by Keith Bassham
When I am an observer of seemingly insoluble problems — especially those that appear to be endemic in certain cultures and locales — I tend to go into quiet mode. Instead of being ready with an apt answer, I am more like Preacher Jim Casy in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (I mean the Casy early in the book, not later when he turns union activist), trying to figure things out, because as Casy says, “Preachers gotta know.”
I grew up in a lower class, but not abject poverty. I don’t remember going hungry because there was nothing to eat. I slept in a car a couple of nights when I was on my own and between apartment rentals, but I knew it was a temporary thing at worst. There were bad places in my town growing up, and though I did not realize it at the time, I know now I was fortunate I was the one bullied when I was there, and I was not a bully myself. That line could have been easily crossed, and where would I be today if it had?
And so it is true that I do not, and probably cannot, completely comprehend what it means growing up black in a place like Ferguson, MO. Intellectually, I can see how a perpetual distrust can manifest itself in fear, and then rage, and how what may seem perfectly reasonable from one perspective will appear horribly wrong from another. But I have not lived that way. Therefore, while I have my opinions and thoughts, I am not free with them.
I am thankful, then, that a friend of mine can help. Charles Lyons, pastor of the multi-ethnic Armitage Baptist Church in suburban Chicago, has been a columnist for the Tribune through most of my 13 years as editor. When I think of Charles, I think of the line from one of Raymond Chandler’s books, “… down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean …”
Charles grew up tough in a tough neighborhood. But he has known God is tougher since he was a kid, and so he gave Him his allegiance early. Today, he preaches the Gospel to both small and great — and to the mean — and I depend upon him to give me eyes, ears, and words for days like these.
In this month’s “Urban Current,” Charles’s column, he talks about Ferguson and other tragedies. Some won’t like what he wrote, or that he wrote anything about it at all. We argued some over the words he used. Editors and writers do that, and in a couple of places neither of us was completely happy with the phrasing we left on the page. But, Charles has made an observation and guided us to a hopeful solution. Chandler could have been describing Charles when he wrote, “If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.”