I'm Really Trying to Be Paul

I just want to know the story.

I am asking a genuine question, grounding it as best I can in curiosity rather than snarky judgement.

My pastors have focused the last month of their sermons on Romans, Chapter 12. Four weeks, one chapter. Yet their messages - particularly the final message in August - present teachings that absolutely contradict the guidance of Paul's letter. There are even verses that my pastors quote that they explicitly violate just minutes before or after.

I think I understand the story they're trying to tell. I just cannot see how they veered so far off course. I want to learn more about the connections they see and how they see the alignment between their message and this scripture. Because I see a stark and dangerous departure, an alarming unmooring of their rhetoric away from Romans 12.

I'm not a Biblical devotee; this is not a work of literature that I know well. My wife is the voracious scholar. I only pick it up when prompted, but I always find connections that affirm and reinforce the goals I have for my walk. Romans 12 is a short, specific, even simple outline for how Christ wants us to approach and interact with each other. It even has an undercurrent of defiance -- Paul knows he is challenging a history and a culture of subjugation, perhaps even challenging our own primal, subconscious instincts that drive us into the worst kinds of individualism, nationalism, and tribalism. 

And so I feel called to unpack this chapter and describe the story I'm telling myself about how my pastors' messages splinter away from this important scripture even as they are trying to illuminate it. I hope to interpret Paul's guidance while following his example, presenting a loving critique that honors its subject. My pastors are very good people. They work incredibly hard to build a real community of heaven on Earth. I want to help them.

Paul's Guidance for Debate

"Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord." (Romans 12:10-11)

Paul presents the prime directive here - love thy neighbor, honor them above yourself. But it's immediately followed by a warning: don't let your fervor pull you away from the Lord. Don't let the conviction behind your beliefs lure you into behavior that does not build that love and that honor. The tension here speaks to a fundamental question that many of us wrestle with: how do we approach those whom we disagree with?

We cannot address this tension without challenging what we believe about debate. So much of our society has become argumentative, and the binary nature of our culture has reduced the act of disagreement to a zero-sum, winner-take-all-and-loser-gets-cancelled conflict. In the best case scenario, it's a game that gets too competitive. Worst case: we stop talking to certain people entirely because we are only interested in vanquishing enemies. But we desperately need to re-think this approach. We can leverage specific language to keep our love in place even as we challenge or question the ideas of others. Debate can lead to a consensus around the ideas that survive the test of argument. 

"Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us."   (Romans 12:3-5)

The key is to maintain a generous mindset while engaged in debate. This is more than avoiding judgement; you can do that by de-personalizing your language: "I disagree with that point" rather than "I disagree with you." A generous mindset takes it a step further, where you honestly believe that your partner in the verbal wrestling is genuinely trying to achieve something noble. They are worthy of your honor because you believe they are doing the best they can to build a better world. They may have a different vision of what that world looks like than you do, and they may have a very different way of trying to build it, but if you turn your heart towards theirs, and re-cast the debate as a partnership and not combat, then you are ready to listen genuinely and build the discussion on love and honor. 

Sounds like a bit of a process, right? Especially as you imagine the toughest nut to crack on your social feed or at your family Thanksgiving. Can you fake it until you make it? Yes, to some extent. Start by framing your understanding of the issue with "The story I'm telling myself." This is language that comes from Brené Brown - it quite accurately describes how assumptions and biases burrow their way into our thinking. Our brain craves order and structure so much that it will take whatever bits of information we have and actually concoct a story that allows them to make sense. The narrative is meant to bridge the gaps in our knowledge. Sometimes, it even masks those gaps, yet the tidiness of the story is so seductive that our mind will cling to it. If you're going to recount your own understanding of a topic - especially if the topic engages passionate feelings - framing it as "The story I'm telling myself" pulls you out of that emotional center -- the very place that often derails civil discourse. It also shows to your partner that you are conscious that it is your story, and you recognize that it may have some pieces that need to be reconsidered. It's a story, after all, and you're open to revisions. 

This can also shift your perspective in the debate to one of curiosity over judgement. (Yes, I'm channeling Ted Lasso here.) Now that your arguments are framed around your story, you can debate with the goal of unpacking your partner's story. Respond to your partner's views with questions, rather than rebuttals. And be careful to weed out any whiff of judgement in the language you use. 

Aside: Let's be honest, here. Many of us have a default setting for judgement. It's our go-to in certain situations and conversations. It may even be an impulse that is affixed to certain people -- as soon as we see them or hear their name, the inner judge calls out. Shifting our language toward a generous place will take time and effort when this is our starting point. So, we can start by faking it in a couple of ways:

1) Keep the judge inside. Whatever they are screaming in your head, don't give an external voice to it. Notice the judge, but don't share what they say.  

2) Lean into questions that sound genuinely curious. That means being careful with the words and also the tone with which you ask. Your first step may be to dial down the snark and aim for a neutral tone. And that's fine. 

Practicing Paul

Now here's an authentic example from that recent sermon I alluded to at the start. I'll try to illustrate here the range of responses: pure judgement to cynical assumption to neutral question to generous question.

Pastor: "I'm an agent of Truth and because I'm here you could prosper, but I ain't going to cow to a world of Lies just to suit your sensitivities... I'm too kind for that. I'm too kind, I got too much character for that. How do you measure the level of your character is by what you succumb to." [sic]

- Judgement response: "So you're a bully who thinks bullying is kind."

- Cynical assumption: "What you're calling 'kind' sounds a lot like bullying. If you know they are sensitive to something, why would you push so hard against it?"

- Neutral question: "I'm not following. What does it look like, exactly, to challenge a 'world of lies' kindly? How does a person prosper through that challenge, when they have sensitivities that are vulnerable during that challenge?"

- Generous question: 

"The story I'm telling myself is that you intend to confront anyone that you suspect of telling or perpetuating a lie, and you intend to prioritize this confrontation over being mindful of another person's sensitivities.  Is that a fair summary?

I agree with the premise that deliberately lying is a sin, and that the truth should be defended against such disinformation. I also agree that kindness, if it's truly genuine, can sometimes require us to have conversations that are uncomfortable. If I care deeply for someone, I want to have the courage to steer them away from a bad decision or a destructive habit. But I wonder how we determine whether someone is telling a lie (or repeating it), as opposed to someone sharing a thought or belief that just doesn't match our beliefs. If we are the sole arbiter of whether someone is lying, this seems to contradict Paul's guidance to "Not think of yourself more highly than you ought." 

So if Paul calls us to "honor one another above (our)selves," including the "different gifts (that we have), according to the grace given to each of us," would asking the person questions, and learning more about their perspective, keep us more aligned with these directives without abandoning our belief in or pursuit of truth? How do we reconcile the defense against disinformation with Paul's command to approach others with humility?"

How did generosity get so wordy? Let's break it down.

First, let's delve into why the first two responses are so brief. They're abrupt and sharp by design; these are retorts. The giveaway is the number of times "you" appears in the first two replies. "You" is the subject, which makes both of these more pointed and personal despite other language that tries to create some distance like "what you're calling 'kind'." The second remark may be a question, but it's clearly grounded in cynicism rather than curiosity. It's a classic move: "I'm phrasing this as a question to try and sound polite, but I'm pretty sure I know what your answer is, or I'm confident that you don't really have an answer for this because it's such a wicked burn wrapped in a question." 

The neutral reply softens a bit because it removes "you" completely. The subjects in these sentences are all depersonalized -- "a person", "it". This is also the first time that we see clauses joined together juxtaposing both sides of the dilemma: "How does (something happen), when (this other force pulls against it)?" This also makes the neutral response longer than the first two rebuttals.

Then we get the generous questions, which seem like a mini-essay. But the opening paragraphs are key because, first, they center on the speaker, using "I" as the subject.  The entire first half of the response is spent with the speaker summarizing their own understanding and highlighting points of agreement. The sharing of your own narrative establishes the partnership.  And when you begin to challenge part of the argument, it's still framed using "I", as in "I wonder...." This is an explicit way to make sure curiosity governs the discourse. 

The language of juxtaposition soon takes over: "How do we (option A) as opposed to (option B)?"  "How do we reconcile (A and B)?" We're also using the pronoun of partnership - "we" - even as you present challenges to the initial argument. All sides are acknowledged and honored, and no argument (not even your own 😉) is given any more status than another. And you don't have to stay anonymous in the debate to do this; your language can make it personal in a positive way.  You can call them out and call them in at the same time.

More to come

As the U.S. enters a season where debate will be in the public spotlight, I hope to provide more samples of language that can harvest the value of testing each other's ideas while maintaining grace in relationship. May we connect each other and confront, together, the really difficult problems in front of us. Inevitably, we will disagree. My hope is that, when we do, we seek the "agree" more than the "dis."

My Most Difficult Relationship at Work

My President started a series of all-administrator meetings in early June - shortly after graduation - with a rather blunt assessment of our college-wide dynamic: We don't talk to each other enough. We don't talk to our faculty, our direct reports, or our colleagues. No one gets enough conversation, and we are all guilty of not initiating that dialogue.

As this series is about to culminate in my being sequestered for three out of five days this week, surrounded by my administrator colleagues -- a network of extraordinary humans that I deeply admire -- I scan the landscape of my life and all the circles that I move through with the echo of these words reverberating. We don't talk to each other enough.

I often blame e-mail, at least for the lack of work-chat with my teams. I'm starting to wonder, though, if there is a more subtle and powerful demon at play here. Perhaps it's a form of perfectionism, but I'm landing on the term "complete-ness." I like to finish things, and I've been trained to value that pretty highly. Building on my Ephesians essay, our culture loves to reduce us to objective transactions, especially at work. Email is an area where I feel very imperfect because it is perpetually incomplete. I don't think I've ever had "Inbox Zero" in my entire career after, maybe, the first month in any position. The job I had immediately prior to Dean gave me some of those moments, but that was also a place where I was discouraged from building relationships. In fact, in an earlier position, my attention to long-game relational leadership, planning, and processes was explicitly critiqued. My refusal to respond to toxic e-mails was weaponized against me, and I was fed a story that continues to haunt me: that my value as a leader is less so long as that inbox isn't zero. Thanks to that story, I can spend a full day in meetings, engaged in hours of thoughtful, creative, challenging but ultimately encouraging and insightful conversations, and leave with a stinging feeling of frustration. 

Why? Why I am supposed to loathe this extended dialogue where my thinking is truly tested and stretched? Because it leaves no time for e-mails? I've realized that this reaction only breathes life into another corrosive part of our culture, which loves to tell us that talking and connecting with people isn't really work. The number of written replies outweighs the depth of your relationships. We prioritize jumping at every ping and answering or forwarding it immediately over being a present listener and truly learning the stories of the people right in front of you.

Malarkey. Communal work is God's work. For me, nothing is more important.

I'm proud to serve others and answer their questions. It genuinely feels good to be able to do that in a written message, or even a long thread. But it's more important to build people up, share experiences, and align our hearts towards a greater purpose. The Spirit sings in chorus, and anywhere that we can lay down the conditions for people to be fully authentic, open and wholehearted, honest and free - that is where inspiration and dedication are born. It is where the best work emerges, yet it requires investment in the messy connections that cannot be calibrated by a number of read, unread, or folder-dropped notes. 

No, I'm not breaking up with my inbox. We are probably inseparable at this point; the workplace will never return to hand-scrawled memos. I will continue to work on our relationship, and find the boundaries that can bring us into harmony. But that requires letting go of the guilt I've been trained to feel. I need to prepare my inbox for days of neglect -- probably three of them this week -- and I need to be OK with that. I also need to prepare those around me so they understand that a lack of response does not mean a lack of care. I'll invite them to set up a time to call or meet once I'm freed from my sequester. Together, we'll walk toward the beautiful synergy when the inbox become a springboard for conversation, rather than its substitute.

Summer Reflection - On Ephesians, Imperfections, and Culture

My summer studies and reflection have centered around the elements of American culture that prop up an unhealthy lifestyle and belief system. I’ve long believed that the COVID shutdowns did not cause most of the ills in our society. Rather, they exposed the other long-festering infections that have poisoned our beliefs, our habits, and even the way we see and interact with each other. I’ve been juxtaposing the works of Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun with The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown to define these cultural elements and the shifts in our hearts and habits that can allow us to break free of them. I also turned to a source I don’t often consult: my Bible. Specifically, I found great affirmation and synergy in the Book of Ephesians from the New Living Translation, published as the Life Application Study Bible by Tyndale House Foundation. (Yup – I crack it open so rarely that I felt it smart to lean on the extra footnotes and study guides. My wife – who is unquestionably the lead theologian in our home – also shared a great discussionfrom The Bible Project that lended very helpful context.)

The point is that all these sources – Jones and Okun, Brown, and Ephesians – are divinely aligned. Or at least, they have collectively helped me a great deal, illuminating where and why we stumble and struggle to build and maintain the kind of community that frees us, nurtures us, grows us, and supports us in our unique authenticity.

The problems really start and stem from a paradigm that dictates, in our culture, an objective ideal that everyone should strive to embody. And everyone is assessed (and, more often than not, judged) based on this objective ideal – you’re either there or you’re not. Most alarmingly, we find many places in our culture where it’s OK to erase people that impede your progress or who don’t live up to this ideal image. I call this the Mono-Binary: “There are only winners and losers: which one are you?”

The Apostle Paul begins Ephesians by highlighting how the arrival of Jesus dismantled a prevalent binary of the times – the superiority that many churches believed Jews held over Gentiles (and the term “Gentile” basically meant “everyone else who is not a Jew.”)   

For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups.  (Ephesians 2:14-15)

Jesus is Anti-Binary. 

He challenges us to move away from earthly, human-created divisions and unify with each other. In another translation, Paul captures the sin as being “puffed up in being a follower of one of us [spiritual leaders] over the other.” (1 Corinthians 4:6 – New International Version)  I love this image; it captures our current state quite well, with so many leaders and public figures puffed up like birds in heat, winning our favor only by demeaning and dismissing the people they find objectionable. Okun calls out the destructive nature of a culture that “Reduces the complexity of life and the nuance of our relationships with each other and all living things into either/or, yes or no, right or wrong.” We wouldn’t have a reason to “puff ourselves up” over anyone if we abandoned the notion that there is only “one right way.” Along with poisoning the way we relate to each other, applying the same principle to ourselves feeds our toxic perfectionism. We invest so much in trying to reach this ephemeral, objective, and singular notion of what it means to be “good.” Brown lays out just how harmful this is:

Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it’s often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis….Perfectionism is self-destructive simply because there is no such thing as perfect. Perfection is an unattainable goal. Additionally, perfectionism is more about perception – we want to be perceived as perfect. Again, this is unattainable – there is no way to control perception, regardless of how much time and energy we spend trying.  (Gifts 76-77)

We worship the idol of ideal. We look down on others who don’t measure up, and we look just as harshly upon ourselves.

Compassion paves the path away from the MonoBinary. Since we are all sloppy mixtures of strength and struggle, we can and should honor both in our relationships and, first and foremost, in ourselves. If we embrace our own imperfections as human features, not flaws, that compassion empowers us to connect more fully and authentically with others. We don’t weaponize compassion as a gentler way to condescend to those who don’t fit our “good person” framework – that’s just another way to hold up the MonoBinary. The shift is to prioritize making authentic connections with others. Seek to move forward by finding the folks who can plug their knowledge into our questions, who can coach us through our clumsiness, and whose own anxieties can be tempered by our genuine compassion and empathy. The paradigm that Jesus offers is not a global hegemony; it is a web of love that bonds and builds everyone together.

Remember that, at the start of Ephesians, Jesus creates our universal unity by dismantling “the system of law with its commandments and regulations.” The dogmas, the doctrines, the rhetoric, the cause, the culture that tries to corral love into one frame, one diagram for how humans are supposed to connect – this is where so many fall into the MonoBinary trap. These folks are not prophets; they’re just puffed up. The Holy Goal is to embrace and connect with each other, and when needed, support each other authentically.

Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace….[Christ] makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.  (Ephesians 4:2-3, 16)

You can’t “love the sinner but hate the sin” if you’re criticizing the way somebody gives love to another human. Love is love is love is divine is divine is divine. If we can summon the courage to connect to others beyond our circle and extend our compassion into the areas that we think are imperfections, our hearts will be open to reconsider what we perceive. Those alleged imperfections may well be mirages concocted by a diabolical, short-sighted view of who we should be.

Fire and Steel

I'm thinking about two meetings coming up this week where I expect that the changes I will insist upon will meet some strong resistance. It calls to my mind the interplay of the five elements in Chinese astrology; the other half of the animals we often associate with the Lunar New Year. Fire is the element of change - especially substantial, fundamental change. Steel can be viewed as its opposite: the stabilizing, immovable spirit that helps persist, insist, and at times, resist.

And I imagine the blacksmith or the forger - the artisan that actually uses fire to sculpt metal through slow melting and very careful crafting. You have to heat the steel first, loosen its grip on its current shape, and then gently and tenderly nudge it in a new direction. Even in this malleable state, the metal's heat is very intense, seconds away from bursting into a new chemical formation you don't anticipate, snapping back into its original shape, or falling away completely.

So the metal's integrity must be nurtured and supported even as you bend it to suit a new purpose. After you navigate the resistance, provide comfort as it rests and cools into its new form. They will mourn the passing of its old figure. You need a tender touch here, too, as the cooling steel can be suddenly fragile, even brittle at some points. 

Only the caring hand can bend the steel without breaking it.

Soaring on a Saturday

SOAR Day was last Saturday, April 20, at Chabot College. SOAR stands for Senior Onboarding And Registration. We take a Saturday morning to welcome local high school seniors who have already applied to Chabot College to guide them through the process of enrolling in classes for next Fall. We provide an overview of the college and the resources we can offer them, walk them through a worksheet that helps them plan for their first semester, and then we get them onto computers and coach them through their registration until everyone leaves with at least a partial schedule of classes for the Fall semester.

The day was absolutely incredible. The high school community truly showed up. I know of six different schools - including one private and one from Oakland - who came. I would love to get a full roster of all the schools represented. We were overflowing.

I still, even a few days later, remember the sense of pride that permeated all the young faces at the end of the day. Their faces beamed when they recognized that they had just registered for their first college classes. It reminded me of my time at Overfelt, when we celebrated every stage of the process. Counselors were embedded in senior classes every week guiding them through each college and financial aid application, and we held campus-wide events to highlight our seniors' first-choice schools as they applied and publicly celebrated all the places they ended up enrolling. As the application deadline approached, our counseling team would camp out in the library all day, with seniors pulled out of class -- over a hundred at any given point in the day -- to make sure they persisted in finishing the job. Every time a counselor confirmed that a senior was done with their application, they would ring a bell and the room would applaud. 

This is precisely how you build a first-generation juggernaut (and easily two-thirds of our Overfelt graduates every year were just that - the first in their family to go to college). You provide hands-on support that models determination. We eliminated barriers and excuses; seniors had no choice but to make those steps toward higher education. And they were honored for all their efforts, cheered at every stop because we know that, for families who don't have a college history, every part feels hard. Without a palpable sense of victory, without the communal applause, it is too easy to succumb to intimidation and overwhelm. 

Now that I'm working in at a community college, I see first-hand how the difficulties in the bureaucracy can stymie a student's (actually many students') aspirations and ambitions -- so much so that both of the high schools I previously worked in hosted workshops on campus where students could fill out community college applications, during the school day or right after school, with hands-on help from both high school and college staff. We held similar sessions for the FAFSA and CADA forms, long before the recent updates made the launch of healthcare.gov look smooth by comparison. So SOAR Day was, at its core, very familiar to me. It reinforced that we have to engage with students just as deeply as their high schools do; we have to hold these events that walk them through the bureaucracy with care. And even last Saturday, the system pushed against us a little bit, as the students who joined the event without an RSVP - the "walk-ins", if you will - had not been cleared to register. They still had a lock on their account that had to be manually, individually corrected. Thankfully, our lead counselors had the tools to do just that, and since the attendance in the computer lab where I worked was about double the number expected, those students (and several parental units) got to see us pro-actively troubleshoot and remove these barriers. They showed up for us, and they got to watch us dig in for them. Even though it nearly doubled the length of our registration session, causing me and several others to miss lunch, I firmly believe that the gratitude that was sown on Saturday will resonate across our community. We will see the fruit of that effort in the coming months.

There may be a sentiment that a teenager or family who cannot successfully navigate a college application is not yet prepared to attend college and be successful in those classes. There may be a sentiment that those who cannot RSVP for an event like this should have to suffer the consequences of waiting for help or possibly needing to come back for a later appointment. I challenge these notions on a few levels. First, our economy no longer sets high school graduates up with a sustainable livelihood; you have to pursue some kind of training and certification beyond 12th grade or your GED if you wish to have a career that offers anything close to a living wage. Therefore, college is no longer a luxury; it's a necessity, which means that we have to approach it as an essential community service. So why wouldn't we want to make it as accessible as possible? The community college system is, in itself, a revolution. Higher education began as an elitist institution, catering only to the families with legacies of privilege. We believe in the opposite: in a world that demands additional training beyond high school, we have a responsibility to provide that training to everyone. This is the challenge that our community puts to us when they walk onto our SOAR Day. They are basically asking us: "Are you truly accessible? Do you really mean that college is for me? Who may have just heard about your event the night before, but I set a Saturday alarm anyway and took two or three buses to make sure I didn't miss it? Even if I show up an hour after the 'check-in' time - are you going to reward the effort it took to come to campus? Or will you turn me away for not knowing about or not being able to jump over all the hurdles that the system puts in my way?"

I hope your local community college or university, or even your high school and adult school, answer this challenge the way we did at Chabot College last Saturday. I'm so proud of how we rose to this challenge, and welcomed all of our neighbors with a smile and a guiding hand. "Why yes, of course you can register. What's your name? Let me show you where to start. Vamos a empezar."