Category Archives: Maturity

Because I Said So

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[Cover story on the PD on Monday 5-2-2016 about the prosecution of “failure to comply”]

Most of us know that we can’t control other people’s choices. This knowledge doesn’t stop us from trying, of course, but we aren’t really surprised when we tell someone to do something and they don’t. Even when this someone is our child the fact that we have given a command doesn’t mean we will get compliance. As often as not, the order will be met with the query, “Why?”

In the larger social order we want there to be a force that will control errant behavior. We create a certain class of powers that are supported by law and appoint persons to have these police powers. We train them and we require them to take an oath to properly uphold the law. We feel safer because of the presence of those who are pledged to protect and to serve.

But from time to time someone with the badge may order us to behave in a particular way that doesn’t seem to be consistent with safety and public welfare. The command may not be within what we understand to be the law and may even be experienced as an abridgment of our rights. We resist.

While this resistance is understandable, it is also a response that weakens the authority of the law. It becomes an occasion for the decay of social order. It demands our attention. Is this an overreach on the part of the police or a rebellion on the part of the populace? We must be very clear about this. Both the police and the populace have rules they have to follow. And when the populace comes to believe that the police are not obeying the rules, rebellion is the result.

The populace is by nature unruly. The police are by design disciplined. It thus falls to the police to police its own. When we have cops who go beyond their appointed powers they undermine the authority of all police officers.

Rev. Dr. Mark Lee Robinson
Monday, May 02, 2016

Freedom of Contempt

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This week the House Emerging Issues Committee of the Missouri Legislature failed to pass on Senate Joint Resolution 39.  This bill would place on the ballot a constitutional amendment to shield clergy, churches, and certain other businesses from government penalties and legal liability if they decline to participate in a same-sex wedding ceremony.   The authors of this bill frame it as protecting religious freedom.  In fact, were it to become law, it would protect the right to openly express contempt for certain persons under the guise of being an expression of “sincere religious beliefs.”

I am myself a Minister of the Gospel and am empowered by the State to sanctify marriages by signing a marriage license.  I have had couples come to me seeking my services at their wedding and I have had conversations in which we ultimately agreed that I would not do the service. But this was not because of my feelings about their lifestyle.  Most commonly it was because they showed me a lack of maturity in their relationship and I was willing to point this out to them.   As a result, they either decided not to wed, or to find someone who was not so frank with them to do the service.  But it was never because of who they were as persons.

Were I a baker I can easily imagine having to tell a couple that I couldn’t do their cake because I wasn’t skilled at what they wanted or because I was already too busy that weekend.  But what this bill seeks to protect is the right of a service provider to say to a person, “I will not serve you because I find some aspect of your being to be so odious and contemptible that I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”

While the bill itself doesn’t name any particular religion whose sincere beliefs would be preserved and protected, I do find a strong parallel in the Gospels to a sect called the Pharisees.  They were especially contemptuous of the behavior of one Jesus of Nazareth who had the troubling habit of partying with sinners and tax collectors.  While the contempt they showed for him is not something most people celebrate today, I can certainly see the importance of not discriminating against those who hold such views.  On the other hand, I don’t understand why it is necessary to protect those practices in the State Constitution.  It seems to me that we are better served by urging ourselves in the direction of greater maturity and health rather than protecting the rights of those who are less self-aware.

Many years ago I was in a meeting for my denomination, the United Church of Christ, as we were considering whether to ordain persons who were openly and actively gay.  Seated next to me was an anxious young man who spoke up against the resolution stating that, “We all have urges that we need to have help resisting.”  He believed he had to resist his own feelings of attraction to other men.  His fear of those feelings had led him to be contemptuous of himself and to ask the larger community to join him in that contempt.  How sad.

While I have compassion for the Pharisees, I don’t believe we are wise to enshrine such self-hatred into State law.

Rev. Dr. Mark Lee Robinson

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Because of Fear

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The front page story about the man who went to Home Depot for help in making pipe bombs [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Friday, April 29, 2016] continues on page A6 right across from the stories on A7 of the continuing prosecution of the San Bernardino terrorist attacks and two stories from Baltimore; one about a man in a hedgehog costume with a fake bomb and the other about a 13-year-old boy who was shot while brandishing a BB gun designed to look like an automatic pistol.

Embedded in the story about the 13-year-old is a quote from a press conference given by Police Commissioner, Kevin Davis.

“Why this young man chose to leave his home with a replica semi-automatic pistol in his hand, I don’t know,” he said. “Why this young man chose to flee on foot when he was approached by two Baltimore police officers, I don’t know. Why that young man chose not to drop the gun and comply with the officers’ commands to stop? I don’t know that either.”

I do.

He left his home, the place of greatest safety for him, to go out into the streets where it is very unsafe for a young man on the cusp of becoming an adult. He took with him what he has been told will make him safe by an army of pro-gun activists.

When he was confronted by police he ran because he is emotionally flooded by fear and he doesn’t experience the police as a force for safety in his life.

When told to drop the gun he didn’t because he couldn’t decide whether he could give up the only thing in his grasp that gave him a sense of safety.

I often have conversations with folks who feel just that way. What troubles me most is that the Police Commissioner doesn’t seem to be having these conversations.

I get it that the police were scared too. They didn’t know the gun wasn’t what it appeared to be. They could not have known that they were not at risk. Everyone in this scenario did just what we could expect them to do. And the boy will live.

But we continue to live in fear, a fear born not just of the media but of our day-to-day experiences, a fear that causes us to flee or to freeze such that we do not understand each other and therefore cannot work together to create genuine safety.

Rev. Dr. Mark Lee Robinson
Friday, April 29, 2016

Hubble galaxy

The “real” world!

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The young man across the restaurant table from me closed his eyes and straightened his shoulders.  I sensed immediately that he was dropping his awareness into a meditative state and I followed him.  I normally meditate with my eyes closed but watching him allowed me to connect with him more closely and as he quickly dropped more and more deeply into a trance I felt myself pulled along as in his wake.

I had hesitated to accept the invitation to meet at this restaurant.  I knew only a few of the people at the table and the place is noisy.  It is a microbrewery and the high ceilings and hard walls make it hard for me to hear.  This was a group of folks who were just coming off a week-long meditation retreat and they were excited about and bonded by their shared experience.  I was afraid I would not be able to connect, especially because of the noise.

We all exchanged names in the foyer before we got a table and we made it through giving our orders to the server when we discovered ourselves at that awkward place where we wished we could connect more deeply but didn’t want to shout at each other.  It was at just that point that he closed his eyes.

Watching him I found the noise in the room fade into the background and we settled into the quiet and the calm that we can summon by our meditative practice.  We rested there together for a few minutes before he took a deeper breath and opened his eyes looking straight at me. He had sensed that I was with him but was surprised to discover that he was right.  We had only just met, had shared but a few dozen words, knew only each other’s first name and almost nothing else, and yet had shared this deeply intimate moment.

Weeks later we became friends on Facebook.  It was only then that I got a glimpse of the life he was transitioning back to as we met in that noisy restaurant.  I learned of the death of his lover and mother of their child and his struggle to raise the child even as he struggled to care for himself.  This knowledge put that shared moment in the restaurant into a deeper context.  He wanted to savor that spacious peace before returning to the “real” world.