Dr. Charles W. Ferguson

For many years, I prided myself in being as competitive, focused, and goal driven as any individual I knew. When I played sports, I only had one losing season ever. Winning was in my DNA. Losing was not an option. I had to win. Period. Winning was an escape from my inward pain. Winning was the validation that others did not provide. Winning gave me hope that I would be accepted. Winning gave me “friends”. Winning made me successful.

The problem with using this line of logic is that one loses the ability to learn how to recover from defeat, become introspective in a challenge, and ask for help to grow and become better. My greatest hang ups as an adult were rooted in the idea of being self-reliant. I believed the hype about my giftings, skills, and abilities. To some degree, I allowed people to inflate my misguided understanding of myself so I did not lose any personal value to my existence.

How wrong I was…..

For the past few years, I have found myself very hesitant to accept praise or encouragement from people. Most of that resistance has come as the result of experiencing people hyping me to my face while tearing me down behind my back. It is the worst kind of cruelty. You are set up to believe that you are making a difference or impacting lives, only for someone to take the time to tear down your name or make a mockery of your existence. It is never an easy proposition.

The more I think on it, I realize that every single heartbreaking moment has served as an opportunity to strip my former way of thinking. The challenges have aided in my shifted perspective on how I engage my life at this point. Many people that have been in my life do not realize how much impact they have made on my mentality. Some of them do not know that the negative things that have been done humbled me.

Now, I live in a manner where nothing is taken for granted. I don’t take moments with true friends lightly. I don’t take opportunities to serve as entitlements. I can’t look at the world with bootstrap mentality. People will never be addressed from the place of their outward condition. The soul, mind, and spirit matter much more than ever before. I no longer pity the person grinding to put one foot in front of the other. I honor the person who has tangibly little, but is profoundly wealthy in spirit.

My greatest desire now is to live humbly under the guidance and hand of God. I know that sounds so over the top and super spiritual. The truth is that I can not make it in this life without God’s guidance. I don’t need to debate with people about my understanding of God. I don’t wish to get into the semantics of gender/no gender assignment of God. I don’t need people to attempt to change my understanding of my relationship with God.

I know that nothing that I do for the rest of my life will be strictly by my own effort alone. I will not be a good husband without paying attention to the best way to love Myrissa. I will not be the father CJ needs without the willingness to continue to learn constantly. I will never truly win in life without maintaining a healthy understanding of what God has entrusted to me to use for enhancing the lives of others.

Many of you have lived with similar realities. You wanted to please everyone, enhance your world only, or position yourself to be superior. It is a futile enterprise. Nothing good comes from unhealthy ideas of self over the rest of humanity. There is nothing wrong with confidence. There is nothing wrong with believing in yourself. Yet, consuming ourselves with the “me” mentality can ultimately destroy us. Humility will keep and elevate us.

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. –James 4:10, ESV

Halftime. It is the most critical part of a sporting event. The moment give opportunity for a reassessment of strategy, adjustment to flow of execution, and reexamination of the opponent. Halftime. It is the stage of living that requires us to become more introspective our journey. We are at the half way point of the year, and it is time to take some inventory.

Over the past six months, we have witnessed greater division in so many areas of life. The political scene has reached the point of wrestling with Nazi Germany Part II and a “More Perfect Union”. Black and Brown people are still being killed, imprisoned, and marginalized. Weaponized, privileged tears are being exposed. Institutions of morality have begun waving the white flag in many instances. More philosophy has been offered regarding doing the right thing than actually doing the right thing. It’s bad. It’s not impossible to overcome. The second half is upon us. So what do we do?

The truth is we must go back to some simple basics. We must get back to the simple approach of treating one another with basic human dignity. The strangest thing happened when money, tangible pursuit, and supremacy became regular attachments in the world. It caused people to truly believe that a person could have a higher place over another.

The arbitrary dismantling of families is not a new issue. However, it is a reminder of how people associate their personal values in relationship to their beliefs and history. While many people are disgusted with children being used as bargaining chips for the building of a wall, several others are focused on the rule of law that continues to disenfranchise individuals desiring the opportunity to be free from oppression. The words of St. Augustine come to mind Lex iniusta non est lex (An unjust law is no law at all).

Nevertheless, the rule of law is protection for the supremacist, racist, sexist, and oppressor. The rule of law is protection for individuals unwilling or frightened to suggest that certain ideas are absolutely wrong on moral and spiritual grounds. Yes, laws are in place to establish order. They are to give guidance on how to maintain a decent society for all people. Yet, the law in the wrong hands become a weapon to increase fear and create greater division.

Treating one another with respect and dignity requires a change in our internal perception of one another. I ought to see you first as created in the Imago Dei  (image of God). From that point, I must treat and honor your life as sacred. It should not be necessary to remind you that my life is just as important as yours. It should not be necessary for the reverse to occur. We should begin on that common ground. Since we are in that unfortunate place in our global community, it becomes more important to begin in the place of common ground.

Take the opportunity to listen more to the journey of those around you. Think about the repercussions for siding with moral injustice. Consider the overall affect that decisions have for every person in your community. Renounce your judgmental ideologies and think critically. Attach yourself to history and recognize when it is attempting to negatively repeat itself. This moment has come for you and I to change the narrative. Halftime is over….

My personal goal for this week was create space between posts. Sometimes, we must give people the opportunity to process one thought to another. However, it would be disingenuous and near sinful not to provide critique possibly strategy regarding the current issue of the cruelty of migrant children being held in modified concentration camps.

I recognize that many of us did not live through the days of Native Indigenous people being removed from their tribal homelands, pushed to general locations, and stripping children of heritage through the education of a white supremacist Gospel. I understand that the slave trade over the Atlantic was not observe by many people. We did not watch men and women were auctioned off and stripped from their families. Some of us only read about our Asian brothers and sisters being imprisoned unjustly during World War II.

All these major events and many others have been a part of the fabric of this country. Through it all, many Americans still call our country “the land of the free”. People are still under the delusion that this place is the best country in the world. We have people  in government that stand to give apologetics for a nation that has not confessed and change from its wicked, systematic behavior.

Wait, preacher! You just use the word apologetics. Yeah, its a two dollar word that means to give a defense. In other words, our nation is known for defending its behavior rather than confessing and owning fault with the mind and determination to change. Look at the current record. Jeff Sessions and Sarah Sanders have conveniently decided that Biblical references are good for defending the inhumane actions of stripping children from their life sources–parents. The law is above basic human interaction and care. This type of thinking is nothing new.

Remember, slavery was legal. Imprisonment for interracial marriage was legal. Black men were 3/5th of a human in the Constitution. Black women and children did not add to the population in the same document. People have been murdered because of their sexuality. Lynching was a picnic event. Systematic, imperialistic, supremacist ideology is the backbone of the wealth and apparent prosperity of this country.

We allow people with no moral compass to continue to speak and act as proxy for a society that the majority of people are not about the destruction of the human condition. The same Jesus that is bastardized by Evangelicals (because I refuse to call them Christians) the child of refugees that escaped to Egypt. Wait for it…a place that once held his people as slaves. Deep revelation. Watch this…

Don’t miss the lesson. Egypt had people that found refuge in their nation due to lack of food and supplies in their homeland. Because of Joseph, the Israelites were able to prosper in Goshen and be restore. When Joseph died, the pharaoh did not know of Joseph or care about what was done as an opportunity to grow the nation. That pharaoh decided to imprison the people because of the assumption of the people taking away from Egypt (sound familiar).

Eventually, the pharaoh saw that Israel was still growing in spite of slavery. He put out an edict to kill the male children, but God has a sense of humor. God causes an intersection between a marked child, Moses and pharaoh’s daughter to take place. She takes this exotic child into her home and raises him. She got a wet nurse (Moses’ mother) to do all the child rearing (sounds familar….). The Israelite boy learn the Egyptian system, and God raised him up as a man to be a liberating force from the oppression of one bad leader.

I believe that ultimately that liberation experience changed the course of how Egyptians dealt with Israel according to the Biblical account. Therefore, brown people entering into a brown country makes perfect sense on many levels. Egypt did not give apology for the past. They gave asylum as action and evidence of what they believed as a people at that moment.

I submit to you that we must stop being a society of apologist for nonsense. Stop defending your foolishness. If you are devoid of basic human decency, own it and make a decision to continue or change. If you feel guilt for the problems that plague our society, don’t defend your specific actions, commit yourself to being the individual you say you are and speak truth to power.

This nation needs to be converted. It needs to stop sweeping the problems under the rug. God right now is beating this rug showing the world the dirt. We need to confess our sins. The Bible says, that if we confess our sins God is faithful to forgive us and cleanse us. Yet, we must take the next step. The next step is living in our cleanliness.

May I propose an outline of a strategy?

1. We must confess our sin
2. We must commit to living at peace with all
3. We must assess our collective abilities and position ourselves to move change forward
4. We must demonize those who are not front line, but recognize the power of support on all front
5. Stop promoting utopia ideas without addressing systematic nuisances opposed to human unity
6. Begin the change on every micro level so that macro impact is no longer seen as impossible
7.   Look to God in every level of the process

Do not allow the negativity of the moment push you to find a place to defend blindness to the atrocities of now. Do not allow the fear internet trolls (weak minded people who would never speak in public to you) to shake your resolve for change. Do not hid behind structures and processes that limit your commitment to doing the things of God (Church! Proclamation and letters of discontent are not the way Jesus handled business! Conversion, change, and action). It is time that the movement of change extends to real transformative action. No more apologies! Confession and Action! Period.