Mitch Carnell

DAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2014 COMMENTARIES

As for me and my house, call me a thug

It is past time to realize that division only brings more division.

By Connie Stinson

I pastor a racially mixed church in a densely populated Maryland suburb of Washington. We accurately call ourselves diverse.

One month ago, one of our young adults, a particularly gifted 20-year-old, preached “Judge Not” from my pulpit and further exclaimed, “As a young black male, I am often followed through a store by a suspicious security guard. It’s my life.” The parents of color in the congregation didn’t blink an eye. They understood this young man’s painful reality. The message that we should judge not hit home that day.

While I sorely grieve the violence in Ferguson, I also recognize it as one of many indications that our country is being shredded into factions of hate and deep-seated prejudice. That is why we are joining our District of Columbia Baptist Convention on Sunday mornings to pray to end violence in a nation that needs peace.

I was in Missouri last week, less than seven days after the shooting of Michael Brown. My first full day there was the Sunday after. The Ferguson-focused reports saturated local media, local pulpits and local conversations. My Sunday afternoon dinner with extended family from southern Missouri represented three churches they attended that morning.

“What did your pastor say about Ferguson this morning?” I asked. I was wondering how (or if) Christian compassion might express itself in the politically and theologically conservative, whiter, geographically-closer context. I was told, and I personally witnessed as I sat beside my mother in her church that morning, that “all sides were prayed for.” Another said, “We prayed for the family of Michael Brown as well as for the safety of the police officer. We also prayed for all the thugs there.”

Thugs? That was a word I hadn’t heard in a while. What exactly is a thug? The next day, I heard the word used repeatedly by TV newscasters. Wow, apparently it was a popularly understood term, whatever its meaning. My insides grimaced. It was yet another label that we human beings thoughtlessly use to judge and divide, but here it was being used as a regular noun like “boy” or “girl.” I looked it up. Its textbook definition is a person of violence, especially a criminal. Its street slang meaning is one who wanders, looking for meaning in life.

In my view, David True’s words ring painfully true, especially, “The equation black = criminal is built into our culture’s deepest sinews.” We are a country divided by our own fear and our own sick efforts to maintain law and order. It is past time to realize that we are all human beings with the same needs. It is past time to realize that division only brings more division. It is past time to realize that human connection, brought by compassionate listening, is the only way to break down the barrier wall that divides us.

As for me, call me a thug. Never mind that I’m a 58-year old white woman pastor. For that matter, call my whole church a bunch of thugs. I reject the old-school definition; we are not violent criminals. I am claiming the truth in that slang version of the word. Though we do not do it well a lot of the time, we aim at meaning, especially when it comes to seeking unity in diversity. Sometimes we wander, sometimes we go backwards, and sometimes we attempt to march boldly into the future. But the goal is to be meaningful and make a difference in the name of love.

Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be about? May God forgive us all, including our own country, for being much less most of the time.

“For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility.” (Ephesians 2:14)

y

Connie Stinson

Connie Stinson is pastor of Luther Rice Memorial Baptist Church in Silver Spring, Md.

.