This is important to note, I think, because it has led me to specific conversations and projects with folks involved in the broader movement, and because most of the folks I’ve seen responding to all of this are either not specifically committed to nonviolence, and/or they don’t have specific relationships within the movement. Because the video is so geared toward being viral rather than comprehensive, people’s responses are understandably not all that comprehensive either.

Let me elaborate a little bit. It was 2008 when my wife and I were first fortunate to meet roadies from Invisible Children at the church we were involved with. We didn’t have many folks (even for our small community) in attendance the night they came, and because they had heard so much about our community they came just wanting to talk, rather than give a screening.¹ It was a fascinating evening I won’t forget, and after that a few of us we were able to take the roadies out to dinner.

I had known about the organization before this, but this was the first time it made a deep impact on me. I was just beginning to dream about ways that my skills and passions for web design could feed into, and be fed by, my skills and passions for ministry and activism and so on instead of just being separate things. The revelation that that was what these people were doing – the filmmakers specifically, of course, as they had been students at USC – but others who we met that night, as well. Artists and graphic designers and so on were finding ways to contribute those things in new ways.

In 2009 Invisible Children hosted The Rescue in 100 cities, an attempt to get folks to come, hang out together outside, write letters to representatives, make art, and get attention from media folks. I was able to help out a bit in Atlanta’s event, and through that I unexpectedly got to meet John Lewis, and hear his passionate words on how, yes, we should help keep children from fighting, but there should also be no wars for them to fight. But of course through all the planning and such I also got to meet other wonderful folks, hear their hearts, and be inspired by them.

In 2010, we were able to host some different roadies, and take them to dinner a few times. Two of them were Ugandans traveling around the country to tell their stories, both affected by the LRA’s violence in different ways, and both involved with Invisible Children in their country. We talked more about each other’s dreams, we heard their stories and heard about the issues in the Ugandan government, and so on.

Let me branch out a little bit from there. We’ve also been fortunate to meet/host in our apartment, Skype, or otherwise talk with lovely folks from Falling Whistles, Ember Arts, and others of the fascinating organizations that have been birthed out of or otherwise aligned with Invisible Children. I’ve also been fortunate to talk with many others from these organizations on Twitter alone.

I say all this to try to give a bit of context. I don’t live in Southern California (where many of these folks are based). I’ve never been to Africa. I don’t consider myself an activist. I’m a white, American male who tweets, reads, thinks, talks, designs, codes, buys stuff, and gives what time and money I have to things that I think fit with the heart of God for changing the world, and when I do those things I try to get to know the folks involved as much as I can. This means my perspective is indeed limited, just like everyone else’s, and thus I’m thankful for some of the other responses. I can’t (and don’t have the right to) speak to all of the issues people have raised, but I do feel like I can speak to some of them.

And here’s the thing. In the last four/five years of building these relationships and attending these events and watching these documentaries and whatever else, I’ve never heard a person say he or she wanted Joseph Kony killed. I’ve heard them talk about reconciliation, peace, justice, and share the stories of Ugandans who have learned about all of these things through the darkest of journeys.

I’ve seen them make shirts that said “We Love the LRA,” and have conversations about what that actually means. I’ve had conversations with folks wondering how to bring the principles of nonviolence shown to us by Gandhi and King into the lives of people who are not in any direct danger (read: Americans), but want to advocate for folks who are (whether Ugandans, Congolese, or others who they’ve grown to love).

On a deeper level, I’ve seen them go far beyond the issues of LRA-specific violence (which many of the critics don’t seem to realize). I’ve seen them talk about issues of colonialism and the specific role of Westerners in creating current and past situations in Uganda and the Congo, especially.² Some of them have talked about the White Man’s Burden, and their experiences with other organizations that “forgot about people.” Many of them have talked directly and often about coming alongside the folks of Uganda and the Congo, working together for mutual liberation, and they’ve really sought ways to do that. This has happened in their African programs, as well as the American ones and the ones that bring people in between the places.

None of my experiences (or those of anyone else) imply that there are not issues with Invisible Children, the Kony2012 campaign, and the organizations in their spheres of influence. I don’t doubt that there are issues (there always are, of course), but I don’t think the negative issues are necessarily the same ones that people have been talking about since the video was released. I don’t believe their issues are issues of resisting nonviolence. In this video and everywhere else, they consistently say that they don’t want Kony killed; they want him captured and sent to the ICC – this is on top of all the conversations they regularly have about nonviolence, peace, and broad definitions of justice. I also don’t believe they are issues of the white savior complex. No one there implies that the Ugandans are the sad ones being saved by the rich white people’s good ideas, and they all know that these issues (which are decades old, and often have roots in issues that are much older) might not be there at all without rich white people anyway.

Because of this, part of me thinks that the video has hurt the impressions that the intellectuals, development folks, and others who have never talked about Invisible Children before might otherwise have of the organization. It’s true that there isn’t much a full spectrum of history and such in the video (they admit this), and it’s true that the video doesn’t talk as much about many of the most beautiful parts of the organization’s existence, other than getting the attention of the United States government to try to capture Kony. One could certainly argue that this is a bad thing. But on the flip side, 70 million people have watched the video in less than five days, and a nearly unprecedented mainstream conversation about justice in Africa is taking place. Some of these people who have watched the video will go deeper, and once such an awareness starts it can change a person’s life. From my perspective, I can’t say that’s a bad thing.

1. This was Revolution Atlanta, an alternative community with a solid group of 20 or so, but an influence much bigger than that.
2. The LRA, for example, is not involved in the ongoing violence that creates materials for the electronics we buy. Thus, Invisible Children has not dealt directly with it. But Falling Whistles, an organization aligned quite closely, is dedicated entirely to peace in that situation and does not deal directly with the LRA.

Many of these ways have made life better for many people. People have learned to believe that it is possible to make a difference in the world, that the dreams are worth following and the risks are worth taking, and this has led to businesses and organizations that have revolutionized activism or art or both, to name a few, just as Apple has revolutionized the industries it engaged. The extent to which the world would be a less beautiful place without Steve Jobs and the Apple he created is impossible to measure, and that needs to be celebrated and continued.

But there’s also a weird tension between the beautiful things the company has done and created, and its own entanglement in issues of systemic injustice. From the time Apple’s designs leave Cupertino and need to be produced for us to buy, they have created, sustained, contributed to, benefited from, or failed to stop systems that oppress the people who make instead of buy their products.

The constant violence over minerals for phones and computers in the Congo, and the sweatshop-like conditions of factories like Foxconn in China, the environmentally damaging and unsustainable ways that these products get disposed, and the consumerism and materialism that they do, regardless of their intention, fuel – all these things entangle Apple in systemic injustice.

I don’t mention these few examples to pretend as though it’s a new issue. Capitalism, when it produces good things, almost always has this tension. It almost always has a dark underside (whether it produces good things or not), and it is in the interest of maintaining the status quo that these things are easy to hide.

I also don’t mention these things to pretend Apple is the only, or even one of the worst, offenders. This is what makes it so difficult – everyone in the electronics industry has the same issues. They all make products with bloody minerals from the Congo, and they all have stuff made at Foxconn or similar places. They are all decades behind in thinking about sustainability, whether environmental or personal.

Many people who buy these products don’t know anything at all about their supply chains. Maybe it wouldn’t change anything if they did, but maybe it would, and this is why it is important to tell these stories (to that end, start with Phone Story, Free2Work, and SlaveFree, to name a few).

Further, many of these companies have people who are thinking about these issues. Designers and engineers and marketing people all can, and would have to, contribute if they are to be resolved. Apple has many of the best of all of these. But so will users and potential users.

Most of us who talk about these issues, whether we are users or creators or both, are hypocritical when we do it. Whether it’s because we don’t know about alternatives, or because there aren’t alternatives yet, we are complicit in systems that oppress people. Confessing our complicity is necessary, but it doesn’t have to end there.

We can tell the stories and dream the dreams that people tell us are impossible, both about the products we use and the systems that create and contain them. Capitalism has always had these and other issues, and socialism had its own as well. But we don’t have to see that as the last word.

We live in the tension here. And it’s perhaps exemplified most by the fact that Steve Jobs, as much as any other in recent history, can teach us how to tell big stories and dream big dreams.

I’m somewhat interested in all of the political talk and questioning of international consequences to both our actions and our reactions to our actions, but I’m far more interested in what all of this (both the event, how it was announced, and how we have responded to it) says about us than I am in what it says about anyone else.

I learned about the event on Twitter, where there was a chorus of responses, and then watched Obama’s announcement. While watching it, I was struck (and added to the chorus of Twitter responses) that his definition of justice is deeply flawed if it can contain death, even death of an enemy. I was also struck by the irony that it may be this event, not the (deeply flawed, but valiant) attempts to bring universal healthcare to our country and keep us out of a depression, that will propel him to re-election.

Then, it hit me (not for the first time): we are a country of revenge.

In my lifetime, it is around revenge that our country has become united. 9/11 and it’s ridiculous aftermath. The lead-up to and early stages of the invasion of Iraq. And now the death of bin Laden. We don’t want justice. We want revenge, but we want to call it justice.

At some point that evening or the next morning, I saw this tweet:

Remember these words by Dr. Martin Luther King’ Jr. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Now, King used this quote a great deal, but he most often used it in defense of nonviolence. Besides that specific quote, it has been incredible for me to spend the last several months immersed in King’s actual words (books, speeches, articles, essays, etc.), in which he explains, on an in-depth level, his thoughts on justice, violence, and loving one’s enemies, among other things. This is often done while taking on American violence and militarism in ways that make it fairly clear that he wouldn’t see bin Laden’s death as justice, whatever else he may have thought of it.

No one calls out people who take him out of context like this, because it’s easier to pretend that King would like our desire for revenge. Instead, we call out folks for an (admittedly odd) meme on Twitter and Facebook that combined a quote of King’s with something else, even though the full quote fits quite well with the ways King thought. And that’s because it’s uncomfortable for us to think about our culture blatantly disagreeing with a figure who is, at this point in history that feels distant from his life, almost universally admired.

It’s easy to point this out about King, because we have such a large body of his work that we can turn to and say, “He’s writing about our culture when he says these things, and we haven’t changed.” It’s a bit harder, but still deeply necessary, to point this out about Jesus, as most Christians rejoice in bin Laden’s fate, assume that he’s in hell, and that it’s a good thing that we’ve murdered him so that he can’t hurt us anymore.

Jesus stands against this, asking us to love our enemies. The implications of this in a pluralistic, non-Christian society are myriad, and I’ll grant this, but it’s often Christians who are the loudest advocates for revenge and violence. It is to them that Jesus (along with Paul, when you read Romans 12 – speaking of the kingdom of God before 13 – contrasting it with the kingdoms of the world in which we live) speaks, and, I think, asks for resistance of the violence of the State. He’s not ignorant of the State when asking us to love our enemies, but nor does he expect us to allow it to tell us what justice is in treatment of those enemies. Justice cannot be defined by violence.

Revenge, and the violence associated with it, is an unkind master, aside from the obvious effects it has on our enemies. King was one who tried to encourage the State to realize these things in light of the teachings of Jesus and Gandhi’s methods of nonviolence. Revenge will not make our lives safer. In our case, it won’t fix anyone who was hurt by bin Laden, or anyone who was hurt by us in our pursuit of bin Laden. It will also not be satisfied, as it will not lead to the end of war in Afghanistan, and we will find other figureheads to whom we can attach our anger.

Finally, it won’t increase the freedom, or decrease the allure of Al-Qaeda, to folks in the Middle East. Once again, we can see the stark contrast between the way of nonviolence that Tunisians, Egyptians, and Syrians have pursued, the sacrifices they have made, the brutality they have endured to seek their freedom, compared to the violence we have used to push our agendas on their neighbors. These are messy situations, but the contrast is there and is deeply powerful.

Our violence, whether exemplified in foreign policy, specific acts of war, or torture and refusal to prosecute it (or, on the Right, the willingness to defend it), have given many folks a reason to radicalize against us. But nonviolent resistance, arising from within their countries, has begun to take away the desire for violence and oppression as a means to escape from violence and oppression.

We don’t know if it will work in bringing freedom to all of these countries, and if it does we don’t know what it will look like (thank God, for example, that Egypt doesn’t seem to be a pawn of America’s policy toward Israel), but it is beautiful, powerful, and it has just as much of a chance to work as our own strategies do without resorting to our methods. This is what should give us cause to rejoice.

Recently, I read his last presidential address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, given in 1967 in Atlanta, and I’ve found it to be possibly the most meaningful thing I’ve read in this volume. The radical nature of what King is saying combines with the relevance that all of it still has today, and indeed the fact that many of the issues he raises are worse today than they were then. I couldn’t find any audio or video to link to, I’d love to encourage all of you to read it here, in its fullness.

This should cause all of us who dream of better economic, political, and cultural systems to pause and see where his brilliant imagination was going these few months before his death. I’m not interested in the conspiracy theories here (though I think many of them are very likely true), but I am interested in how much of a threat King was, and remains, to the status quo.

The issue that I find myself more and more annoyed by, each year that I learn more about this man and his message, is that American cultural discourse has watered it down so much that we call it a “Day of Service” when we celebrate his birthday (not that he’d be against service, but that it is so much less than he did stand for), and randomly use him to justify violence and oppression and political stances that are antithetical to his own. People like to quote sections of his speeches that make us feel good about being Americans and all the things we do, and ignore the rest of what he had to say. The extent to which The King Center did not allow this was compelling to me, and I feel a responsibility to spread his words as well, in the hopes that his message will stand as it is.

Where do we go from here?

Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Atlanta, Georgia
16 August 1967

Now, in order to answer the question, “Where do we go from here?” which is our theme, we must first honestly recognize where we are now. When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was 60 percent of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare he is 50 percent of a person. Of the good things in life, the Negro has approximately one half those of whites. Of the bad things of life, he has twice those of whites. Thus half of all Negroes live in substandard housing. And Negroes have half the income of whites. When we view the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a double share. There are twice as many unemployed. The rate of infant mortality among Negroes is double that of whites and there are twice as many Negroes dying in Vietnam as whites in proportion to their size in the population.

In other spheres, the figures are equally alarming. In elementary schools, Negroes lag one to three years behind whites, and their segregated schools receive substantially less money per student than the white schools. One twentieth as many Negroes as whites attend college. Of employed Negroes, 75 percent hold menial jobs.

This is where we are. Where do we go from here? First, we must massively assert our dignity and worth. We must stand up amidst a system that still oppresses us and develop an unassailable and majestic sense of values. We must no longer be ashamed of being black. The job of arousing manhood within a people that have been taught for so many centuries that they are nobody is not easy.

Depiction of Blackness and Negro Contributions

Even semantics have conspired to make that which is black seem ugly and degrading. In Roget’s Thesaurus there are 120 synonyms for blackness and at least 60 of them are offensive, as for example, blot, soot, grim, devil and foul. And there are some 134 synonyms for whiteness and all are favorable, expressed in such words as purity, cleanliness, chastity and innocence. A white lie is better than a black lie. The most degenerate member of a family is a “black sheep.” Ossie Davis has suggested that maybe the English language should be reconstructed so that teachers will not be forced to teach the Negro child 60 ways to despise himself, and thereby perpetuate his false sense of inferiority, and the white child 134 ways to adore himself, and thereby perpetuate his false sense of superiority.

The tendency to ignore the Negro’s contribution to American life and to strip him of his personhood, is as old as the earliest history hooks and as contemporary as the morning’s newspaper. To upset this cultural homicide, the Negro must rise up with an affirmation of his own Olympian manhood. Any movement for the Negro’s freedom that overlooks this necessity is only waiting to be buried. As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery. No Lincolnian Emancipation Proclamation or Johnsonian Civil Rights Bill can totally bring this kind of freedom. The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive manhood his own Emancipation Proclamation. And, with a spirit straining toward true self-esteem, the Negro must boldly throw off the manacles of self-abnegation and say to himself and to the world, “I am somebody. I am a person. I am a man with dignity and honor. I have a rich and noble history. How painful and exploited that history has been. Yes, I was a slave through my foreparents and I am not ashamed of that. I’m ashamed of the people who were so sinful to make me a slave.” Yes, we must stand up and say, “I’m black and I’m beautiful,” and this self-affirmation is the black man’s need, made compelling by the white man’s crimes against him.

Basic Challenges

Another basic challenge is to discover how to organize our strength in terms of economic and political power. No one can deny that the Negro is in dire need of this kind of legitimate power. Indeed, one of the great problems that the Negro confronts is his lack of power. From old plantations of the South to newer ghettos of the North, the Negro has been confined to a life of voicelessness and powerlessness. Stripped of the right to make decisions concerning his life and destiny he has been subject to the authoritarian and sometimes whimsical decisions of this white power structure. The plantation and ghetto were created by those who had power. both to confine those who had no power and to perpetuate their powerlessness. The problem of transforming the ghetto, therefore, is a problem of power — confrontation of the forces of power demanding change and the forces of power dedicated to the preserving of the status quo. Now power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change. Walter Reuther defined power one day. He said, “Power is the ability of a labor union like the U.A.W. to make the most powerful corporation in the world, General Motors, say ‘Yes’ when it wants to say ‘No.’ That’s power.”

Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often have problems with power. There is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly. You see, what happened is that some of our philosophers got off base. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites — polar opposites — so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love.

It was this misinterpretation that caused Nietzsche, who was a philosopher of the will to power, to reject the Christian concept of love. It was this same misinterpretation which induced Christian theologians to reject the Nietzschean philosophy of the will to power in the name of the Christian idea of love. Now, we’ve got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. And this is what we must see as we move on. What has happened is that we have had it wrong and confused in our own country, and this has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience.

This is leading a few extremists today to advocate for Negroes the same destructive and conscienceless power that they have justly abhorred in whites. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.

Developing a Program?

We must develop a program that will drive the nation to a guaranteed annual income. Now, early in this century this proposal would have been greeted with ridicule and denunciation, as destructive of initiative and responsibility. At that time economic status was considered the measure of the individual’s ability and talents. And, in the thinking of that day, the absence of worldly goods indicated a want of industrious habits and moral fiber. We’ve come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operations of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. Today the poor are less often dismissed, I hope, from our consciences by being branded as inferior or incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty.

The problem indicates that our emphasis must be twofold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. Once they are placed in this position we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available. In I879 Henry George anticipated this state of affairs when he wrote in Progress and Poverty:

The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power and enriches literature and elevates thought, is not done to secure a living. It is not the work of slaves driven to their tasks either by the task, by the taskmaster, or by animal necessity. It is the work of men who somehow find a form of work that brings a security for its own sake and a state of society where want is abolished.

Work of this sort could be enormously increased, and we are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished. The poor transformed into purchasers will do a great deal on their own to alter housing decay. Negroes who have a double disability will have a greater effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use in their struggle.

Beyond these advantages, a host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts among husbands, wives and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on the scale of dollars is eliminated .

Now our country can do this. John Kenneth Galbraith said that a guaranteed annual income could be done for about twenty billion dollars a year. And I say to you today, that if our nation can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children on their own two feet right here on earth.

Commitment To Nonviolence

Now, let me say briefly that we must reaffirm our commitment to nonviolence. I want to stress this. The futility of violence in the struggle for racial justice has been tragically etched in all the recent Negro riots. Yesterday, I tried to analyze the riots and deal with their causes. Today I want to give the other side. There is certainly something painfully sad about a riot. One sees screaming youngsters and angry adults fighting hopelessly and aimlessly against impossible odds. And deep down within them, you can even see a desire for self-destruction, a kind of suicidal longing.

Occasionally Negroes contend that the 1965 Watts riot and the other riots in various cities represented effective civil rights action. But those who express this view always end up with stumbling words when asked what concrete gains have been won as a result. At best, the riots have produced a little additional antipoverty money allotted by frightened government officials, and a few water-sprinklers to cool the children of the ghettos. It is something like improving the food in the prison while the people remain securely incarcerated behind bars. Nowhere have the riots won any concrete improvement such as have the organized protest demonstrations. When one tries to pin down advocates of violence as to what acts would be effective, the answers are blatantly illogical. Sometimes they talk of overthrowing racist state and local governments and they talk about guerrilla warfare. They fail to see that no internal revolution has ever succeeded in overthrowing a government by violence unless the government had already lost the allegiance and effective control of its armed forces. Anyone in his right mind knows that this will not happen in the United States. In a violent racial situation, the power structure has the local police, the state troopers, the National Guard and, finally, the Army to call on — all of which are predominantly white. Furthermore, few if any violent revolutions have been successful unless the violent minority had the sympathy and support of the nonresistant majority. Castro may have had only a few Cubans actually fighting with him up in the hills, but he could never have overthrown the Batista regime unless he had the sympathy of the vast majority of Cuban people.

It is perfectly clear that a violent revolution on the part of American blacks would find no sympathy and support from the white population and very little from the majority of the Negroes themselves. This is no time for romantic illusions and empty philosophical debates about freedom. This is a time for action. What is needed is a strategy for change, a tactical program that will bring the Negro into the mainstream of American life as quickly as possible. So far, this has only been offered by the nonviolent movement. Without recognizing this we will end up with solutions that don’t solve, answers that don’t answer and explanations that don’t explain.

And so I say to you today that I still stand by nonviolence. And I am still convinced that it is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for justice in this country. And the other thing is that I am concerned about a better world. I’m concerned about justice. I’m concerned about brotherhood. I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about these, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer but you can’t murder. Through violence you may murder a liar but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that.

And I say to you, I have also decided to stick to love. For I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today. I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love, I’m talking about a strong, demanding love. And I have seen too much hate. I’ve seen too much hate on the faces of sheriffs in the South. I’ve seen hate on the faces of too many Klansmen and too many White Citizens Councilors in the South to want to hate myself, because every time I see it, I know that it does something to their faces and their personalities and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we are moving against wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who has love has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.

I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about “Where do we go from here,” that we honestly face the fact that the Movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, “Who owns the oil?” You begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?” You begin to ask the question, “Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two thirds water?” These are questions that must be asked.

About Communism

Now, don’t think that you have me in a “bind” today. I’m not talking about Communism.

What I’m saying to you this morning is that Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.

If you will let me be a preacher just a little bit — One night, a juror came to Jesus and he wanted to know what he could do to be saved. Jesus didn’t get bogged down in the kind of isolated approach of what he shouldn’t do. Jesus didn’t say, “Now Nicodemus, you must stop lying.” HE didn’t say, “Nicodemus, you must stop cheating if you are doing that.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, you must not commit adultery.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, now you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively.” He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something basic — that if a man will lie, he will steal. And if a man will steal, he will kill. So instead of just getting bogged down in one thing, Jesus looked at him and said, “Nicodemus, you must be born again.”

He said, in other words, “Your whole structure must be changed.” A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will “thingify” them — make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, “America, you must be born again!”

Conclusion

So, I conclude by saying again today that we have a task and let us go out with a “divine dissatisfaction.” Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. Let us be dissatisfied until those that live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family is living in a decent sanitary home. Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality, integrated education. Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity. Let us be dissatisfied until men and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the content of their character and not on the basis of the color of their skin. Let us be dissatisfied. Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol houses a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy and who will walk humbly with his God. Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid. Let us be dissatisfied. And men will recognize that out of one blood God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout “White Power!” — when nobody will shout “Black Power!” — but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power.

I must confess, my friends, the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will still be rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. There will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again with tear-drenched eyes have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil-rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future. And as we continue our charted course, we may gain consolation in the words so nobly left by that great black bard who was also a great freedom fighter of yesterday, James Weldon Johnson:

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days
When hope unborn had died.

Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place
For which our fathers sighed?

We have come over the way

That with tears hath been watered.
We have come treading our paths
Through the blood of the slaughtered,

Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last

Where the bright gleam
Of our bright star is cast.

Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us the courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.

Let us realize that William Cullen Bryant is right: “Truth crushed to earth will rise again.” Let us go out realizing that the Bible is right: “Be not deceived, God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” This is our hope for the future, and with this faith we will be able to sing in some not too distant tomorrow with a cosmic past tense, “We have overcome, we have overcome, deep in my heart, I did believe we would overcome.”

The broad point of his article (which you should read for yourself) compares the civil rights activists of the 60s and their amazing bravery and protests with the ease of clicking and tweeting things, without doing anything else, that often seems to be the extent of online activism. If you know me, you’ll probably not be surprised that my initial reaction to his article was that he is simultaneously right and wrong. Again, to an extent I agree with him and think his point is essential for many people to see. But I’m of the opinion that he’s also wrong.

Anil Dash, consistently one of the best bloggers of any kind, wrote a response. In it, he says this:

However: There are revolutions, actual political and legal revolutions, that are being led online. They’re just happening in new ways, and taking subtle forms unrecognizable to those who still want a revolution to look like they did in 1965. Gladwell is absolutely right to say that political action today takes place in the form of many smaller, simpler steps than it did when one used to have to put livelihood, liberty, or even life on the line to make change happen. That doesn’t mean it’s ineffective, just that it’s a million small protests instead of one visible act. For me, it’s a form of protest that feels much more Asian in its methods, with a steady trickle of small rebellions instead of the traditional western model of the visible, violent, aggrieved uprising.

This, I think, is the key: there is the potential for activism to occur online, and it is happening, but it won’t always look like activism has in the past.

Gladwell’s article suggests that the activists of earlier movements like the Civil Rights movement, among others, were activists because they protested, sat-in, endured violence, and were highly committed and personally connected to others in the movement. It’s certainly true that they did all of these things, and that in doing so they changed the world. But I question whether that is really the root of activism. Lately I’ve been fascinated reading Martin Luther King’s A Testament of Hope, which collects a large number of his writings, speeches, and articles, and there’s a massive section where he discusses his own and the movement’s philosophy of nonviolence.

Never does he indicate that protests and boycotts, though useful, were at the heart of the activism that he and others engaged in. In fact, the opposite is true:

One march is seldom successful, and as my good friend Kenneth Clark points out in Dark Ghetto, it can serve merely to let off steam and siphon off the energy which is necessary to produce change. However, when marching is seen as a part of a program to dramatize an evil, to mobilize the forces of a good will, and to generate pressure and power for change, marches will continue to be effective.

I’m of the opinion that this same argument can and should be made for things like social media. Pete Rollins is one who, today, is often reminding us that we can use social media, buy fair trade stuff, and do other low-risk things while still not accomplishing anything in ourselves or in society at large. While it was certainly more dangerous than anything most of us do, King is clear that even the marches and sit-ins and boycotts and protests (which he talks about in the same section) could have the same effect if they were not viewed as part of a more holistic and sustained thing, in his case using the philosophy of nonviolence in sustained ways.

Here’s where my thoughts are, at this point: social media is not the root of activism today any more than the marches were in King’s day. Gladwell is smart enough to know that this is the case, and I think he’s going the way of cheap pageviews from sensational articles by ignoring it. The root of activism today needs to be the same as it was then: a robust philosophy of change in souls and change in lives, seeing that the end does not justify but is inherent within the means we use (as King said in defense of nonviolence), which can bring those who resist along by changing enemies into parts of a beloved community and the apathetic into the passionate.

If the end is inherent within the means, and I believe it is, we should indeed question what we’re doing (and what we’re trying to do) when we tweet things, click Facebook’s Like buttons, and donate to the things that get through the incessant flow of stuff that comes at us, but we should not resist doing those things simply because we’re not getting beaten and jailed for doing them. We should instead see what we’re trying to do when we do them, and if we haven’t already (which in most cases we haven’t, and are just throwing various social media options at the wall to see what sticks just like the rest of the online world does) we should try to get to the bottom of it and discover a core philosophy like King did, and use the right sustained methods to take us there.

This is the important thing that all of us in this discussion need to understand: social media is not the end of what we’re doing, and it’s not the core philosophy that we want to use. Making connections, which social media facilitates, is not the core philosophy. If we make it the core, we end up with the useless self-gratification of passing things around to people who already agree with us, the vicious anger brought on by overexposure to unhealthy conversations, and the failure to use whatever we may have learned online to make the world a better place.

I believe that our core philosophy in the infant stages of online activism needs to be the telling of meaningful stories that get people involved in them. I think we’re just at the beginning of learning what this means, and I think there certainly is the risk that as a whole we will never learn what it means. But I am encouraged when Tim O’Reilly, a web pioneer if there ever was one, tells a room full of people creating the web today to “stop building trivial apps” and “make stuff that matters,” and goes on to talk about things that really do matter.

I have hope that we can make things out of this.

This year strikes me as different than the last several, probably mainly because of the anti-Muslim talk that is plaguing our country these days, and the inability that so many folks have to separate fundamentalists who fly into buildings from folks who want to build a community center, and the ridiculous desire to burn the Koran in response to that community center.

In 2001, I was a freshman in college. A few months before, I had attended Cornerstone Festival for the first time, and one of the bands I saw there was Ballydowse. Ballydowse was a Celtic punk band based at JPUSA, the intentional community on the north side of Chicago that puts the festival on each year. Ballydowse sang songs about politics, economics, and society that were (and in general still are) very unique. They sang songs about Oscar Romero, George Macdonald, Iraq and the sanctions we placed on it, and a number of other such topics. They also operated a section of their website that provided a place for dialogue about these and other issues.

In the first couple of days after the attacks happened, the lead vocalist wrote a beautiful piece in response, seeking to encourage us to be slow to speak, slow to anger, and quick to listen; in the hopes that we would have sought to respond in the right ways, rather than to answer terror with terror. While his words, being from a band in an underground music scene, went unheeded in the national conversation, they changed my life forever. Ballydowse’s website has been down for years, and the band no longer exists, but this year I managed to find an archived copy of his article. I post it here, as the formatting isn’t what it was when the site was operating, and it’s not very easy to find.

The power and beauty of his words have not been lost in these last nine years.

These were my thoughts shortly after the World Trade Centers horror. Since then too few have been rescued, and the death toll is in the thousands. It is very sad and our prayers go out to those families.

It is hard to begin speaking when so many arms are emptied of loved ones and for them our hearts feel only silent grief. It has been just a few short days since the world turned and Terror murdered so many. The Towers were no longer symbols. Suddenly, we realized that they were nothing, but the lives they contained were everything. These unique lives cannot be replaced even if a thousand towers, twice as high, rise again in our cities.

Who among us can describe such loss? The necessary transformation to a numerical body count will only be a vulgarization. Each one of my children, alone and unaided, outweighs the world. How can a mere number shroud such unfathomable depths of vanished possibilities? As the dead are gathered- and we hope against hope that more survivors will be found-already we know that over three hundred firefighters, police officers, and emergency personal were lost. This world is hard enough to doctor without this terror. The pain and accidents that come with our freedom fill the days of the service people with enough grief, we all wonder why humanity elects to add to such a brimming cup. As the days go on the numbers will rise. God be with these families and let us offer whatever we can, for those who still struggle in the hospitals wards or beneath the rubble and for those who mourn. That is our first response.

Beyond that let us be slow to speak, slow to anger, and quick to listen. The talk today is full of payments long due and vengeance swift preparing. As to the payments long due, it is one thing to speak of a nation’s collective responsibility for its words and deeds. It is another to overturn all constructive foundations that any such talk must have and embrace the murder. Let this point be clear- there is no past actions or present policies that can justify the targeting of innocent civilians in any nation’s cities. No cries to call America to justice for its past actions can be mingled with blood arbitrarily drawn from the mothers and fathers, sons and daughters of this land. The murders in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania contribute only to the glory of evil. The historical dynamics, the discussion of what lies between the birth and death of those who commit such deeds may form a bridge to understanding the temptations of rage but at the crossing of the line into terror, the actors must be left naked without excuse. Murderous actions cannot be dignified as necessities, they must remain unable to drown out the still small voice that offers each of us freedom to overcome our past.

However, to the cries for vengeance, we say remember the words of Chesterton, that shipwrecks are not avoided by doing Something, but by doing the right thing. We have done many a something these past years and have suffered no small number of shipwrecks. Yes. We must respond, but responding we must look to caution and restraint now more than ever. We have been deceived before. Pain and fear will grasp for the relief at hand, be it a healing courage or the maudlin delusions. The murder must be answered. This Terror is without excuse and it is our rightful enemy. But Terror is a coward and likes nothing more but to slip out the back door at the last minute only to re-enter through the front, guiding the mob and ensuring that all hopes of ending its eternal return are incinerated by the torches of vengeance.

Many voices are hearkening back to another day of infamy, to the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese Imperial Admiral Yamamoto had engineered the attack despite his misgivings about war with America. Shortly after the attack he is quoted as saying in regret “We have awakened a sleeping giant and have instilled in him a terrible resolve.” We are awake and the giant is forming. But there are giants and there are giants. Which giant we awaken and to what end our resolve will be the measure of our society.

This attack was rooted in hatred, in the ability of evil to remove all threads of empathy with the victim. It relied upon black and white delusions where god or virtue is completely united with the desired action. Terror seeks a specific response. Like calls to like. We must think long and hard about our response and refuse to awaken the giant that Terror desires for its company.

Whatever offer of true comfort for our grieving families, whatever sacrifice it takes to prevent actions such as this, we must make. Save the one that will be most tempting and most counter to true need. “We are never in greater danger than in moments when we deceive ourselves as to the real nature of a threat and when we summon all our energies for defense against the void while the Enemy approaches from behind” wrote Denis De Rougemont shortly after Hitler was driven from France. “It is the Devil who invents our moral sophistries, blots out our categories, transforms that habitual sin into a delirious “virtue”, into a fit of false innocence, into an exaltation of destructive power.” We must not offer our compliments to the Terror. We must not awaken it in ourselves.

Hannah Arendt, in the years after the Holocaust said how often people would come and tell her that they were ashamed to be Germans. She answered that she was ashamed to be human. Tuesday, as lives were hijacked and sacrificed to violence and force I was ashamed to be human. As desperate people, themselves no strangers to grief, danced in celebration I was ashamed to be human. And this morning, as Arab Americans who grieve along with us began to receive death threats in the name of freedom I was ashamed to be human.

The great myth of injustice has been it ability to instill moral strength with every lash of its whip. When men and women are placed beneath grief and pain, the outgrowth is not always noble. Any war against terror that does not seek to guarantee a continual renewal of enemies will demand to know whether the suggested tactics truly uproot more than they seed. We have laid siege to nations and encampments only to harvest hate. Let us seek to starve hate and see if we might not reap something desirable for our children’s future. No more bitter rage and collateral damages. The price of each human life must be marked according to its irreplaceable and unrepeatable value. And from this day forward any voice that says “Yes such and such is innocent of this crime, but the price of their lives is worth the reward”- that voice will be recognized as the call to seed terror and a great cry should rise against such tactics.

We cannot hope for absolute security. The chief weapon of terror is the human mind and a society secured against it absolutely is a cemetery. But, with Camus, we can resolve never to legitimize the terror. We are not speaking of forsaking action to prevent or answer terror. We are asking that we refuse any means that cannot be reconciled with the ends we propose. If the end we desire is the rule of justice then let the means be ruled by that same justice. If the end we desire is the rule of violence and vengeance unchecked then by all means we know what we can do to accommodate that desire.

Within hours of the horror voices are rising saying that for too long we have allowed security to take a back seat to civil liberties and that those days should end. Is Democracy to be defended by its death? Or is its pulse so low that a bed or a grave is of little difference? Proclamations of “We are one!” may sell papers but do not let the instant homogenizers sell the tensions and differences between us, for the tension is democracy itself. Now more than ever we must resist propaganda and support calm dialogue that does no violence to our plurality. To borrow from Pierre Joseph Proudhon, “in nations as in children reason seeks unity in all things, simplicity, uniformity, identity” but when the situation is not elementary, simple answers are popular lies. Without full depth of perspectives unbalance will drive us in circles slowly sinking beneath our own weight. Terror thrives when the exchange of ideas is replaced by “that august silence of all perfect orders” that Camus spoke of when “nothing anybody says will rouse the least echo in another’s mind.” If this is the unity that we are tempted with, it must be denied.

But that is not to say we might not come together and accomplish something. The self sacrifices that have filled the past days, the drama of flight 93 to the weary work in New York, have answered our shame with no small hope. If we did not rise to respond to this, if seeing these children wondering when mother or father was coming home we did not feel the fury we would not be human. But such precious worth cannot be entrusted to fury. Rather than surrendering to the fury, we must speak and act with power. That power will only arise where men and women speak and act together “where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities.” We must forsake the doing of something and begin seeking right things to do. If we answer terror with terror, again deluded that a salty spring will bring fresh water, we send the vicious circle of eternal return around again.

Gustav Landauer said in times like these we must “be the type of innovators in whose anticipatory imagination that which [we] want to create already lives as something finished, tried and tasted, and anchored in the past, in primeval and sacred life. Therefore let us destroy mainly by means of the gentle permanent and binding reality that we build.” Let us starve the Terror by binding ourselves not to become it. Let us seek the actors of this terror and with severity end these actions but let us do nothing without the remembrance that children are not born ready to hurl themselves and others in fury against steel and concrete. It takes an entire species to allow such pressures to build and such techniques to be mastered. Those who did these things are uniquely responsible but we are all involved. Let us rely on the gentle permanence of humility and build a sense of forgiveness, by daring to ask what sort of pressures tempt humans to become bombs and why so many trace those pressures to these shores. And in turn acknowledging whatever honest examination uncovers. As we promise to answer the actions of others, as we must, let us promise to answer for our own as well.

These words were penned by Hannah Arendt on Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility half a century ago as the world still reeled in the horrors of the Third Reich. That her conclusions speak so fluently to us today bears witness to how little we have learned. She describes the only giant we may safely awaken.

“To follow a non-imperialistic policy and maintain a non-racist faith becomes daily more difficult because it becomes daily clearer how great a burden mankind is for man. Perhaps those Jews, to whose forefathers we owe the first conception of the idea of humanity, know something about that burden when each year they used to say “Our Father and King, we have sinned before you,” taking not only the sins of their own community but all human offenses upon themselves. Those who today are ready to follow this road in a modern version do not content themselves with the hypocritical confession, ‘God be thanked, I am not like that,’ in horror at the undreamed of potentialities of the [characteristics of terror]. Rather, in fear and trembling, have they finally realized of what man is capable- and this is indeed the precondition of any modern political thinking. Such persons will not serve very well as functionaries of vengeance. This, however, is certain: Upon them and only upon them, who are filled with a genuine fear of the inescapable guilt of the human race, can there be any reliance when it comes to fighting fearlessly, uncompromisingly, everywhere against the incalculable evil that men are capable of bringing about.

If you heard of the bombing in Uganda the other day, you may grieve with us to know that one of those killed was Nate Henn, who spent time in the States as an Invisible Children roadie and was there spending time with the Ugandans who changed his life when the attack occurred. The Invisible Children blog has lovely words in his honor that I’d encourage you to read.

I’ve sat on this post for a few days, as I wasn’t sure what to say. I’m still not entirely sure, but I feel the need to say something. I didn’t know Nate, but we knew and loved and were changed by many of the same people. I’ve found over these few years that there is an instant companionship with folks involved in this story in its various forms, and it’s a beautiful thing. When Kiera found out about Nate, she expressed my thoughts with her own:

I cannot believe that I love the Invisible Children family so much. I did not realize how much until I find myself on the verge of tears. I feel like I know them… even when I don’t. That includes Ugandans as well. They are all family. I am sad for the loss of Nate’s life and the lives of many others.

So we mourn with all of this family, as big as it is.

Please know that Nate’s immediate family has set up a website and a memorial fund that will support his dreams for peace. You can also watch the video that Invisible Children released today.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

The King Center was set up by Coretta Scott King, and is (I think) currently still owned by the King family. The basic elements of the place include a small theater, a circular exhibit full of quotes, photos, and such things detailing King’s life and the Civil Rights movement, a gift shop, a room full of items worn or owned by Martin and Coretta (including academic robes, Bibles, suits and dresses, manuscripts, etc.), a rose garden, a small exhibit about Ghandi, the church he pastored (currently being restored, apparently) and so on.

I had wanted to visit the King Center since moving to Atlanta, and am so grateful that we were finally able to do so. It’s a powerful thing to experience. The films that play in the theater are amazing stories of the King family, the power of nonviolence, the stories and sacrifices of amazing people like John Lewis (who I was unforgettably and fortunately able to meet last year) and Joseph Lowery who are still with us, and the various students and churches and marchers who changed the world.

The wonderful thing about the films is that they are passionately drenched in hope that we as their viewers will do the same with the injustices around us. Indeed, the whole place is a center for nonviolent social change, though it functions as a museum to a specific era. It does not allow us to keep our minds on the past, thinking that we have arrived at racial justice, or economic justice, or any of the other things that King sought. Each exhibit is full of timeless words and stories, speaking to us about our own time.

I went into this place not knowing whether or not this would be the case, and though I assumed that it would it surpassed my expectations. Today in America, Martin Luther King is used to sanction so many political and social causes and movements, and every year on his birthday his name is invoked in support of various actions of violence and oppression that are antithetical to everything that he stood for.

But not at the King Center. He stands in his own prophetic and challenging context there, and it is a beautiful one. No attempts are made to hide his passion for truly alleviating the suffering of the poor and oppressed among black and white in the United States, or for nonviolence in Vietnam, or any of the other things that we don’t like to talk about on January 15.

I feel like there are so few places that still allow Martin Luther King, Jr. to speak on his own terms, but I’m so thankful that Atlanta has one. Go to it, if you are ever here. It’s free.

Anyway, the book is partly a story of how Richard Stearns’ life has been impacted by the essential call to justice that the message of Jesus brings, and partly an expression of that call to justice and the ways in which the American church has, for the most part, completely missed it and thus presented the world with a gospel that is not complete.

What the book says

That needs to be restated: the American church has presented a gospel that is not complete. The book then goes into deep observances of how true that is, giving overviews of what the Bible expects of us with regard to justice – holistic, all-encompassing justice – and how that has played itself out in bringing Richard Stearns to a place of spending his life in pursuit of that justice.

A large part of his information here is designed to get folks who would call themselves Christians to understand that their faith demands that they seek to alleviate the plight of the poor and oppressed around the world. The rest of it is designed to tell stories that have the power to shake folks out of their ignorance and indifference toward these things, getting rid of misconceptions about poverty and disease and showing our role in oppression and in freeing oppressed people.

What the book says to me

I found this to be a necessary book, even though I was already aware of the majority of the issues of poverty, disease, and oppression that it covers. Each still had much to teach me, many places to encourage and challenge me, and many places to remind me of things that I’ve forgotten or neglected to do anything about. It is also, importantly, insistent that there are things that I can do, and this is essential in a book of this nature. It is so easy when learning of systemic issues of justice to become complacent from simply being overwhelmed, and Stearns does not allow this.

I also found it necessary from a theological perspective. Stearns has a strong grasp of the theological and biblical issues around justice, and beautiful stories with which to express them. It’s also a beautiful thing for me to see someone who is clearly an evangelical be willing to throw himself so wholeheartedly on the line in support of justice.

I can’t overemphasize how much I loved seeing it. I have occasional theological differences with things written in the book, and that’s fantastic. It’s great to see that it is possible for him to have such a profound love for justice and the poor and oppressed, in spite of the theological and political structures within evangelicalism that keep so many from grasping it, that he is able to devote his life to them. Beautiful book that needs to be read, and its call to action needs to be heard.

1. In the interest of disclosure, I received the book for free, and am not required to write positively about it.
2. Many folks who know of World Vision know (as I did) of their child sponsorship programs, but maybe not much else. In recent months, both from this book and from other things I’ve run across, I’ve been learning about all the additional work they do among the poor and oppressed, seeking to promote justice and bear witness to the kingdom of God. It’s a wonderful organization.

The point of his post, essentially, is this: many folks these days buy t-shirts, update our Facebook and Twitter statuses, and send money to various things that may not actually require us to change the ways we live, but we still want to feel like humanitarians and activists. He compares this directly with the cost of, for example, being a positive role model for folks without fathers.

Now. First of all, I love Donald Miller’s own organization, The Mentoring Project, and have deep appreciation for what it is doing, and the difference it has made and will make in the lives of mentors and mentees. It can’t be overestimated. Obviously, he’s trying to get folks to think about getting involved with something like it. As we should.

But I’ve also made no secret that I adore organizations that work to build wells, free child soldiers, and stop human trafficking – all of these are things that he specifically mentions that can cause “slacktivism.”

I see the point. It’s possible to give money to these organizations, buy their merchandise, update various social media outlets and websites, and never change the way we live. I know there are folks like this, whose lives are not affected by the cheap awareness endeavors in which they engage.

Invisible Children responded to him with their own post, choosing not to disagree with him and reminding us that they don’t want to be an easy deed that eases our consciences and neglects to challenge us. In it, they write this:

Rather, Invisible Children hopes to be the starting point of humanitarian work. It hopes to show people their potential for influence, without regard for their age. IC should be the leaping-off point for activism and fighting injustice – the eye-opener to a broken world. IC will never say that child soldiers in Uganda is the only cause you should care about. We only demand that you not be apathetic about the suffering in the world.

Now, I’ve been involved with Invisible Children on a significant level for at least two years, and have been fortunate to meet a good number of current employees and roadies, former employees and roadies – many of whom have gone on to start their own organizations – and also a great number of local folks who participate in events, update their statuses, and buy merchandise.

None of the people in these groups with whom I’ve had significant interactions have been able to to go on with their normal lives. The ones who fell in love with the invisible children of Uganda have learned to get in touch with elected officials, how to use art and creativity to express their desire for change and tell the stories that have affected them and their own stories, and they’ve learned in general to have hope and idealism for such change.

Many of them have also fallen in love with the child soldiers of the Congo, trapped in a war that makes the materials for our cell phones and computers cheap, benefiting countless corporations, governments, and individuals while ignoring the suffering of millions. They’ve learned of systemic injustice, and that they have a place in it. They don’t know what to do about it, necessarily, but they’ve learned and are trying to do something.

Once one learns of systemic injustice, and his or her own place in it, the world isn’t the same. Many learn of similar oppressive systems further from (Israel and Palestine, or American imperialism, for example) and closer to (increasingly irrelevant institutions of religion, or the entrenchment of sex trafficking in major American cities, for example) home, and they learn of their own roles and opportunities to evoke change in these systems as well. It’s a beautiful thing to see and experience.

Now, this is where I disagree with Donald Miller. I’ve seen the deep and lasting effect that these organizations have had in my own life and the lives of folks that I love. I will never be the same. I will never buy things the same way. I will never look at Africa the same way, and I’ll never look at the other dear people in my generation the same way.

But I also agree with him in darker moments. I see myself in it. I feel like I talk a lot about justice and activism without doing anything that costs me anything. I don’t call myself an activist or a humanitarian, though I often wonder if I’ll ever get to a point at which I think that’s an appropriate term. I ponder ways in which I can learn to use my life as a theologically-educated web designer who wants to seek justice to actually seek justice, combining all of my passions for ministry and spirituality, and design and code, and justice and activism, in ways that make something beautiful. Some days, I think I’ve got it. Some days, I think I’ve got ideas that will lead me to it. Other days, I think I never will get it.

Do you have days like this? What do you think?