Faith Works 11-18-17
Jeff Gill
Mending the breach in the wall
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Our prayers continue with our brothers and sisters in Christ in Texas . . . and in California, where a church shooting took place that same morning, but with only two dying, not twenty-six, it got much less attention. It, too, was the act of a man angry about his lot in life and his loss of relationship with a female partner.
I hear much about guns and violence and there's much for us to discuss around those subjects. And there's another aspect of these events related to the work I'm involved in around our community, including the event today up Mt. Vernon Road at Family of Faith Community Church with our County Prosecutor and the Ohio Attorney General's office.
It's the question of hope, and our state and even national "hope deficit." I've had the honor and sad privilege to speak about our hope deficit before a House committee in Columbus, and in this column I have and will come back again and again to this subject . . . and it's why ministry and the preaching of the Gospel is the heart and core of what I feel called to do.
Yes: 33,000 gun deaths in America per year is tragic and horrible. Did you know two-thirds of them are suicides? And are not every one of these awful mass shooting events ultimately a complicated form of suicide? We see gun deaths start to catch up to auto fatalities, about the same figure per year: did you know that over 20% of those are single vehicle versus fixed object accidents, that patrol officers will often quietly tell you "were not accidents." They were suicides seeking to look otherwise.
And the opiate epidemic. I could go on at length on this subject, but let me just say this much today: most of what I see and hear and know about the turn to heroin is very like a slow-motion suicide. Much of addiction, as I see it at work in our community and beyond, is a form of hopelessness and despair and openness to the end of life as a risk worth taking versus a quick release . . . and so many "accidental" overdoses I think are an indirect form of self-harm and on occasion suicide themselves.
The problem is not access to drugs or cheap Mexican black tar or lack of residential treatment, none of which helps, but the core element is the loss of hope. Where there is no hope, these other ills flood in to fill the gap. Where there is hope, they have a harder time making progress into lives and families.
We have so many families in our community directly impacted by the hope deficit and the opioid epidemic. Adult children and grandchildren attempting rehab and treatment, often with failures before the program sticks and the follow-up works. Elderly people raising grandchildren and great-grandchildren to give some respite to the parents as they go through recovery. Families who have lost loved ones, both in distant states and right here in the county, to drug overdoses, but who feel the need to maintain a cautious, sorrowful silence.
In Sam Quinones' "Dreamland," one of the key families he follows, in the narrative about the birth of the opiate epidemic and the rise of Mexican heroin in Ohio, is from Columbus. You read about heroin delivery to Johnstown. And much of the book keeps returning to Portsmouth, where the mother of two young adult addicts says "When your kid's dying from a brain tumor or leukemia, the whole community shows up. They bring casseroles. They pray for you. They send you cards. When your kid's on heroin, you don't hear from anybody, until they die. Then everybody comes and they don't know what to say."
That silence is part of the loss of hope, the hope deficit that I believe faith in God and the power of the Good News made known in Jesus Christ can overcome. The accounts of hope can be replenished and restored, but the deposits only come through conversation -- with God in prayer, and with each other out loud -- and a community ready to speak of what we have long avoided saying.
Rebuild ancient ruins, and repair the breach in the walls, Isaiah declares in chapter 58. Speak hope, say words of peace, and share the hope that is in you. That's the journey we are on right now, and I am more than hopeful about the destination.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him where you draw from deep wells of hope at
knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
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Faith Works 11-25-17
Jeff Gill
Role models and where to find them
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We're living through a long-overdue season of reckoning with public figures being confronted with past behavior.
And sometimes, not so past. But long-running enough to make the individual's denial in the face of a long string of accusers look as flimsy and false as it generally turns out to be. These assault and abuse allegations against a seemingly endless string of clueless, callous men in power are not a case of "where there's smoke, there's fire," it's more of "when you see the entire forest burning from here to the state line, there's fire."
Some have been utterly unsurprising (Hi, Hollywood!) and others force me to rethink assumptions I've had about males I've admired or at least respected. And for any of us, male or female, it can be discouraging to start to think "are they all like this?" Absolute power corrupts absolutely, we're told, but these days it seems like "any power at all makes men into amoral idiots." Whom can we respect, which are worth our admiration?
I know lots of decent political office holders personally; most of them would say that it would be a mistake to look to politicians in general as personal role models. I've known a few athletes (none professional), and they often joke about what a bad idea it is to see sports stars as exemplars. Clergy? I am one, and have known many marvelous men and women in ministry, but I'm all too aware of that not-small-enough minority of rogues in robes we have out there, leaving a swath of sorrow and disappointment behind them. And I'll just leave entertainment alone.
If we want to find examples to live by, we'll have to turn off the TV, shut down the laptop, pocket the phone, and go out into the streets and fields and gyms and church basements. We would, if we wanted to find role models, have to follow along with life as it is lived, for a stretch of time, and see where a good example is shown day after day, year after year, often far from the limelight, rarely with much public notice . . . and yes, even then, with occasional stumbles of ill temper or private pique. From which they get back up and return to the road we claim to want to follow.
They are soccer league coaches and AA sponsors, Sunday school teachers and Girl Scout leaders, Scoutmasters and offensive line assistants. They are lunch ladies and crossing guards, knitters and crocheters, fast food cashiers and automobile mechanics. Not all of any one of those categories, but you're as likely or more in those activities as you are in politics or sports or ministry to find a life worth imitating.
And most of all, you can't imitate. Even the imitation of Christ, as Thomas á Kempis tried to explain, isn't the wearing of sandals and rough woven robes. It's a spirit of openness and appreciation and thankfulness for the world as it is, and simultaneously as it could be, and a sensitivity to how one can help make that transition from is to could in the world around them. "Find the good, and praise it" said Alex Haley; the finding of it is a good all its own.
There is good somewhere near you right now. Just look for it.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him where you found someone worth admiring at
knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
