Could Anonymity Help Decrease Polarization?

Mike Leake

photo-1481174228429-b2c3f5680a7aI have a filing system for anonymous letters that I receive. They typically go straight from my hand into the trash. If somebody cannot attach their name to a critique then it makes it almost impossible to deal with it biblically*. This is not to mention what such a letter does to someone like me with trauma history.

I treat anonymous criticism on the internet pretty similarly. There are reasons why somebody might need to remain anonymous so on occasion I’ll interact with someone on social media who has a crafty username instead of a real name. For the most part my principle is to not give weight to anonymity.

Is it possible, though, that in our polarized climate a bit of anonymity could be beneficial? Let me explain.

I’m a Fantasy Football expert. My record doesn’t agree with that assessment, but in my mind I’m the smartest one in every league I join. It’s just that dumb luck for others sometimes gets in the way of my success. Part of what makes me so smart is reading Matthew Berry.

Berry has this fun little exercise he enjoys doing. Here is an example:

Player A: 21.9 PPG, 68.6% completions, 265.1 pass yards per game, 2.1 TD passes per game

Player B: 22.0 PPG, 67.3% completions, 260.1 pass yards per game, 2.3 TD passes per game

You don’t know who these players are, but you look at these stats and you think, “I’d take either of these dudes.” And then he reveals that player A is actually Ryan Tannehill and player B is Patrick Mahomes from week 7 of 2019 to November of 2020.

I would have never taken Tannehill over Mahomes. (If you’re more familiar with movies than football let’s just say that Patrick Mahomes is Brad Pitt and Ryan Tannehill is Marty Feldman). Yet when Berry frames his argument with the anonymous player A and player B it puts away all my pre-conceived notions about these players. I only look at the facts. I have to consider what is being said.

When he reveals that Tannehill was player A and Mahomes was player B, I do still argue with his conclusion. I ask about rushing yards and rushing TDs. Are they scoring the same amount of fantasy points? Does injury or teams they played against factor into anything? But, and here is the clincher, I was less polarized than if Berry would have started with Tannehill vs. Mahomes.

Can Anonymity Disarm and Decrease Polarization?

In some ways what Berry is doing is similar to what the prophet Nathan did with David. He told a compelling story and left out a few key details. He disarmed David and the king was able to see the facts as they stood. When Nathan lowered the boom, “you are that man”, there wasn’t much of a way for David to weasel out of Nathan’s loving net.

Chris Bail, author of Breaking the Social Media Prism, argues for the value of an anonymous social media platform. I’m skeptical, but I do think there could be some value in this at the “think tank” level. Bail is behind an interesting idea called DiscussIt. After observing interactions on this platform for months, Bail was given hope that “anonymous forums might facilitate more productive conversations across racial lines.” (Bail, 126)

It’s an idea worth considering. I don’t believe anonymity is generally helpful—but I’m open to the suggestion that in the right setting anonymity may actually be beneficial for decreasing polarization.

What do you think?

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I say typically because there might be reasons for someone to give an anonymous letter. And there may be valid critique and a reason why said person cannot attach their name. So in these instances I’ll perhaps give the letter to a trusted friend, have them read it, and tell me if there is anything I need to address.

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Why Do We Keep Holding the Social Media Rope

Mike Leake

photo-1446317109212-0d94545661d0In his book, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Pete Scazzero shares a story from Ed Friedman about a stranger who approaches a man and hands him the end of a rope. The man, who is tied to the other end of the rope, proceeds to jump off the bridge. Now the man is stuck here having to abandon his own dreams to keep this other fella from dying. He pleaded with the dangling man to take measures to climb up the rope and end this ridiculous situation, but the man had no interest in such an idea. So the man keeps holding the rope until he has an idea…

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A local church pastor labors to plant a biblical faithful church in his community. His community context within an urban-Metro area, as you would expect, looks much different than a rural church in Big Sky country. His strategy will be different, he will use different words in different ways, his application points, his concerns, his emphasis from the biblical text, and much more will be different than the other pastor in the upper Midwest.

Our urban pastor has some measure of success and his church is featured in a national newspaper for their work feeding the homeless and providing education assistance to impoverished teens. It’s not all they do, of course, but this is what the media picks up on and it’s the focus of their piece. When he shares his story the words and phrases he uses and the way in which he is doing ministry brings about a check in the Spirit of our other pastor. It just “doesn’t seem right”.

The Big Sky pastor, who has a relatively wide-reaching internet presence, decides to use his influence to call out this urban pastor. He’s bothered by his use of phrases, the way he seems to be influenced by secular theories, and a host of other things. He doesn’t believe this brother is faithful in his ministry and he feels it to be his responsibility to let others know.

Here, urban pastor, hold this rope for me….

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Back to our bridge. Eventually the man tasked with holding the rope took his stand:

“I will not accept the position of choice for your life, only for my own; I hereby give back the position of choice for your own life to you.” (Scazzero, 134)

The other man would have none of it. He accused the rope-holder of being selfish and uncaring. And he blamed him for all his troubles. If he was a good man he’d keep holding the rope. But eventually the rope-holder accepted the choice of the dangling man—who gave zero effort—and let him plummet over the bridge. (You can read the whole story here)

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I thought of that story today when I read an exchange on Twitter by John Onwucheckwa. John used a phrase (“white gaze”) that drew the ire of some in the anti-CRT crowd. “White gaze” doesn’t mean what you probably think it means, and John was being misrepresented. Here is the crux of his argument:

Black & brown communities need the freedom to plant churches responsive to their own contexts & needs, free from the white gaze…Black Christian history teaches us it’s possible to work on separate fronts while supporting one another in the same war.”

My point here isn’t about whether or not you agree with John or Thabiti in the article, but it’s about how John responded to this. I found this to be particularly compelling:

John’s response is that of the man who refused to hold the rope for someone who doesn’t actually want rescued. And I think this is a path forward for us with many of our social media arguments. If people are not interested in good faith arguments we do not have to continue holding the rope. Furthermore, it’s doubly foolish for us to give a platform to the one with the bad faith arguments. Doing this is comparable to passing out a portion of the rope to every passerby.

You don’t have to spend time arguing and conversing bad faith takes when you have work right in front of you.

This brings me to my final observation—and it’s a tad prickly. I believe part of the reason why we keep holding onto the rope—why we keep conversing with “bad faith takes”—is because we don’t actually like the work that is set before us. This is also the reason why people are handing ropes to others and then leaping off bridges. We don’t like the world in front of us so we attempt to shape a new identity online.

In his work, Breaking the Social Media Prism, Chris Bail notes that most “extremists on social media…often lack status in their off-line lives” (Bail, 56). Is it possible, for instance, that some of the vitriol directed towards someone like Beth Moore has less to do with her authority and reach and more to do with the lack of actual authority pastors are experiencing in their local churches?

The answer to some of this social media craziness is for us to be honest with ourselves and our neglect of cultivating the things which are right in front of our faces. And we likely need to deal with some of our own hurts and disappointments in our local contexts. If we don’t, then we’ll attempt to provide healing by putting on a false online self.

It’s possible that some of our ministry is to an online field. There is value in this. I wouldn’t be writing this article if I didn’t believe that. But our online ministries will always be tainted if they’re not an overflow of our local and right in front of your face ministries. This goes for discernment ministries as well as advocating for the vulnerable. If I’m not doing it locally it’s probably a projection of a false self online.

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Why You Feel the Way You Do Right Now

Mike Leake

photo-1513124130903-ea989a7706fdThere is such a thing as collective trauma. And we’re smack dab in the middle of experiencing this. A pandemic, civic unrest, increasing polarization. We have had a difficult couple of years. And it’s taking it’s toll on our collective psyche.

I heard a word the other day to perfectly describe where many of us are; languishing. We aren’t all in the deepest pits of depression but we are most certainly not thriving. We’re somewhere in between those and probably leaning more towards the depressed side of the equation. We’ve become indifferent.

I am noticing this not only in the church that I pastor but in others with which I interact. I’m hearing it from many pastors. There is a reason why so many of us are feeling like failures right now and many are looking for work elsewhere. Last week Russell Moore asked, “Are Our Pastors in Trouble”? The answer is “yes. Yes, we are.” But so are our people. The two are connected.

We are collectively traumatized and it’s killing us because we’ve never really been taught how to grieve together, how to lament together, or even how to really truly praise together. And so we default to tearing one another apart.

Adam Grant is correct that we might not even notice that we are languishing:

Part of the danger is that when you’re languishing, you might not notice the dulling of delight or the dwindling of drive. You don’t catch yourself slipping slowly into solitude; you’re indifferent to your indifference. When you can’t see your own suffering, you don’t seek help or even do much to help yourself.

But that’s the thing with trauma that you need to know. It’s like a puppet master. All that trauma ahs to go somewhere. All that trauma will go somewhere. That pain, frustration, and disappointment is going to find a landing spot. It’ll wreck marriages, It’ll destroy friendships. It’ll create discontent with your church family, your church leaders, etc.

But there is also a connection to trauma and shame and hiding. I’m not an expert on all of the connections here but I know with certainty that when we have trauma—and this is true also of collective trauma—we will pursue release instead of staring down the pain. We’ll turn to Saturday Night Live after 9/11 instead of acknowledging our anger and fear.

Grief and trauma become like a puppet master. It attaches itself to something else and makes you think that what you are really upset about is that politician, or that decision your pastoral staff made, or that person, or that theological belief. Or it could even attach itself to your spouse, your children, your job, or even yourself. Usually it’s a menagerie of marionettes*.

All those pent up feelings come out upon that person and you’ll feel right and justified—because you really do have a reason to grieve and be upset. Things really have been painful. But all that aggression is misplaced. But that momentary feeling of release will quickly subside and be met with another wave of shame. You know that you aren’t really upset with that other person. And so you pick yourself up looking for another victim.   

Trauma has a tendency to run away from healing, especially if we have not cultivated a discipline of lament. We aren’t a very emotionally healthy people so collective trauma is going to have far-reaching consequences for us as a people. And the church, sadly, rather than helping is usually part of the puppet show. But it doesn’t have to be.

Those who are experts on dealing with trauma tell us that there are three big things that need to happen for healing:

  • I need to tell my story.
  • I need to tell my story safely to another human.
  • I need to tell a new, different story with other humans.

Can you think of a better place for this to happen than in the local church? Is there a better story than the gospel? We have a tremendous opportunity to be at the front of the line in listening to other people’s stories and pain and then hoping and helping to reframe our collective trauma.

But before we can do this we must learn to lament together as a church. We need to tell our stories. We need to give our vent to the Lord. We need to share our frustrations. Our deflated hopes. Our languishing hearts. We must cast all our cares upon him.

Feel free to share your story….no need to clean it up at this stage. We can do that tomorrow.

Jesus heals every languishing heart.

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Photo source: here

*As evidence of my own languishing I want to punch myself in the nose for that alliteration

What is the “New” of Luke 5:36-39

Mike Leake

photo-1597337726353-26512fbe80c6I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to preach through Luke 5:33—6:11. I had preached on the parallel passage in the gospel of Mark, so I had assumed it’d be pretty smooth sailing.

New cloth, old garment. New wine, old wineskins. The new expands (or shrinks) and causes harm to the old object it was placed in and you end up wrecking both. The point here is of incompatibility. If you try to combine the new with the old, both will end up being ruined.

When I preached on this parable in Mark I absolutely loved this point from James Edwards:

“He is not an attachment, addition, or appendage to the status quo.” Jesus is not something that you add to an already comfortable Christianity. He’s not something that you make fit into your box and if it will fit then that’s cool. Jesus radically transforms everything. Jesus blows the box up and replaces it with His fullness. We don’t make Jesus conform to us, to our rules, to our Christianity…He conforms us, our rules, our Christianity. It’s been said that the goal of Bible reading isn’t to master the text but more fully to be mastered by the text. In a much greater way we can say this about Jesus, our goal is not to “figure Jesus out”, to somehow “master Jesus”…our goal is to be transformed and changed by Jesus.

I still think that’s a pretty solid application point you can make (especially from the gospel of Mark). But when I stumbled upon Luke 5:39, I started wondering if maybe Luke was doing something a little different than Mark.

“And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’”

Why is Jesus saying that the “old is better”? Plenty of commentaries answered this question by saying that Jesus is being a bit tongue-in-cheek here and saying that the Pharisees would never embrace his new wine while they were obsessed with their old wine. And that very well could be accurate, but I’m not convinced. Old wine really is better. And I think Jesus knows his wine. But even more than that I think Jesus knows his Old Testament.

I think we’ve made a slight misstep here in the way we interpret this passage—or rather how we paint the backdrop to this passage. We tell the story as if the Pharisees are faithful followers of the OT and the OT system and that Jesus is doing something entirely different and blowing up that whole way of thinking. But this is really problematic for Luke because he is all about showing how Jesus is the fulfillment of the OT hope and promises. He doesn’t want to blow it up—he wants to fulfill it.

Is it possible, then, that the “new stuff” in this parable is actually the Pharisees? Their fasting laws, their Sabbath restrictions, etc. are NOT the intention of the Old Testament. They’ve added new things in order to help us obey.

Think of it this way. The Law (and you can see this with Paul and in Hebrews) is a shadow that is pointing to Christ. It’s not complete. It’s not meant to be. This is why the author of Hebrews says that it’s not “faultless” and that it has woven within its fabric the need for a new covenant. To use our parable, it’s a bit like a garment that has a hole in it which needs a patch.

Something is incomplete with the law because as it says “do not covet” something happens within us. It stirs upon within us covetous desires. You don’t want to step on the grass until you see a sign that tells you not to do this. The Pharisees knew this. The history of the Jewish people bore this out. They had gotten booted out of the land because of this. And so to combat this they came up with a strategy, they developed more strict laws. They built fences around the commandments. Rather than just saying, “Obey the Sabbath” they developed an entire system of how many steps you could take without breaking this. And it is some of these “laws” which are confronting Jesus in these chapters of Luke.

But the fundamental problem isn’t that you need new laws. It’s not that you need to put a new patch on an old garment or to put new wine into old wineskins. The problem is that you need a new heart. You need an entirely new heart. You need something compatible. You need to be born again.

When this happens you want to change. You want to obey. And so you don’t need a shadowy thing—a thing that says, “do this, don’t do that” in order to love your neighbor—a changed heart looks for ways to love neighbor. This is why Paul argues in Galatians about the fruit of the Spirit and says, “against these things there is no law”.

If you really understand the “old wine” then you aren’t going to desire this new wine of the Pharisees. That’s one way to take verse 39. The gospel is older than the laws of the Pharisees. God’s intention for the Sabbath predates their silly rules.

At the end of the day, though, I think our application is pretty similar. Jesus is incompatible with a system of legalism. Jesus is incompatible with first century Judaism, and he’s often incompatible with all the junk we build too. What’s needed is the gospel.

I still think James Edwards’ comment on this text is fitting:

The question posed by the image of the wedding feast and the two [short] parables is not whether disciples will, like sewing a new patch on an old garment or refilling an old container, make room for Jesus in their already full agendas and lives. The question is whether they will forsake business as usual and join the wedding celebration; whether they will become entirely new receptacles for the expanding fermentation of Jesus and the gospel in their lives.

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