Violence: A Parable (Part 1)

I have a fairly large back yard, at least for Chicago. We bought our home here on the western edge of Humboldt Park almost five years ago, and when we moved in the yard was about in the worst shape you can imagine. It was barren, with broken glass and bricks and concrete and weeds and sterile soil. Where a pool had once been, there was a large area of sand that was completely devoid of anything living.

Not long after we moved in, I set out to create the Garden of Eden in my back yard, starting with the grass. So my plan was to remove the concrete and paving stones, pull the weeds and bring in some good soil. I bought six yards of dirt from Farmer’s Market up on Elston Avenue – about a dump truck full – and on my vacation that year I roto-tilled the entire back yard, then painstakingly transported the dirt from the pile in the empty lot next to my house to the middle of my yard using a plastic wheelbarrow. When I spread the soil over my back yard, I came to realize that I had only purchased enough to cover the existing dirt by about 2 or 3 inches. Undeterred by such a small detail, I proceeded to plant nearly a hundred dollars of premium grass seed and waited for my yard to transform into a golf course.

So it did. The grass came up beautiful and green, and it looked like I was going to have the yard I had always envisioned – a paradise for my kids to play in and a relaxing landscape for my wife and I to develop our green thumb in.

But then the problems began. Significant areas of grass just couldn’t handle the summer. I had to baby them with extra water, and still they looked like they were from Arizona. The grass just wouldn’t stay thick, and wherever the grass was weak and thin, weeds would pop up. Finally I gave in and bought a bag of Weed-N-Feed from Menard’s and spread the toxic junk all over my yard. Within a week – voila! – Beautiful thick lush grass was taking over again.

Problem solved.

Well, maybe not. Winter came and went, and the spring found my grass struggling again – in the same spots. Right over where the pool had once been, where the sand was just a couple inches beneath the topsoil. I painstakingly reseeded the bad areas and added some more topsoil from a bag, and when summer came I used the Weed-N-Feed again, but I soon realized that my efforts were in vain. Every year, my grass struggles.

I figured out what my problem was… I have bad soil. In the places where the soil is good, which is maybe 2/3 of the yard, I never have a problem. The grass has been thick and healthy since 2004 and weeds only show up on rare occasions and are quickly dispatched. This leaves me with a couple options: I can keep playing the Weed-N-Feed game every year, and every April and September painstakingly reseed the same struggling areas and do battle with weeds all summer, or I can go through the monumental job of removing the top layer of soil, getting rid of all that dead sand, bring in about $1000 worth of good soil, and actually deal with the root cause of my problem.

So what is the meaning of the parable?

Chicago is plagued with violence, particularly among young people. Every summer, as if on schedule, the gangbangers start shooting each other and numerous innocent bystanders, and the newspaper editorials, the neighborhood activists and the politicians parade their obligatory outrage over the problem and suggest the same tired approaches to try to deal with it.

What seems to be remarkably missing each year from the dialogue is the elephant in the room: The fact that these communities and the people who populate them are, for the most part, profoundly broken.

Broken people break things.

Poverty, fatherlessness, substance abuse, dysfunctional relationships and hopelessness are the order of the day. Yet when the politicians and activists speak, all I hear is more talk about more legislation and more funding, blah blah blah. Chicago is under four layers of firearms legislation, for example. Federal, State, county and city. In order for a criminal to use a gun in an act of violence in Chicago, he has to penetrate all four layers of government and violate around a dozen laws, many of which carry felony-level penalties. Despite the fact that this historically has resulted in nothing regarding reducing violence, the politicians suggest that if we just do more of what isn’t working, it will work.

I believe many of them mean well, but it’s hard not to think that some of it isn’t just posturing in order to appear that they are doing something about the problem. This is, in fact, the Weed-N-Feed approach: Ignore the genesis of the problem and keep attacking the symptoms.

And what is the genesis of the problem? Whew, that’s a thick one. It's the "bad soil" part of the parable.

That will be the next post…

An Election Parable

Jesus used parables to make a point. As I was driving into work today, I thought of one too. It may seem like a fairy tale, but I dreamed awhile and wondered what might be if we could get the point of a parable like this…

“Once there was a great nation that chose its leader every four years by popular vote. Election cycle after election cycle, various candidates would campaign across the vast nation, trying to convince the people to vote for him or her and stirring up and even revealing a great deal of division in the process. One particular year, the nation was especially divided over who should lead it and how such a leader should go about governing.

Even the Believers of that nation were divided, with some feeling very strongly that the candidate that ran on a “pro-life” platform should be the choice, since life was important to Believers; and others feeling just as strongly that the candidate who ran on a platform stressing unity and the inclusion of those traditionally disenfranchised should be the choice, since those things were important to Believers as well.

In fact, many Believers were themselves among the disenfranchised. They saw the importance of bringing justice to a historically unjust situation, and the candidate they favored, who was himself among the historically disenfranchised, seemed to be just the man to do it. He even identified himself as a Believer! The problem was that the other Believers, their brothers and sisters, had never experienced such injustice and had difficulty understanding how the Believers who had experienced injustice could overlook something as fundamentally important as life.

Lo, the election came, and indeed the man who stood up for the disenfranchised won. This was cause for great celebration, and even the historically disenfranchised Believers who did not vote for the winner felt a certain sense of progress. The problem, however, was that the Believers who had not ever experienced injustice, who were indeed part of the majority culture, simply could not understand how their brothers and sisters could vote the way they did. They felt bitter and betrayed.

In time, disunity began to tear at the Believers, with their political passions overcoming their bonds of brotherhood and faith. Indeed, this disunity revealed significant cracks in the body of Believers that had been overlooked or ignored before, especially by those who had never experienced disenfranchisement. Believers began to despair.

But then The Miracle happened. The Believers began to come together and pray for the candidate who won. All over the Great Nation, believers overcame their differences and prayed and fasted night and day that God would work in the heart of the new leader, to make him the kind of man that would care about all the things that are important to God, not just one limited set of ideals. There was repentance on both sides for voting political passion or expedience or raw emotion over Kingdom values, and there was much weeping and joy.

And then it happened. The new leader began to see the importance of life! In fact, he began to see the beauty of God’s design for every facet of human experience. The new leader began to see the importance of all of the values of the Kingdom of God, as God opened his eyes in gracious response to the prayers of His people. He repented of his blindness and sin and began to lead justly in all things. And lo, there was an even greater celebration, as believers were able to overlook their political passions and instead focus solely on the things that are valued by God. And the new leader became increasingly wise, and skillful, and balanced and compassionate, as God’s people, the Believers, continued to pray day and night for their elected leader.

In fact, they prayed so much, and God worked so profoundly, that the new leader became one of the greatest presidents in history, and was re-elected by a bipartisan landslide four years later, even though many in his own party and in the larger political establishment were dismayed at his radical change in values.”

A fable? A hopeless fantasy?

You decide.