Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Weekday Devotion With Pastor Chris


Bias takes a lot of different forms.  Around 1972 I asked a friend I knew from our church youth group out on a date.  Her father said she couldn’t go.  He didn’t like my long hair, or my blue jeans, or the fact that I drove a convertible.  The convertible I could have understood, but I gather it was the blue jeans that bothered him most.  A wealthy financier, he couldn’t abide what he took as a sign of the working class.  So maybe i dodged a bullet on that one.

     In college there were a couple of more encounters that stood out.  The first term of my first year I had a professor who had a policy of never giving an “A” to freshmen.  Unfortunately, his course was a requirement for my major.  One thing I knew was that I could write great papers, so I set out to show him the error of his ways.  I wrote great papers, but I never got higher than a B+.  It was a disheartening way to begin my college career.

     Two years later I had another professor in the same department.  The issue this time wasn’t my hair or blue jeans or freshman status, it was the fact that I played rugby.  He didn’t like students who were involved in sports (or maybe it was just sports like rugby or football).  When I would share a paper, the other students would love it.  The professor, however, would always make some kind of disparaging comment.  At the end of the term he had a party for the class.  He pulled me aside and told me I didn’t have to come.  I went anyway, and early on in the party he politely invited me to leave.  Me?  What did I do?

     A year later, that same professor released the SAT scores of a couple of our hockey players.  The scores were not impressive.  In the resulting scandal, the Trustees appointed a four-person team to investigate the school’s admissions practices.  Ironically (from the professor’s perspective), I was part of that investigative group.  Ultimately it led to the departure of our hockey coach and the resignation of our president.  It should have led to the resignation of that professor for releasing confidential material, as well. 

     My personal encounters with bias are about as close as you can get to being insignificant, but they were hurtful.  Forty years later I still remember them.  And they opened my eyes to the reality of bias.  In high school the most respected person in my class was black.  Every year he was elected class president.  He went to Princeton, became a Rhodes Scholar, and went on to Harvard Law where he ultimately joined the faculty. In high school I took it as a given that any intelligent person would have risen above racial bias by the early 1970’s.

     College taught me otherwise.  I heard black students complaining about the bias of some professors.  One of my favorite professors confirmed it; he had seen it firsthand.  And with that, the bubble I had been living in burst.  I realized that for all their intelligence and education, even professors were still very human and subject to the same failings as all the rest of us.

     So here's the thing: if even the most educated can fall victim, then what hope is there for the rest of us -- the politicians, policemen, financiers, bus drivers, and yes, even pastors?  What that means is that there are always going to be bad policemen, just as there are bad professors and bad pastors.  If we know that up front, then we don’t turn a blind eye and it doesn’t come as a surprise when we encounter it.  Instead, we make sure we have systems in place to address the issues when they happen (and they surely will) in a constructive and proactive way.  We deal with them.  It's part of caring for one another.

     I know what it is like to be white and to have someone take an instant dislike of me based on something as superficial as how I look or the sport I love.  I can only begin to imagine what it is like to be black or brown, and face a bias that is far more pervasive, and exponentially more threatening.  In an ideal world we wouldn’t have this issue.  But this world, of course, is far from ideal which is why it is so very important that we be intentional about creating accountability in our own lives, and in the organizations and institutions of which we are a part.  That's what loving one another looks like.  That's what being our best, together, is all about.

“Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell.  Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you” (2 Corinthians 13:11)

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