finally able to tie my bike up and clear the aisle. But I went home feeling beat up, discouraged, loathing the portion of my day that involves travel — three hours total every day.

The next day, as I sat in a nearly empty train car near the end of my daily journey, a woman told me she appreciated the way I'd handled the confrontation with the man on the fold-down seat. It hit me that hers were among the eyes that had been on me that day. I had felt derision in their gaze; at least one pair had been looking with compassion, even respect.

Had it been her bike, she said, she'd have let the whole train know what was going on. Maybe they'd have thrown her off the train, but she wouldn't have let him sit there.

She wondered at my restraint, my self-control.

She asked me what I did for a living.

I told her I taught at a Christian university and the word "Christian" seemed to flow over her like oil. She smiled and nodded.

Suddenly I sensed God speaking in that inner whisper that has the power of a shout. He had been there that day, in the aisle with me, as the man had angrily told me off. All those stares had been people well aware of the picture. And in my weakness, God had shown His strength.

2008-02-12T20:08:00.000-08:00

It's only February. But look at us.

Yes, McCain is very close to clinching the Republican nomination due to sheer numbers,but in the Democratic side of things it's a long way to November.

And we're acting like it's September.

Just watch Bill Clinton — who remains the king of political spin. The Washington Post, in today's editions, points out that Sen. Clinton is now the underdog. Nice. Somebody in that household knows how to score upsets and win fence-sitters off their duffs.

What will Barack Obama do with this new momentum? A week or two from now, we'll know. And two weeks after that, we'll know again.

A CNN estimate late Tuesday showed Obama had a little less than 20 more delegates than Clinton as of that day. Call it a lead if you like, but this one's looking more and more like it's going to be decided by Superdelegates.

The good thing about it all is that the longer this neck-and-neck thing drags on, the more people are drawn to pick up newspapers, devour newsmagazines, and fire up web sites that guide them to what's really going on.

Americans — and, truth be told, some journalists — are people who cram their lives with so much day-to-day flurry that they just don't take time to find out what's happening in their country.

What gets their attention is repetitive noise from one source over time. They get up, look around, and find out what's making all that racket.

And democracy is the better for it.

Here's hoping we have the most attentive election season in a long time.

2008-02-03T21:50:00.001-08:00

When journalists get it wrong, it hurts. And one of the reasons people get mad at journalists for doing their job badly is because the ripples just keep widening.

A guy came to our home tonight and told about what the newspapers said about him when he was indicted for white collar crime involving state funds. He couldn't defend himself well enough in court and ended up in a plea deal.

The news media treated him as guilty until proven innocent.

And he now lives with the reputation.

Journalists aren't omniscient.

But they can be fair.

May I learn that, and help my students ask more questions than they think need to.

2007-12-27T21:52:00.000-08:00

My wife told me as I was coming down the stairs of our home.

Benazir Bhutto had been shot. It numbed me — not quite as personal as news of a family member's death. But close. Close to the feeling I had when I heard Princess Di had been killed in that tunnel. I'd known it was coming. I'd sensed these were women on the edge, in danger, so close to the end.

Perhaps only in death do we really know people. This woman who could so mobilize a nation's passions was a kind of political household word in halls of power around the world. News of her death headlined instantly in online newspapers in Jerusalem, London, New York, Singapore, and — of course — Karachi. She had been put under house arrest for a time. She had been attacked in just such a motorcade only ten weeks earlier. The Times of London appeared to have background slide shows and written material on the shelf ready to roll. They knew.

Bhutto seemed a woman capable of leadership in her region of the world — a region where women aren't commonly seen in positions of authority. But as news of her death circled the planet, word came also of just how divisive a woman of intellect and passion could be to a nation trapped in chains of fear.

Bhutto had impressive educational credentials — Harvard, Oxford, and the pop-culture education of one who knew New York, vacationed in Switzerland, and sat at the feet of political discussion from her earliest life. Yet when she had campaigned for election in recent months, she had struggled to pronounce words in Urdu.

Bhutto had sought to be a human bridge between the optimism of the democratic world and the cynicism of those regions where those in power considered the greater populace unfit to govern themselves. Bhutto's passion for change had about it an aroma of death that she couldn't shake. In the end, it overcame her words, her ideas, her logic.

Bhutto had seen her father just before he was hanged and as she looked in those eyes, probably gained an education few in this country will ever know. She was no stranger to the specter of violence and the terrorist ethos of those for whom hate was a way of life.

Details are sketchy, but on the day she died, police in Karachi and those onlookers willing to talk to the press said Bhutto died waving.

She was on the way to safety, driving away from a rally that was full of the political rhetoric that enfuriated her enemies. She was retreating and probably would have been safely with friends or family soon. But she had a tradition of giving back — letting her supporters know they mattered to her.

She poked her head and arms out of the car just far enough to give love to the crowds who were always wanting just a glimpse, a touch if possible.

That's when the shots rang out. It didn't take many. She was as frail as the elegant robes she wore, as vulnerable as a flower. She collapsed into the car, bleeding from one side of her face. Within seconds the suicide bomber's explosion rocked the car.

Medical experts on the scene said she never regained consciousness after falling from her position of farewell gesture. Her heart failed and could not be resuscitated.

And though she was beyond knowing it, the violence she had rallied to stop erupted in the streets of Karachi with new vengeance.

The world suffered a loss it will take months, even years to unravel. But part of the unraveling was a letter she wrote to a Washington Post journalist. She'd told him to keep it under wraps until the day she was assassinated — almost a "when" rather than an "if" about it.

2007-11-23T13:12:00.000-08:00

Why is Christmas something so many just endure?

Maybe it's because we've created so many fictions about it. One of them is that Christmas is a feeling -- a passion that goes deep and fills us up somehow.

How sad the worship we create for something as fleeting as an emotional moment.

No, Christmas is painful because we just do it. And even when we're around others, too often it's still a solitary experience. We do it for ourselves and include others (if they fit who we are, or think we are.)

Unwrap the commercialism, the numbing blasts of glib, syruppy marketing hype. Turn off the TV. Get off the web sites that lie to you in converged ways. Christmas is not there.

Turn to someone near you and, if you can bear it, look for more than an instant into their eyes.

The connection that happens at that point of visual contact is a tiny glimpse of what God did when He sent His Son, God in human form, to the earth as a baby.

It was God saying, in a very personal way -- as personal as a gaze into your eyes -- "I know you. I love you. I'm here to be with you."

Even if you don't believe in God, He believes in you. He wired you to know Him, and to know others.

Someone has said that we all live lives of quiet desperation.

That desperation is felt most potently when we experience it alone.

The thing that sustains us in this journey is something intangible, yet as real as a firm handshake (one that comes from two hands), that hug clasping us tight and not letting go for a moment. It's the jolt in our inner recesses as we see a smile on the face of one we love.

All of that is an illustration, a subtle invitation to the kind of spiritual experience that only comes when we know God.

Pity the person who says they don't believe in God because they can't see Him. He is there. And as Francis Schaeffer said, He is not silent.

He told us, when He was leaving this earth that if He did not go away, the comforter would not come.

And that comforter has been mistaken for many things -- angels, demons, the force of the cosmos, the chemicals we put in our body to numb an emptiness we're born with.

The comforter enters our souls when we believe in who Christ said He is.

But the paradox is that though He's within us, we can't really know Him fully until we meet Him in the company of others who also know the One who said "I am with you." That coming together is community.

We so disdain that word, so misunderstand it, so neglect its intended meaning. (And how sad the inverse proportion between familiarity and our attention to the things we think we know.)

Community is like good water. Got it? You don't think about it. Don't have it? It's all you think about.

Community means we cannot exist alone and be fully human, fully ourselves. We are part of others, others are part of us. And when we know God, He puts an extra something -- something we crave -- in that encounter with others. It's a spark, even a roaring blaze, of His power that can transform us into what we never thought we could be.

Community can be messy, annoying, inopportune, frustrating. It can hurt. But it can also be a balm, a place of healing, a sloshing cool refreshment to a parched throat.

We need it. We need each other.

And Christmas is one of the darkest times of the year in the United States (and many Western countries) because it is the time when Jesus (whose name, one of many, is "God with us") reminds us that we are so alone without Him. Somehow, Christmas points out, too, how much isolation we build into our lives in pursuit of the stuff that we think is making us happy. Christmas, experienced without Christ and apart from others in any meaningful way, is torture.

But it need not be so.

The Beatles weren't prophets, but they occasionally stumbled onto concepts that have had lasting value.

Come together, as a phrase, has stuck with us (well, some of us.)

May we revisit it this Christmas with the meaning God can infuse it with.

2007-10-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

Fire.

It's been said you should never yell that word in a crowded theater. It's a word we fear so much that it constitutes speech that First Amendment scholars say is too powerful to be allowed in careless usage.

Smoke is in the air today, as it was yesterday. California is peppered with fires being driven by Santa Ana winds that seem relentless -- a surging sea of invisible gasoline on the dry landscape of this piece of land by the ocean.

I heard someone say today in an NPR interview that drought, the dryness of the land, is the Rodney Dangerfield of natural disasters. We're now giving natural disasters personalities and a sense of self-image.

How far we've come.

Marvin Olasky, shrewd and attentive historian that he is, has pointed out that there was a time in this country when journalists (and the rest of us who read journalism) looked at the tragedies of life -- ones we can neither predict nor avoid -- as acts of God, incidents with special eternal purpose.

Too many journalists today would look at that earlier era with a sneer. Act of God indeed. There's got to be somebody down here to blame. We'll just keep looking.

If neglect or intentionality -- malice aforethought -- caused these fires, may that truth come to light and justice be done.

But should the cause never be pinned down (and perhaps even if it is), we are wise to
re-think the nature of life and its fragility. So, too, should we realize that all this stuff we accumulate, the stuff we find we can leave behind as we run from the path of the burning embers, is after all not as important as our lives make them appear to be.

On our knees, helpless before the forces of nature, we find the place of real peace.

And our God, the one who stilled the waves with a word, is our only refuge.

2007-09-08T22:32:00.000-07:00

Maybe Larry Craig is guilty.

The truth in his case is difficult to know.

But what is fascinating is the reaction of those in his party who would rather he just fall on his sword.

The Republican Party has a lot to worry about right now, and the fight of one senator to clear his name isn't worth their time. They haven't got much of that left. November, 2008 is closing in and the skies are darkening.

Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), the Senate Minority Leader, told the New York Times Wednesday that Craig was correct in indicating he would resign. Then he told the Press he wanted to talk about something else — anything else.

In McConnell's mind, there's not a whole lot to say, at least not officially. McConnell and other Republican leaders removed Craig from leadership on three Senate committees last week — a move aimed at shuttling the Idaho senator out of the spotlight and into the shadows. Damage control in fast-forward. Abandonment on speed dial.

Loyalty in Washington is an amorphous thing — a kind of vapor. When there's enough of it, one can seem to float in it like a thick fog. When it dissipates, one can be left standing alone in a place one wouldn't have expected.

But Craig's not all alone. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa), last Sunday, appeared on Fox News telling the nation — and Craig, if he was watching (he was) — that this case was winnable. Disorderly conduct is not an impeachable offense in the U.S. Senate. And the stuff Craig is accused of doesn't meet the qualifications of lewd behavior. If anything, the man was first stupid, then arrogant. But neither are what would count for removal of a member of Congress. (If they were, we'd have an immense number of special elections coming up soon.)

Robert Novak, in the Chicago Sun-Times on Sunday, noted that Specter, ranking Republican member of the Judiciary Committee is a man who remembers a favor. Craig once pulled for him when the Senate leadership wanted Specter out of the running for Judiary Commitee chair.

Specter has been fairly silent this week about what Craig should do now — silence Novak says came after Republican leadership pulled him aside and reminded him who he worked for (and they didn't mean the people who elected him.)

Sen. Patrick Leahy, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, agreed with Specter.

Courage is a tough thing to find on Capitol Hill. Maybe what the country needs is to see a Republican get up off the mat and keep slugging rather than throw in the towel.

2007-08-25T18:24:00.000-07:00

My son graduated today.

His older brother graduated about a year earlier, so this might seem anticlimactic.

Neither were the kind of graduation that involves robes, tassels or folding chairs.

But it mattered to Matt, the younger of my two sons. Just like it had mattered to Ben a year earlier. And it mattered to me, because I'm their Dad. And little moments are what make up the fabric of our lives.

Matt is 16. He's had his driver's license since shortly after his birthday in April.

He'd learned to drive on our Toyota Sienna — a mid-size van that's far too easy to drive. He passed his driver's test with few warnings.

But he got that license when I wasn't around. (He's always been good at working the angles.) He got his Mom to take him. The deal I'd set with him, and his brother, was that they wouldn't see the Department of Motor Vehicles until they'd proven to me they could drive a five-speed clutch (on my Corolla.)

That meant me in the driver's seat guiding them toward easing off the clutch and onto the gas at stop signs, stop lights, and in bumper-to-bumper traffic. There was a bit of bucking. Motorists either smiled or cursed — usually depending on if they were behind us or not.

So now it was August. School would begin soon for Matt, and I knew he needed to be competent on our second vehicle. We'd need his taxi services — for him and for his 13 year-old sister.

The day before, I'd told him he couldn't go to a pool party unless he drove the Corolla. Mom had the van and I made it his only option. But Mom showed up and bailed him out.

So today, Mom had the van again and Matt wanted to do another friends outing. I told him the Corolla was his only option.

Now Matt had been practicing with me several times with the clutch and basically had it down. What was missing was confidence. The barrier was in his head. And that barrier could only be removed by him, at the wheel, in traffic.

He asked if he should practice first — on the steep hill that runs through our subdivision. I told him to do that hill three times.

He came back a while later and said he was headed out to the mall.

The mall he had in mind was about 10 miles away and at the base of a fairly steep hill. I knew he'd do okay on the way there. But uphill would be a challenge.

Three hours later, he called me.

"I made it," he said. "I'm parking the car." The boy was calling me from the driveway. The Eagle had landed.

I went out and opened the garage door for him and told him to leave it in the driveway. I didn't want him to have to figure out backing into the single-bay opening. Our older son had sheared off the passenger-side mirror that way.

As he got out of the car, he said, "I can do it. Now I can drive this car whenever I want to." I didn't correct him. The title and insurance bill still had my name on them.

But he'd done it. He'd graduated.

I can't remember if I told him I was proud of him. But I did tell him congratulations — that I knew he could do it.

Like most graduations, it didn't last long. He promptly forgot it and went in the house.

The world around us moved on, most never knew it happened. But it did. And the second of my two sons had taken another step toward life preparation that can come in no other place than hard pavement.

2007-05-10T09:56:00.000-07:00

Somebody stick a fork in it. We're done — at least for a while. The mercy of the academic calendar gives us a moment to step back and try to figure it all out.

Something is wrong with what we're doing in our colleges and universities in this country.

I'll admit it. And I'll say that evangelical Christian colleges and universities (I teach at one) aren't immune from missing the significance of moments like this. All of higher education is a journey — one we're frequently too busy to look at critically. Death among our students has a way of slowing us down.

At no time in recent memory was this more clear than the day — was it just weeks ago? — that an angry English major at Virginia Tech put a high-powered handgun to his head and pulled the trigger. Prior to that gun blast, this strangely quiet young man had systematically, calmly, silently killed fellow students and professors in ways that has put all of American higher education on notice. John Dewey was wrong. So was Walter Lippmann and others in the 1920s Progressive Movement who said the answer is our minds, not our souls.

Train up the children, Dewey believed. Do NOT depend on parents, and definitely avoid the influence of people like pastors or other clergy. No, train kids up to be thinking, reasoning adults — let them experiment, do not ever tell them they're wrong because they need to find that out themselves — and they will, ultimately choose well. They'll do the right thing because deep inside, they know what's good and their default is to choose what's best. (What's ironic is how many commencement speeches in the next couple weeks will have spouted this kind of drivel despite the looming clouds of Blacksburg behind them.) Where the whole thing falls apart, Dewey believed, was when moralistic adults step in and muck up the mix with admonitions about God's place in all these decisions.

Lewis P. Lipsitt, profesesor emeritus of psychology, medical science and human development at Brown University, last month in the Providence Journal reminded us again that there's just something about people — something deeply dark. He put it in terms perhaps only a biology-trained scientist would: "The human animal can be more destructive of its own species than and its living environment" than any other.

The truly frightening thing about Cho Seung-Hui was not his guns but his ego. This was a young man with the kind of mental focus necessary to plan a mass execution and time it in such a way that he layered his killing with ground-transport mail of his video, still-photo and written explanation for it all.

In an odd way, I look forward to the scholarly analyses of what happened in Blacksburg that snowy day. But what will be hard to take are those who will be claiming that this young man was a shy, unassuming person. No, he was an egotist
of a proportion that far surpasses those he called his egotistical persecutors — people he railed against for their wealth and self-love.

C.S. Lewis calls self-hate a kind of egotism that can be as destructive — perhaps more darkly forceful — as arrogant self-love.

"Deeply egotistic," Lewis says, "now with an inverted egotism, it uses the revealing argument, 'I don't spare myself" — with the implication "then a fortiori I need not spare others."

2006-06-06T10:24:00.000-07:00

Hate

Matt. 5:43-46

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax-gatherers do the same?

Hate is bondage.
God calls us to break the cycle of violence and the prison that hatred can become. Righteous indignation is not hate. Righteous indignation is grief over sin. And God has that. But He does not hate. He is merciful to the unjust and persecutor. He might stop them from their acts, but He does so for their sake. And He is as tender to them as He is to you or me — because He wants everyone to be saved. He knows our frame. He knows we are dust.

One of the ironic drawbacks of hate is its intimacy. When you hate, you drive yourself closer to your enemy; you find yourself imitating him. Your hatred feeds off his hatred. In fact, history shows us the hatred of one enemy will likely outgrow the hatred of its nemesis. Nobody really wins when hate’s driving the motivation. Hate becomes a cancer that eats at us and saps our strength, our sanity, even our ability to rest. You don’t know what real stress is in your life until you’ve lived in hate.

God knows we are drawn to hate. He understands it. (Why are we so tempted to think God is surprised by sin or the worst atrocities of human history?) But look at the Psalms. The Davidic Psalms have many examples of angry emotion, but it’s a rage that David took to the Lord. And He found peace there. When we take our rage to God and ask Him to release us from it, then take it a step further (which we don’t see often in Psalms but which we see in the New Testament) we release ourselves from a dark intimacy with evil.

Some have accused the American news media of being purveyors of hate. In cases where that has been true, its worst forms have been those in which journalists and media professionals have allowed their passions to prevail over a reasoned pursuit of Truth. It is possible to cover evil, and even clear acts of hate, without glorifying it or becoming infected by it. May we, and our students and alumni, be those who bring healing in these days when hatred seems at fever pitch all around us.