Politics Don't Apply

I don’t like to write about politics, for a number of reasons. Many arguments are nuanced, and nuance is often difficult to communicate in written form, particularly within the confines of a brief blog post. On the few occasions when I feel could comment with clarity, in our deeply polarized society there remains the possibility readers could mistake a causal opinion for a deeply held belief and misjudge me accordingly. The simplest reason is that I rarely think I have anything to say that hasn’t already been said by someone else and said better.

That being said, I don’t see current events in Israel as political. I am not unaware of differing opinions regarding Palestinian autonomy, control of the Temple Mount, Israeli settlements, the viability of a two-state solution, or the myriad other issues that have been debated for the 75 years since Israel became a nation, and I am confident these topics will be debated ad nauseum in the years ahead. I just do not think any of them matter right now.

Right now, the world needs to confront the reality of evil. Unjustifiable, indefensible, horrific, evil. There is nothing, nothing, the nation of Israel has ever done or could ever do to justify the actions taken by Hamas against innocent Israeli civilians.

What is hard for me to comprehend, and what motivates this post, is that the words of the preceding paragraph would be questioned by anyone. Yet the Democratic Socialists of America praised Hamas’ attack, thousands of students on elite university campuses have been marching against Israel, and Anti-Israel propaganda is being repeated by members of the US House of Representatives. How can this be?

The answer to the question can be found in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus educated his audience about the heart attitudes that open the door for murderous acts. “You have been taught… You shall not murder… but whoever calls his brother worthless shall be guilty before the court, and anyone who says to his brother, “You fool!” (a term implying a godless reprobate) will be in danger of hell.” (Paraphrased) His point was clear- the road that leads to murder begins with someone devaluing the dignity and humanity of another person or people.

The actions of Hamas, like those of the Nazis in the holocaust, are the deeds of a people of depraved mind who deny the essential value of every human life. If we cannot agree on that, we have lost our way as a nation, and I fear for a future, regardless of which political party is in control.

Bart

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A loser finally wins

Unlike my identical twin, I was not popular in high school. Bret earned his varsity letter in track as a sophomore, was Vice President of the sophomore class and then President as a junior, and hung out with cheerleaders. I was nothing.

When talking about high school I often ask people, “What’s the only think less cool than being president of the chess club?” Folks are uniformly stumped until I give the answer- Running for president of the chess club, and LOSING.

I can laugh about it now, but it wasn’t funny back then. I also lost in my runs for sophomore president and junior vice president. I decided not to run for ASB office, thinking I had suffered enough humiliation for one lifetime, only to be pressured into running at the last minute when one of the offices had only one candidate on the ballot. It was a disaster. I got La La Landed 43 years before the movie was released. The teacher responsible for announcing results read my name by mistake. For one brief, shining millisecond I thought I was popular after all.

My track record as an adult has not been much better. Sixteen years ago I finished second to another man when I put my name in to be the senior pastor of a church in Laguna Hills. Fifteen years ago I was voted off the board of directors of my HMO medical group. In the aftermath of that defeat I decided to focus my efforts on my own practice and leave the governing of the group to others. 

I was isolated and happy for fourteen years, until I was asked to run for an open board seat last year. I reluctantly agreed, only to be voted in. After twenty-eight years, it seemed I had finally found the respect of my pears.

As is my wont, I committed myself to being the best board member I could be. I am a much better listener that I was before, and much less bothered when people disagree with my point of view. It took me over sixty years, but I have learned how to be a grown up. Apparently others noticed my hard gained maturity, as last week the impossible happened. The Board of Directors elected me to be the group’s president.

The victory has my head spinning. I have asked myself, many times, “How did this happen?”

I think it really is the result of growing up. I have worked hard these last fifteen years at controlling my temper, respecting the opinions of others, accepting defeat with grace, allowing people time to digest my proposals, and being kind.

To my amazement, people noticed. 

These events have taught me something. I need to remember who I was and how long it took me to become who I am. I need to view other people as works in progress and not pass permanent sentences on them, to treat them with the grace that God and others treated me. There is a very good chance that some of the losers or today may be winners tomorrow.

Bart

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A BIG DECISION

I didn’t know I was poor until 1976. At the end of that school year students in the “California Scholarship Federation,” a club for students with GPA’s of 3.6 or higher, were treated to a day at Magic Mountain. I rode in a carpool with a friend who was a senior, and on the way home we stopped at a Denny’s with other students. While the others ate burgers or breakfast and sipped Coca Cola, I drank water and ate the onions someone didn’t want on their burger as I had no money.

Six months later I made the sophomore basketball team. The coach decided it would be a good idea for us all to wear dress shirts and ties on game days. I was not opposed to the idea, but I had a problem. I did not own a dress shirt or a tie. My typical school attire consisted of a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt. The coach was kind enough to give me a solid blue necktie but when it came to the shirt I was on my own. The only collared shirt I owned was a brown Pendleton I had been given for Christmas, and though I wore it with a tie for the first game it didn’t look very good. My mother must have said something to her much older boyfriend, because he took pity on me and the next week gave me a short-sleeved light blue dress shirt, which soon became my favorite.

Things changed when I began working during my junior year. I worked several days a week, sometimes more than thirty hours, but I could finally buy the things I wanted. My clothes and my outlook both improved. I continued working regularly for the next nine years, all through high school, community college, and ultimately the University of California, Irvine. Although I knew I was competing against students who did not work at all I never thought of myself as disadvantaged or viewed life as unfair. Until I decided I wanted to be a doctor.

As a product of an abusive home, I lacked self-esteem, and I wasn’t sure I had what it took to get in to medical school. My sense of self-doubt was so well developed that when I transferred to UCI to major in Biology, I felt compelled to promise my wife I would change majors if I did not have at least a 3.6 GPA at the end of my first year I would change majors. I did better than that, and when I submitted my applications two years later, I was in the top 3% of my class and had scored in the top 2.5% of the nation of the MCAT, the standardized admissions test. I thought I had made it.

I had, and I hadn’t. I had performed well enough to easily obtain admission into private medical schools in California such as USC, but when it came to the dramatically less expensive University of California schools I was found lacking. I was dismissed out of hand by UCSF, denied by UC Davis and UCSD after an interview, and put in the limbo of the “waiting lists” of UCI and UCLA. My deficiencies lie not in my grade average or test scores, but in something over which I had no control whatsoever, the amount of melanin in my skin. What I had overcome did not matter. No one cared that I had come from an abusive home or had worked my way through college. I was forced to sit and wait while much less qualified applicants were given spots ahead of me, forced to consider joining the military to pay for private tuition while the schools of my state granted admission to other people based on the spelling of the last name or the color of their skin. The most egregious example was when UCSF gave a spot to a fair-skinned female of Latin descent with a 3.0 GPA and test scores in the 40th percentile. I waited eight months to learn I did not have to force my wife to be a military bride. I did not receive an offer from UCI until six weeks before the first day of school, for UCLA the offer came five weeks later still.

I don’t think about the anguish of those days much, as everything worked out well for me in the end, but those memories came flooding back this morning when I read the news of the Supreme Court’s decision in Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard. In clear, uncompromising terms, the majority of the court declared that admissions policies like the ones that nearly held me back thirty-seven years ago are unconstitutional.

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, a man who happens to be black and who was abandoned by his father as a child and raised by his grandfather, ended his concurring opinion with these words-

“While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination, I hold out enduring hope that this country will live up to its principles so clearly enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States: that all men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally before the law.”

Bart

 

PS: I never write about politics, as my politics do not define me, and my political beliefs are not all that important. This post was motivated not by politics but emotion. For the first time in memory the Supreme Court addressed something I had personally experienced. The post is not a comment on racism in America (I know it is still a part of our culture!). It is simply a story of something I experienced and how today’s decision impacted me.

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We’re not that SPECIAL

The incredibles is one of the greatest movies of all time. I loved it the first time I saw it, so much so that we went back and saw it again the next day. It's one of those movies that gets better with age, and for me, it gets deeper too.

The movie’s villain uses gadgetry to do super human things, (and gain victory over true “Supers”) then declares his plan to use these fake superpowers to become famous and then sell those power giving gadgets to other people.

His ultimate goal is to diminish super heroes by making them common. He tells the Incredibles- “When everyone is super, no one will be!”

The depth and the meaning in that line is amazing.

The villain was a normal boy who lacked the powers of his heroes but whose lifelong dream was to be recognized as “super.” When Mr. Incredible didn’t accept him as special, he made it his goal to ruin the few people in the world who were truly exceptional.

What an analogy for our culture today. No one is content with being normal or average. Everybody wants to be special, to be better than everybody else and recognized by the world, and they will do just about anything to achieve that status. This is borne out by recent surveys of high school students asked about their career aspirations. At the top of list of desired professions was: social media influencer.

You read that right, more than doctors, lawyers, nurses, school teachers, police officers, or firemen, young people of today simply want to be famous. They want to be special. Make the world a better place? Not interested. Make a difference in a child’s life? Whatever. Get a lot of likes and clicks? Sign me up!

These young people are headed for a rude awakening. It is impossible for everybody to famous, super, or special, and the truth is, very few people are. There are over 8 billion people on planet earth. And most of us just aren't that special, and by definition, half of us are below average. In the grand scheme of things, most of us don't make that much of a difference in the world.

This has been the way of things forever, but it seems this reality is unacceptable to many Americans, particularly those who are young. I have read a number of different explanations for this “gotta be special” mentality, from an addiction to “likes” on social media to the consequences of “everybody gets a trophy” participation awards to child centered parenting, but I wonder if something else is to blame. I wonder if it might be due to the rise of humanism in America. (Bear with me while I explain.)

In the not too distant past, America was a nation of near universally shared values. While rooted in Judeo-Christian traditions, these values spanned many different faiths. These values included such things as belief in family, truth telling, the value of hard work, integrity, keeping one’s word, traditional marriage, and kindness. Success, for most people, was measured by a person’s character. Moral values mattered so much that a wealthy person who lacked these virtues was often viewed as a failure.

To put it another way, being a good person made you special, and the recognition of your goodness by family, friends, and your faith community is what mattered. (Before the advent of social media the admiration of strangers was impossible.)

Nowadays I rarely, if ever, meet someone who as a strong sense of morality, much less anyone who aspires to be a good person. I probably shouldn’t be surprised by the fact that people in a microwave, fast food, instant gratification world feel this way. Being a noble person requires effort and takes work, typically over a long period of time.

Humanism is attractive because it offers a faster and easier path to praise. Being “true to yourself” has replaced “being a good person” as the highest form of praise, but it brings with it an unexpected problem.

When everyone is being “true to themselves”, being true to yourself isn’t special anymore. Unless the “self” you are being “true to” is dramatically different.

We see this desperation everywhere, in the extreme ways people alter their physical appearance, express their sexuality and self identify. The self worth created by such extremes will not last, as history as taught us yesterday’s fad will be tomorrow’s norm. (Old folks like me remember when tattoos and piercings were rare!)

The solution to the specialness dilemma is not flashy or popular, but it has endured through the ages. People who find their value in the eyes of God, the love of their family and in service to others will find a deep sense of wellbeing that transcends the temporary and provides something far greater than mere happiness or pleasure.

They will find joy.

- Bart



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