May 24, 2003

Tomorrow is "Race Day." For those of us that grew up in Indianapolis, that’s all that needs to be said.

No one in Jayson Blair’s life cared enough about Jayson Blair to tell him he was sick and needed help. From all I’ve seen his girlfriend hung out with him, his college teachers and advisors just let him wander off, and the NY Times promoted him to look good. Who knows where his parents fit in the picture? No one gave a s&%@ about Jayson Blair, he was objectified by everyone he came in contact with into something important to their lives, but he was never more than a window ornament or a token. Forget what that says about race, and concentrate on what that says about things in general.

Some will say employers have to objectify to some extent and college professors cannot befriend every student they teach, but is it not a sad world when no one in this guy’s life could point out to him that he was crazy and needed to get a handle on things? No one that loved this guy could take the time to call the people at the NY Times and say, you know you are dealing with someone that has a mental illness and probably requires hospitalization?

This is the world to which the church is to become "relevant?" The only thing the church has to teach such a world is that it is screwed up. When will the church finally figure that out? More important, when will the church quit trying to learn how to succeed from such a world? These people used, abused, and the spit out Jayson Blair – it just got ugly this time because the person they did it to was so sick he screwed them worse than they screwed him. I see the same thing happen in the church so often.

Mentally ill people wander into church everyday. Many churches shoo them away. Some will make a show of shepherding them to some clinic, but the effect is the same as shooing them away. Of course a church is not equipped to treat mental illness, but it is equipped to help the ill one contact employers and loved ones and friends. The church is equipped to help loved ones cope with the circumstances. But most churches would just want out of something like this.

What about people whose difficulties are not so obvious but nonetheless in immediate crisis? Well for such people the church information booth would give them a brochure for the support group that meets on Tuesday night and send them on their merry way.

Do you get it? Programs do not heal people or situations. Programs turn people into objects that feed the program. Instead of helping people, programs chew them up and spit them out – Just like what happened to Blair.

Jesus did not divide crowds into sub groups and them stream those different groups through different apostles. He wandered through the crowd, got dirty, got touched, and healed and fed and LOVED.

As long has we have a small group of people trying to minister to a larger group of people we will need to manage that ministry somehow and that will require programs and systems and all sorts of dehumanizing crap.