The Power of Community

I admit, I’ve been somewhat depressed lately. I find myself glued to the news and social media, obsessed with national and international politics and events, unable to understand the level of animosity and hatred between people. You feel it, too. The national trend toward selfishness and isolation into special interest camps threatens to destroy community. And then I look around Lufkin and refuse to believe all hope is lost.

On May 4, I attended a ribbon cutting for an innovative partnership between Angelina College and Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin – a global aerospace and defense company – employs over 500 people in Lufkin, where they manufacture components for several guided missile programs. Working with Angelina College, they created a new manufacturing skills training lab in AC’s Technology and Workforce Center, where students can receive college credit and qualify for an electronics assembler certificate. Certificate graduates will be eligible to follow an accelerated hiring schedule with Lockheed Martin. Those continuing on to get an associate degree have even more options.

The ribbon cutting was a community celebration. Mayor Mark Kicks was there, as well as State Representative Trent Ashby, Chamber CEO Tara Watson-Watkins, AC board members (of which I am one), representatives of the College and Lockheed Martin, and local and regional business development and community leaders. It was a beautiful sight! As Mayor Hicks noted, “Lockheed Martin wins by utilizing the unique training opportunities here at Angelina College to create the best trained employees in all of Lockheed Martin. Angelina College wins by educating workers on the latest in workforce technology.”

What was so heartwarming about the event was that it represented in a concrete way the coming together of community entities and people to accomplish much more than anything anyone could do individually or even as separate institutions. It has been said many times and in many ways that Lufkin is a generous and unique community – one that is full of philanthropic and committed people. We have so much in this county because people get together and make things happen, often with generous support of local foundations. But it is people first and foremost who make it happen.

Take the recent Angelina Benefit Rodeo. According to Chase Luce, President of the Lufkin Host Lions Club, the Rodeo deploys an army of hundreds of volunteers and raises nearly $200,000 to distribute annually for the benefit numerous local organizations, including the Lufkin State Supported Living Center. You can think of many other volunteer-driven arts and civic organizations, museums, churches, the Salvation Army, CISC, the Food Bank, etc., that do great work in our community by helping others and improving our quality of life.

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat in the early 1800s, traveled the young United States and collected his observations and reflections in a two-volume tome Democracy in America. In describing what was unique about the United States, he wrote:

Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small; Americans use associations to give fêtes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools. Finally, if it is a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of a great example, they associate. Everywhere that, at the head of a new undertaking, you see the government in France and a great lord in England, count on it that you will perceive an association in the United States.

When it comes to getting something done – especially on the local level – we do not rely on the government when we can take care of it ourselves. Certainly government has a role in society, but so does volunteerism and philanthropy. At a time when we are increasingly depressed about national and world events, it is even more important to focus on what we can accomplish right here at home. Heck, it might just be the key to solving the world’s problems. Attorney and columnist David French modernized and expanded on de Tocqueville’s comments:

“It is here [in community] that we find meaning and purpose. It is here that we build friendships and change lives. … To do the big thing—to heal our land—we have to do the small things. … For those who think and obsess about politics, this shift from big to small is hard. It’s hard to think that how you love your friends [this community] might be more important to our nation [than national political positions, votes, or corporate activism].”

So, what can you do? Find an organization and get involved! Find a place to share your time, talent, and treasure with others. As I often have ended my columns, it boils down to loving God and loving your neighbor. Words are cheap (and meaningless) unless action follows. We cannot “Love Lufkin” – much less our nation and our world – without getting involved right here at home. 

Barn Raisers and Old Coots

I love springtime. Early mornings when I walk my two German shepherds – Zeus and Zoë – the air is still crisp and the sun is just starting to creep up, bathing the quiet neighborhood in shades of yellow and blue. The birds are chirping more. Easter – next weekend –is the ultimate annual marker of renewal (specifically resurrection), and of optimistic hope. Our word for Easter carries a connotation of new birth or dawn. Even the more secular aspects of Easter, like bunnies, eggs, and new clothes, signal the hope of spring. I’m ready! 

But I am tired of pessimistic, contrarian people.

Pessimism just seems both un-American and not Christian. Americans of all stripes are known for being hopeful, industrious people. Ronald Reagan famously described his vision of America as a shining “city upon a hill” – “a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind swept, God blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace…” Martin Luther King Jr, in a motivational address at Spellman College in 1960, said, “If you can’t fly, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving.” By moving, MLK was talking about moving toward the Promised Land. Hope and optimism are not the same, but they are related.

Neither Reagan nor MLK were calling for blind optimism. In Reagan’s farewell speech, when talking about his dealings with the Soviet Union and Gorbachev, he also said, “It's still trust - but verify. It's still play - but cut the cards. It's still watch closely – and don't be afraid to see what you see.” Sounds pretty rational to me. And MLK’s vision of the Promised Land endured despite his assassination.

Has our optimism evaporated?

Writing an obituary for optimism in the New York Times, Frank Bruni noted that 71 percent of Americans believe the United States is on the wrong track. This “profound pessimism” and “negative mindset” was present during the Obama and Trumpadministrations alike, reflecting a deep well of anxiety and worry. What a downer.

I think our negativity may reflect less a loss of optimism than a pernicious and growing contrarianism. 

Optimists are by nature not contrary people. They find common ground and work toward the collective good rather than basking in selfishness. They are what I would describe as barn raisers.Contrarians, on the other hand, are not team players. They would never show up at a barn raising with its community first, service-above-self spirit.

Now, as a fourth generation Texan, I am well aware that anindependent, pioneer spirit is part of our collective Texas heritage. But going it alone – ignoring the larger community – can lead to unnecessarily tragic decisions (Remember the Alamo!).

Uber-contrarian people are, by definition, difficult people. (We used to say (s)he’s just an old coot, but that person was probably crotchety their entire life.) In my medical practice, I have learned not to argue with old coots. I will never convince them to change their thinking or behavior. (What do I know about medicine anyway!) Old coots are set in their ways. Facts are inconvenient.

Barn raisers understood the need to wear masks for the benefit of the community. Heck, they may not have had complete faith in them, and very well may have objected to broad mandates. But the contrarian’s attitude was, “Hell, no! Your safety, our full hospitals, none of that matters – only my selfish right to do whatever the hell I please!” Same with vaccines.

I was foreman of a jury many years ago. It was – or should have been – an open-and-shut case. The law dictated that the defendant was guilty by association and the prosecution proved their case beyond a shadow of a doubt. One juror – an old coot – would not budge. Any logical argument from the rest of the jury pool was angrily rebuffed with, “You are just trying to trick me!” He was irrational. He did not have facts on his side, only opinion and emotion. He was wrong, and his stubbornness in not following the judge’s instructions and the facts of the case resulted in a hung jury.

Old coots remind me of Evillene, the wicked witch in the musical The Wiz. A quintessential autocrat, she surrounded herself with sycophants who feared her and wouldn’t tell her what was really happening in the outside world. (Sound familiar?) Evillene sings a song titled “No Bad News” that could be acontrarian’s anthem:

“'Cause I wake up already negative /

And I've wired up my fuse /

So don't nobody bring me no bad news”

Writing for The Atlantic, David French warns, “Don’t for a moment mistake contrarianism for critical thinking.”

“The contrarian [is] both excessively cynical and excessively credulous. He’s too quick to disbelieve one side and too quick to believe the opposite… even when the reality and the morality of the moment could not be more clear.”

French’s comment on critical thinking and contrarianism reminds me of one of my favorite verses in the bible, Romans 12:2:

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

I read that verse this way: Don’t follow the selfish, contrarian spirit of talking heads on television, but improve yourself by using your brain to dig deeper and learn more. Only then will you be able to tell what is real and what is fake, what is true and what is a lie. God’s will is clear: Love God and love your neighbor.

Newscasts today are all about the latest “crisis” caused by evil opponents on the other side of the aisle, with nary a barn raiser in sight. Old coots, all of them. We need to love God and love our neighbor – together. We have a barn to raise!

Where Does Truth Come From?

 As a physician and Christian, I have been frustrated over the last 2 years with the alarming anti-science response to the pandemic. Two years ago, I shared worst-case predictions of 2.2 million COVID-19-related deaths. I was optimistic that the American people would “flatten the curve” of COVID-19 cases, but the early seeds of doubt and misinformation were already being sown. Ironically, by the time vaccines were available, science had become an enemy. Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984 and trusted advisor to seven Presidents on HIV/AIDS and many global health issues, including the COVID-19 pandemic, became the hated face of science. The loss of trust in science has profound implications not only for the COVID-19 pandemic, but also for healthcare in general.

Francis Collins, a professing Christian who led the Human Genome Project and recently retired as director of the National Institutes of Health, noted that many white evangelicals have been “victimized by the misinformation and lies and conspiracies that are floating around, particularly on social media and some of it in cable news.” Moreover, he said people are dying as a result. “I am just basically heartbroken in a circumstance where, as an answer to prayer, vaccines have been developed that turned out to be much better than we dared to hope for.” Vaccination rates in the US remain stagnant at 65%. Only 47% of Angelina County are vaccinated, with a mere 17% having received a booster, compared with 28% nationwide.

 Some evangelical pastors, whose political power goals – idols, really – appear to be more important than biblical mandates to love our neighbor and care for the least of these, tolerated and often promoted misinformation as opposed to vaccination, often in sync with a deep mistrust of government (except that of former President Trump). This misplaced “faith” won out over science, with the result that far more of our fellow Americans died of COVID-19 than should have – an astounding one million of us so far.

 Denial of the seriousness of COVID-19, promotion of unproven treatments, and rejection of highly safe and effective vaccines are all more common in evangelical Christian circles. Refusing vaccination became the new creed for many – a mark of membership in a chimera Christian nationalism faith, where wearing a mask in church is considered a political statement and not a safety measure.

For those of us who are Christian and work in science-related fields, the chasm that exists – unnecessarily, I might add – between faith and science is perplexing. In 2015 in an article title Are Evangelicals Anti-Science? Sara Kropp Brown noted that “evangelicals are more than twice as likely as the general public (29 percent vs. 14 percent) to say that science and religion are in conflict and that they are on the side of religion” and that “evangelicals are twice as likely as other groups to look to church leaders for answers to their questions about science.” Pandemic politics are certain to have made those numbers worse.

Historically, there was no inherent conflict between science and religion. Scientists have often been men and women of deep faith, including geneticists, physicists, and mathematicians. Augustine of Hippo (354-420 AD) is often attributed with saying “All truth is God’s truth.” The actual quote from On Christian Doctrine (Book II) is right on target in today’s anti-science, anti-vax, misinformation climate:

Nay, but let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master; and while he recognizes and acknowledges the truth, even in their religious literature, let him reject the figments of superstition, and let him grieve over and avoid men who, “when they knew God, glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.” Romans 1:21-23

 But we cannot claim “truth” and twist circumstances (sins of commission and omission) to suit our needs. Commenting in Bez & Co, Daniel R. Jones notes, “If we focus wholly on fragmented “truths” without getting around to glorifying God, we’re only exercising our own pride.”

 Reformation theologian John Calvin, commenting on Titus 1:12, put it pretty bluntly: “All truth is from God; and consequently, if wicked men have said anything that is true and just, we ought not to reject it; for it has come from God.” Christians must recognize truth wherever it is found or we dishonor God, even if that truth comes from people you may think “wicked” from across the political aisle, another denomination, or a different race.

 Truth, along with fellow virtues of justice and love, are side casualties in the unnecessary war between science and faith. People of faith across the political spectrum are being manipulated by politicians only interested in power – not truth, and certainly not the gospel’s command to love our neighbor as ourselves. Let’s take vaccination as a moral truth example applied to Philippians 4:8 (parentheses mine):

 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true (vaccines work), whatever is noble (vaccines save lives), whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy (preventing millions of deaths worldwide)—think about such things.

 This pandemic wave may be dying down, but the truth battle goes on. Science and religion are not incompatible. If the church claims so, she loses credibility. “The culture war is literally killing people,” Collins said. Let’s hope the culture war doesn’t kill the church as well.

Scarlet Letters and Healthcare

When I was in high school in the 1970s, one of our reading assignments was The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Though subtitled “A Romance”, I doubt any high school boy was interested in love per se; rather, we were consumed with the forbidden thrill of sex outside of marriage and the subsequent public humiliation of the offenders – at least the young Hester Prynne in the story, who was both imprisoned and forced to parade in public, forever wearing an embroidered scarlet “A” (for adulterer) over her breast. Nothing like the threat of guilt (or disease!) to keep a young boy “pure,” or so we were raised to believe.

Then there was Mary Mallon, an Irish immigrant and domestic worker and cook in New York City in the early 1900s. She was also an asymptomatic carrier of Salmonella typhi, bacteria that infect the gastrointestinal tract and blood. Seven of the eight families she worked for contracted typhoid fever, which at the time had a 10% fatality rate. She refused to believe she was the source of disease – she wasn’t sick herself, and the concepts of germs and hygiene disease were in their infancy at best – and she continued to work and evade authorities for quite some time. She ultimately was forced to live in quarantine for decades and died alone. She will forever be known as Typhoid Mary.

There have been times in history when labels like “Typhoid Mary” or Hester Prynne’s scarlet “A” have carried an even more sinister meaning. As part of the Nazi extermination program during World War II, Jews were forced to wear a yellow Star of David on their outer clothing with the local language word for “Jew” inscribed in the star. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “[The Nazis] used the badge not only to stigmatize and humiliate Jews but also to segregate them, to watch and control their movements, and to prepare for deportation.” For six million Jews and millions of others, including homosexuals and the disabled, that meant death. January 27 was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. I was reminded that day by an old friend of her parents, who were some of the few survivors of Auschwitz. They bore the forearm prisoner identification tattoos they received in the concentration camp as teenagers for the rest of their lives.

Being reared in a conservative and deeply religious community, my formative sense of morals in high school was very black and white. An ethic where actions are only right or wrong leads to equally black and white decisions to punish or not (and, obviously, wrongdoing should never go unpunished!) – in other words, not unlike the Puritan ethic in The Scarlet Letter. There was little room for nuance or grace. 

Healthcare shaming is not unique to Typhoid Mary. Think of the AIDS crisis, when just being gay was considered a disease. Now the COVID-19 pandemic – especially with the ubiquity of social media – has taken public shaming into a new and different realm. To die from COVID-19 now that vaccines are available is practically to have a scarlet “C” affixed to your name and legacy, forcing some families to keep COVID-19 deaths a secret in order to protect them from shame and social stigmatization. Some are separating victims into the vaccinated – worthy of our sorrow – and the unvaccinated – deserving only of disgrace. Websites have sprung up shaming victims with great vitriol. As The Atlantic noted, “With the arrival of vaccines, compassion for COVID-19 deaths began to dry up, sometimes replaced by scorn.” Facebook and Instagram accounts of the deceased and their relatives can be flooded with mocking comments. It is public COVID-19 shaming as blood sport. One family, while acknowledging their loved one who died from COVID-19 was not vaccinated, nonetheless pointed out that vaccination decisions have been quite difficult for some. “We think he was a victim of misinformation,” the deceased’s daughter lamented. She was pleading for understanding and grace.

Unfortunately, we have more of a Puritan mindset all around than we care to admit. Legalism and judgmentalism are increasing on both sides of the political spectrum, with some on the right fighting to have government enforce their preferred religious beliefs and some on the left want to cancel those who they deem to be bigoted. Neither extreme allows dissent or disagreement. Despite our talk of tolerance, we only tolerate that with which we agree. Black and white. Judgment only. No grace. Depeche Mode sang about it in their 1984 hit: People are people / So why should it be / You and I should get along so awfully / So we're different colours / And we're different creeds / And different people have different needs / It's obvious you hate me / Though I've done nothing wrong / I've never even met you so what could I have done. 

We cannot minimize the incredible number of deaths in this pandemic – nearly one million so far – or deny that choices (both societal and individual) have consequences. As I started this column, a good friend’s unvaccinated 20-something niece was on a ventilator with respiratory and liver failure due to COVID-19. She, too, is a victim of misinformation as well as COVID-19, in her case pervasive and false information about vaccine effects on fertility. No amount of gentle urging on the part of relatives could convince her once that doubt was seeded. She was one of the fortunate ones who came off the ventilator and was discharged home, but she still has a lengthy recovery ahead. This family needs prayer and grace, not a scarlet “C.”

Though we are understandably tired of the pandemic – tired of masks, tired of vaccines and boosters – we cannot allow ourselves to tire of compassion, even as we fight to educate and persuade. The Puritans in The Scarlet Letter were so busy judging that they could not feel empathy. Compassion for others forbids us from placing a scarlet letter on anyone’s chest. We don’t know – and don’t need to know – the back story of the injured traveler in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. What was he doing on that road at that time of day? Shouldn’t he have known better? We are simply commanded to have mercy, loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Practicing Grace in 2022

A year ago, we tried to say goodbye to 2020. We envisioned a relatively quick end to COVID-19. The Holy Grail of 2020 – a vaccine against COVID-19 – was found, only to be ignored by so many like an unwanted Christmas present. 2020 did not go away – it decided to reincarnate as 2021. 

Of course, COVID remained the dominant issue this last year, but a capital riot, the Afghanistan exit, and ongoing supply chain issues were not far behind. Crime is on the rise, but it is primarily a wave of violence, not property crime.  Lufkin saw 14 violent deaths in 2021.  

Violence is rearing its ugly head in other ways. Airline passengers have been getting increasingly disruptive for years now, but pandemic restrictions seem to have made things even worse. Eighty five percent of flight attendants said they'd dealt with unruly passengers in 2021, and 17% said they'd been victim of a physical attack.  

You’ve seen it around, haven’t you? This increase in anger and rage. People losing it in the checkout lane, at a restaurant, on a plane. There have always been mean people, of course. But those in customer service are seeing a new level of meanness.  One employee remarked, “People are just — I hate to say it because there are a lot of really nice people — but when they’re mean, they’re a heck of a lot meaner.” 

Verbal violence is all around us and the pandemic has only made it worse. Network and streaming talking heads demonstrate that the exchange of ideas must mean an exchange of barbs, and expressing a political opinion requires a personal attack. We end up raging against cancel culture out of one side of our mouth while simultaneously canceling those who don’t agree with us out of the other, and we argue about who is the bigger hypocrite.  David French writes that the problem of cancel culture is just as much who it empowers as who it attempts to silence.  Cruelty is becoming the norm in public discourse, at least for the loudest and most empowered voices. Nice guys tend to stay silent, afraid of getting hurt. 

As a Christian, I read the Beatitudes  – some of Jesus’ earliest teachings – as a guide for personal discipleship. Regardless of one’s faith, they can serve as a moral compass – a way to extend grace: Blessed are the meek, the poor in spirit, the pure in heart, the peacemakers. All Christians struggle with “walking the walk” – with practicing on Monday what we preach on Sunday. 

As the Evangelical Right activists became increasingly drawn like a moth to the dangerous flame of politics, I believe they began to compartmentalize political morals from personal ones. Otherwise, how could they survive and operate in both worlds without the obvious hypocrisy tearing them apart? The fundamental question is whether or not political interactions should reflect personal moral beliefs. It’s a rhetorical question: they should and do. We cannot truly believe one thing on Sunday and behave differently in the political arena.

Yet some political figures want to sweep the Beatitudes and other teachings of Jesus under the rug, touting a much more strident message. Donald Trump Jr. recently told a conference of young conservative activists the turn-the-other-cheek principles of Jesus have “gotten us nothing.”  As he fired up the group, he acknowledged that “this will be contrary to a lot of our beliefs… but we better be playing the same [cancel culture] game.”  Peter Werner, describing the result of this new political ‘gospel’ in The Atlantic, noted, “If the ethic of Jesus encourages sensibilities that might cause people in politics to act a little less brutally, a bit more civilly, with a touch more grace? Then it needs to go.”  

Whether it is in the political arena, at the airport, or in the corner store, a Christian cannot embody anger and rage in the public arena and expect anything but disdain for the cross around their neck. We can’t chant “Let’s go, Brandon!” at a football game on Saturday and in good conscience sing Amazing Grace on Sunday. As the Christian rock band Casting Crowns asks in their provocative track "Start Right Here":  “What if the church on Sunday / Was still the church on Monday too?” The song goes on to preach: “But church if we want to see a change in the world out there / It's got to start right here / It's got to start right now.”

That change – that move toward authenticity, civility and healing – must start with grace. 

In a recent New York Times opinion piece following the death of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who against all odds led the historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission to unify and heal South Africa after more than 40 years of apartheid rule, it was lamented that “In our [United States] culture, reconciliation is often impossible because one side is hellbent on proving that it is right and the other side wrong.”  Civility does not preclude having strong opinions or convictions. Forgiveness does not preclude justice. Love is not weakness.

A practical example: Sometimes all it takes to show grace is taking that extra second or two to think before responding to someone, whether verbally or on social media. (It seems like half of Proverbs is wisdom about taming your tongue.) Online hateful rhetoric doesn’t have to be “liked”, much less forwarded. It’s OK simply to ignore it. Beyond not diving in the social media or political mud pit, how about doing something practical to help out those in your community who are less fortunate? Tim Miller notes that “a culture that does not offer hope and comfort and uplift alongside suffering will not survive.”  

We can make 2022 a year full of grace by loving more, hating less, taming our tongues, and extending grace. Practicing grace takes… well… practice – not just on Sunday, but every day. Let’s all start right here, right now.