This week I got a chance to listen to two of my favorite actors talk about Race.  Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman were interviewed, and I appreciated what both men said.  But Morgan Freeman poked me a little bit with a throwaway comment that I would like to address.  He said (paraphrased), “Race is kinda like religion to me.  It is a good excuse for not getting there.”

I love Morgan Freeman in almost everything he does.  Shawshank Redemption, tops!  RED, Hilarious! Invictus, a Favorite!  I even liked him in “Through the Wormhole.” Liked him but disagreed with him on occasion.  Wow, am I allowed to say that? (Maybe a future blog.)  But I disagree with his comment about religion being a good excuse for not getting there.

For me, religion, specifically my faith in Jesus Christ, has been the reason for me “getting there.”  It has made me think hard. I all too often here skeptics saying that my “faith is a crutch.” If they mean that it is something I lean on, that is true.  But if they mean that it is something that excuses me from doing great things, I have one thing to say: They don’t know anything about Jesus and my faith in Him.  Christianity is not an easy believe-ism that provides excuses for not doing my best.  It drives me to do my best.   It is a thinking man’s faith.  It is a strong man’s faith.

Let me provide just one example of why I say this.  In Matt 22, Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment was.  Jesus partly recites the  Shema first, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ But then in usual Jesus fashion, he adds to the answer, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Pretty easy answer, right?  Until you try to apply it.  Then you get into some difficulties.  First of all, what does love mean?  Not to want to get into Greekspeak; let’s say it means “unconditional love.” So does love include correction and criticism?  Does it mean disagreeing with them when they might have wronged?  Does it mean sometimes going against the majority?  I think so.  OK, unconditionally loving “your neighbor.”  Who is my neighbor?  Certainly the guy next door, but what about the guy across the street?  How about my cubicle mate that plays Metallica, 8 hours a day, five days a week? There are about 141 occurrences of the word neighbor in the Bible, and I will tell you, a tertiary review leads you to believe that it is more than Billy Bob next door.  Then we get to “yourself.”  Maybe I have a low threshold for how I expect to be loved. Perhaps I have a high threshold.  How does that play into it?  How do my petty likes and dislikes figure into that?  I have a pet peeve.  I don’t like being called “Buddy.”  I try not to call other people, “Buddy,” but is that what Jesus meant?  “Don’t call people Buddy, Bob, and you’re good!”  Jesus would say there is more to it than that.

Add to this challenge, the constellation of people we have around us that are in different places in their walk or maybe not walking with Jesus at all.  How do I love my conservative friends when they are at war with my liberal friends and visa versa?  Then layer on top of it our society with its culture wars.  Mixing all these things into a mixing bowl and then determining what those five simple words mean is a thinking man’s game.  Because of that, I think I am getting there with loving my neighbor as myself.

But the bottom line is my faith is the primary reason I HAVE been able to accomplish things in my life. It requires me to dig deep and ponder. It makes me consider what respect means. What excellence means. What love means.  In the current cultural situation, we find our nation in; this is even more critical. We shouldn’t be afraid to wrestle with God’s word.  And we shouldn’t be scared to take divergent positions when God’s word leads us there. It will help us get there.