The movie The Blind Side, which depicts a white family’s successful adoption of an at-risk black male, has stirred the charge of “racism” for many in the black community. The word “silly” comes to mind as the most charitable word I would use in response to such a charge. A movie depicting a re-told true story recounting what the white Tuohy family actually did for a kid in need, who happened to be black, does not contain what we normally think of as racial dehumanization. It seems that many blacks are confusing “racism” with our distaste for “White Messiah” movies.

The Blind Side—which yesterday picked up Oscar nominations for best picture and best actress (Sandra Bullock)—is not racist, however it does depict the often told story of white people coming to the aid of some indigenous, needy ethnic person. My guess is that many white people appreciate movies like this because they help defend against the constant charge that all problems in America have a direct causal link to white people. Movies like The Blind Side tell the world that, even with America’s complicated history, all white people are not bad people.

Ironically, such movies are convicting to many middle-class blacks because, outside of family members, they are just as unlikely to take in at-risk black males as whites. If suburban blacks had a regular cultural habit of doing what the Tuohys did, it would change America.

Alternatively, movies like Avatar, which also is up for the best picture Oscar, elicit suspicions of racism because they depict a common Hollywood fiction that white people are here to save the universe. A couple of weeks ago, The New York Times’ David Brooks explained the racism of Avatar:

“Avatar is a racial fantasy par excellence. The hero is a white former Marine who is adrift in his civilization. He ends up working with a giant corporation and flies through space to help plunder the environment of a pristine planet and displace its peace-loving natives. The peace-loving natives—compiled from a mélange of Native American, African, Vietnamese, Iraqi and other cultural fragments—are like the peace-loving natives you’ve seen in a hundred other movies.”

Must it always be the case that a white male comes to save the day (again)? Perhaps this may explain the movie’s popularity. There are those who believe that Avatar affirms white supremacy—the same kind of white supremacy that juxtaposed Christian missions with the African slave trade and colonialism in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere, for example, in India, South Africa, and Haiti. Brooks explains that this type of white supremacy:

“. . . rests on the stereotype that white people are rationalist and technocratic while colonial victims are spiritual and athletic. It rests on the assumption that nonwhites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades. It rests on the assumption that illiteracy is the path to grace. It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism. Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.”

While movies like The Blind Side are clearly not racist in the least, fictional films like Avatar may explain the growing consternation of stories involving minorities that depict white people as the heroes. I guess this means we need more Will Smith-as-hero movies than Keanu Reeves ones. Who knows? The debate continues.

Is it not odd that many people who complain about government involvement in the housing market are the very ones who encourage zoning laws for their preferences? While there are good critiques on the short-sightedness of the Obama administration’s plans to increase the government’s role in helping the poor acquire access to better housing, the problem is that government intervention is one of the largest variables in the housing crisis in the first place. And this includes zoning laws.

The major government players in the housing market include the Federal Reserve, the government-created and privately owned Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and multiple state and local agencies. These agencies tend to serve as guarantors of risky lending practices that, when left to market forces, would have saved thousands from taking on debt they could not manage.

One of the unnoticed villains in the crisis were local zoning laws. Zoning laws are generally ways in which the elite use government intervention to keep “riffraff” out their communities as well as to thwart local land development that does not fit with the social preferences of the elite, explains Thomas Sowell in the book The Housing Boom and Bust. Restricting the use of land for the sake of “preserving open space,” “saving farmland,” “protecting the environment,” “historical preservation,” and other political mantras actually work to drive up property values in ways in which the market would reduce. Having minimum lot-size restrictions, for example, is a sinister way in which the elite, according to Sowell, “watch the values of their homes shoot up after the restrictions, so that they gain financially as well as by keeping out less affluent people and thereby preserving the character of the community as they like it.”

Local planning commissions often introduce so many regulatory impediments for housing developments that it is no longer cost-effective to build new housing in the first place. Land use restrictions, used by liberals and conservatives, over the past 50 years had a role to play in distorting the supply and demand matrix in the housing market. The market was not free to meet real needs because the elite used the government to prevent development. The elite doesn’t want low-income people living near them, either. Why aren’t those against government intervention fighting against zoning laws that prevent low-income housing developments?

Because of property inflation due to zoning restrictions, there are more and more calls to “make housing affordable.” This is happening in some areas because lower-priced options like trailer parks, apartments, homes on smaller lots, and so on are similarly not available nor allowed in certain areas. If conservatives are truly against government intervention in low-income housing, they should also be against government intervention used to codify social preferences of the elite.

There are times when I do not know whether to call myself a liberal or a conservative. By liberal, I mean “classical” liberal, which is connected to a tradition of individual liberty and small government instead of today’s popular construction with its socialistic worldview. I generally have to ask people, “What do you mean,” when I’m queried on my political ideology. David Koyzis offers helpful distinctions in his book Political Visions & Illusions: A Survey & Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies, which is well-worth reading.

Koyzis rightly points out that we all tend to waffle between idolatry and gnosticism in our political alignment. We are idolatrous when we believe that our political preference is the remedy for the world’s problems, and we are gnostic when we believe that competing ideologies are inherently evil. In an honest moment, I would confess that I do believe that my political ideology is right and all others are wrong because, at the end of the day, I think I’m always right. This is why I struggle with whether I am liberal or conservative.

To conserve something, says Koyzis, means to keep it, maintain it, in the face of forces that might tend to eliminate it over time. A conservative fears that something is being lost with change that cannot be replaced. Conservatives tend also to regret nothing more than the loss of their own power and privilege. What makes someone a conservative is not so much one’s views on government but common attitudes toward tradition and change. Conservatives do not like change. Conservatives want to conserve their own traditions and institutions even if that means trading off innovation and progress.

Liberalism starts with the fundamental belief in human autonomy, which means being self-directed and free to govern oneself in accordance with rules in which one willingly submits. The most basic principles of liberalism, according to Koyzis, is that everyone possesses property in their own person and must therefore be free to govern themselves in accordance with their own choices provided that those choices do not infringe on the equal right of others to pursue the same. Human persons should be free from coercion that favors one person or group’s preferences for another. As such, true liberals have a consistent aversion to government coercion in ways that conservatives do not.

The liberal/conservative distinction may explain why many conservatives do not mind expanding the size of government to maintain their own values and traditions. Many conservatives have no problem using the coercive nature of government to enshrine “traditional values” in America in ways intolerable to liberals. For example, conservatives and liberals would disagree about having prayer in (former Protestant) public schools. Conservatives lament the absence of prayer while liberals see no place for prayer in that setting, or even the idea of public schools.

We saw this distinction clearly in the politics of Ron Paul during the last presidential campaign. Paul stood out among the other Republican candidates because he was more concerned about liberty than using government to preserve traditions and preferences. At the end of the day, I have more affinities with liberals than conservatives because there are some American conservative cultural traditions that America has benefited by extinguishing.

The holidays and birthdays can be difficult for some because of severe family dysfunction. In recent years fathers have been faulted for complicity in emotionally wounding children but little attention is paid to the role of emotionally abusive and unstable mothers. On Mother’s Day women are praised. On Father’s Day men are reprimanded. Christine Ann Lawson in Understanding the Borderline Mother makes the case that much family dysfunction originates with a child’s intense, unpredictable, and volatile relationship with mom.

According to Lawson, adult children wounded by toxic mothers often have these common thoughts in her presence: “I never know what to expect,” “I don’t trust her,” “She says it didn’t happen,” “She makes me feel terrible,” “Everyone else thinks she’s great,” “It’s all or nothing,” “She’s so negative,” “She flips out,” “Sometimes I can’t stand her,” and “She drives me crazy.”

While the book is primarily targeted for adult children with mothers with borderline personality disorders, I find that looking at the four types of mothers Lawson describes can be helpful in understanding most difficult mothers:

1. Waif. The waif mother presents herself as helpless. She is primarily a victim and seeks to evoke sympathy and caretaking from others, especially her children. On the outside the Waif may appear strong but internally she feels like an impostor. Waif’s tend to have been a victim of childhood abuse or neglect, were treated as inferior, or were emotionally denigrated. The primary message to her children is, “Life is so hard.”
2. Hermit. Hermit behavior evokes anxiety and protection from others. The Hermit fears letting anyone in because she was likely hurt by someone she trusted. She tends to be overprotective of her children and lives in fear of bad consequences. The primary message to her children is, “Life is too dangerous.”
3. Queen. The queen’s inner experience is one of deprivation and her behavior demands compliance and allegiance. She is the demanding mother who often intimidates to get her way. She can be vindictive, greedy, manipulative, flamboyant, and greedy. Her emotional message to her children is, “Life is all about me.”
4. Witch. The witch mother is angry. She takes her anger out on others. Her behavior evokes submission. She actually is filled with self-hatred and may single out one of her children to bear the brunt of her rage. Her emotional message to her children is, “Life is war.”

These mothers have different public and private personalities, and only their children know the truth and roll their eyes when they hear, “Your mom is great!” The verbal assaults coupled with passive-aggressive guilt manipulation corners children into embracing their mother’s twisted emotional messages. This can make being around her unbearable. What makes Lawson’s book so valuable is that not only does she explain difficult mothers, she also gives fantastic advice for adult children so that they can simultaneously love their mothers while creating healthy boundaries that thwart future conflict.

Child sexual abuse cases are reported up to 80,000 times a year, but the number of unreported instances is far greater according to the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry. Why? Children are afraid to tell anyone what has happened, and the legal procedure for validating an episode is difficult. The frequent occurrence of child sexual and physical abuse makes films like Precious reflect more truth than it should.

The movie, set in 1987, is a story of an obese, illiterate, black 16-year-old Harlem girl named Claireece “Precious” Jones and her not so uncommon dysfunctional family. Precious, played by Gabourey Sidibe, in her acting debut, has been raped and impregnated twice by her father, Carl, and suffers constant physical, mental, and sexual abuse from her unemployed mother, Mary. Precious’ first child, known only as “Mongo” (short for “Mongoloid”), has Down syndrome and is being cared for by her grandmother. After Precious becomes pregnant a second time, she is suspended from school. Precious is a film adaptation of the award-winning 1996 novel Push: A Novel by Sapphire.

This movie will make you cry. I was particularly moved by its depiction of those who tried to give Precious a chance at improving her life, including an amazing schoolteacher and a social worker. My personal dream one day is for this level of brokenness to be handled well by the church.

One of great ironies about evangelicals is that churches that have the most resources—in terms of pastoral counseling, clinical Christian counseling services, attorneys, empty nesters, nurses, doctors, teachers, etc.—tend to be located in communities far removed from the rural and urban contexts where we find high concentrations of openly needy kids who are handed over to government to deal with levels of sin and brokenness that desperately need supernatural intervention. We complain about “welfare” programs but don’t live near people needing those services and offer them better alternatives.

I wish I had good answers about connecting Christians with the most gifts and resources to people with the most desperate needs—a situation that’s often called a “spatial mismatch.” The problems of the physical and sexual abuse of children are everywhere, but those hurting in communities with resources have the greatest access to help. What brought me to agony in this film was the lack of options Precious had in terms of knowing where to go for help.

Many Christians will not like this film because of its accurate portrayal of verbal and physical abuse, but Precious is true for many rural and urban girls. I long for the day when movies like this will show the church functioning as a normal part of the help narrative. But that will require two things: (1) Christians with the best resources living in openly broken communities, and (2) a strong Christian presence in the film industry. Until then, the imagination of film audiences will be left with stories of hopelessness and despair at the brokenness of the world.

There has never been a time in human history better for children than the era in which we currently live. In a Western culture like ours that worships children and idolizes youth, the low social status of children in antiquity seems foreign. Given the reality of the Greco-Roman world, it makes Judeo-Christian teaching on children and parenting a powerful counter-cultural witness.

In his book When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity, O.M. Bakke reminds us that in the Greco-Roman world children were considered the lowest form of human beings. The social pecking order went something like this: free male citizens, women, older men, slaves, barbarians, and then . . . finally . . . children. This was because it was believed that children had the least capacity, among all others, for logos—that is, word, speech, and reason.

Children symbolized the absence of logos. The idea that they lack reason is consistently found in sources ranging from the time of Homer to that of Cicero. Bakke recalls a popular Greek aphorism that said, “Old men are like children once more.” In both Platonic and Aristotelian thought, the opinions of children were seen as no more of a consequence than those of animals. To refer to an adult as a child was to issue a major insult.

Moreover, to call someone a “boy” in the Greco-Roman world was perceived as an egregious insult because children were associated with stupidity: pueritia amentia. This is a very interesting point considering the way in which white Southerner’s routinely and publicly referred to blacks as “boy” from time of chattel slavery through the 1960s. Is it possible that the South retained much of the Greco-Roman perspective on children? If so, to call a black man “boy” was more than an assault on his masculinity; it was also an assault on his dignity.

The Romans also were particularly dismissive of children because they were physically weak, vulnerable, and exposed to sickness. Given the mortality rate in the Greco-Roman world, it is not too surprising that children became symbols of human weakness. Children also were not valued because they were seen as lacking courage and subsequently became a symbol for human fear. In fact, Cicero made a well-known point that it is difficult to find any reason to praise a child for his inherent qualities.

This is the cultural context in which Jews in the Greco-Roman world lived before and during the time of Jesus. Many may find this understanding of children sheds new light on Jewish and Christian teachings on value of a child. Respecting the dignity of a child in antiquity was socially counter-cultural. This is a reminder that the good ol’ days may not have been that good after all.

It seems that every Christmas there is a family flick depicting conflict and reconciliation. Robert De Niro leads a great cast in such a movie this year, which also stars Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale, and Sam Rockwell. A remake of the 1990 Italian film Stann Tuttie Bene, Everybody’s Fine features De Niro as a widower who tries to improve his relationships with his complicated adult children. The movie is a sad reminder of the long-term consequences of family members who routinely keep secrets from one another.

Marvin Olasky wrote a review of the movie a few weeks ago from the perspective of a parent. I viewed the film from the perspective of an adult child. As the movie accurately depicts, in most families parents do not know their adult children like they might assume. The 14 years I worked in youth and college ministry I was routinely amazed at the naïveté of parents who believed that they “knew everything” about their adolescent and young adult children. I was shocked at parents who would say that they have a “great relationship” with the same teen or young adult who would, in turn, lament to me the exact opposite. How could this be?

Power dynamics and love distortions are so prevalent in most families that relational honesty is nearly impossible. Everybody’s Fine is a hard reminder that in most families everybody’s not fine. Too often honesty is catalyzed only in juxtaposition to crisis—death, suicide, divorce, drug abuse, religious shifts, and so on. I’m beginning to wonder more and more how many of my friends’ parents have any idea how much their adult children loathe being around them and what would it look like for these adult children to break the silence and explain why. I’m beginning to wonder what it would take for siblings to reconcile the differences that destroyed their relationship 10, 20, or even 30 years ago. Why are we so unwilling to be honest?

I am encouraged, however, by a few of my friends’ parents who have taken courageous steps to encourage honesty with their adolescent and adult children. It is a wonderfully painful experience of confession, repentance, and reconciliation, bringing both tears and joyful intimacy. I wonder if we really want to know the truth. Are we sadly content with the façade?

The weeks that span Thanksgiving through New Year’s are often difficult for families because of concealed tensions, pain, and disappointments. In the end, I encourage families with adult children to watch movies like Everybody’s Fine, The Family Stone (2005), and Little Miss Sunshine (2006) because they seem to be great opportunities to “get some stuff out on the table” so that future gatherings can be context of respite and joy instead of tension and guardedness.

One of the most exciting aspects of the unveiling of the Manhattan Declaration was to see Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant leaders in unity present their convictions about freedom and human life in the public square. In particular, the way in which the Orthodox communion expressed theology can teach both Catholics and Protestants how to communicate unity in other areas.

The Orthodox understanding of theology is that doctrine is “not an academic discipline or set of philosophical propositions, but an expression of the Christian life of prayer, both corporate and personal,” wrote Mary B. Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokritoff, editors of The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology. As a Protestant submerged in a culture where spirituality is often confused with theological precision, the idea that theology is an expression of personal and communal prayer is foreign. If theology were to be oriented around greater personal and communal prayer it could serve as a healthy basis of greater unity among the Christian traditions.

While the Orthodox openly recognize that theology comes out of the experience of the church, conservative Protestants rhetorically speak of theology coming from the Bible, while using pastors and theologians in their tradition to justify theological correctness. What’s the difference? Not much. It is the idea that my theology is “right” because the Bible and John Calvin, Martin Luther, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, and others say so. Since most Christian communions function similarly in practice, I am beginning to wonder why there is not more unity.

The Orthodox “instinct,” as Cunningham and Theokritoff explain, is to focus on synthesis rather than on individual strands of thought. Synthesis seems odd to me to because my own theological journey has been one of identifying myself with particular strains. Early on in my life it was John Wesley and later it became John Calvin. My own instincts are more divisive.

Additionally, the Byzantine doctrine of symphony sees the church and state as aspects of one organism because the incarnation of God has salvific implications to all that is human, including various spheres of culture. With the Roman Catholic understanding of subsidiarity and the Protestant understanding of sphere sovereignty, there seems to be great synergistic possibilities on the issue of culture and social justice. The possibilities for an increasing level of unity among Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Christians as we face our culture together is encouraging in light what Jesus prays in John 17.

What happens when you wake up one day and realize you are not the kind of person you thought you would become? Or you realize that you have made a mess of things? Or you simply want to grow? What often follows is a pledge to find ways to change. A few simple changes, we believe, get life back on track. Here’s the problem: We often try to change in ways that are only superficial.

In the book How People Change, Timothy Lane and Paul Tripp summarize the false ways people seek change that are incapable of delivering the internal heart-oriented change we really need. With my paraphrasing, Lane and Tripp offer this food for thought:

1. Formalism. The formalist is the one who changes by being a more dutiful Christian. “If I only get more involved in church life, that would grow my faith and make things right again.” This is the person who is at church multiple times a week. For them the gospel is reduced to participation in the meetings and ministries of the church.
2. Legalism. The legalist is the person who’s life is organized around a list of do’s and don’ts. The children of this person suffer under the tyranny of performance-oriented conditional love. Being “good” is the goal of the legalist.
3. Mysticism. The mystic becomes a Christian conference junkie longing for the emotional high of an experience in getting closer to God. Following Christ becomes more about emotional experiences than being a different kind of person. The emotional quick-fix does not last.
4. Activism. The activists gets closer to God and makes sense of life by protesting against “liberals” and other non-conservatives. This is a person who falsely believes that religious consistency is demonstrated politically and confusing fighting the culture war with healthy spirituality.
5. Biblicism. The armchair theologian fills the change gap by learning more information about theology and the Bible. Quick to quote dead theologians, and making a sport of arguing theologial minutia, the Biblicist believes that the gospel is reduced to a mastery of biblical content and theology.
6. Psychology-ism. There are some people who surround themselves with others who will comfort and pity them for the mess that is their life. The idea is this: “I’ll get better if the right people support me and listen to my problems.” The church is nothing than a place to heal my brokenness. The right support network will change everything. The gospel is reduced to healing brokenness.
7. Social-ism. For some people the gospel is reduced to having a network of fulfilling social relationships. These are the people who may be in two or three different small groups or are constantly in need of being around other Christians. As Lane and Tripp explain, a person like this makes fellowship, acceptance, respect, and position in the body of Christ a replacement for communion with Christ.

What is most compelling about this list is that these things can both be good and disordered. Political activism, Bible knowledge, having good friends, and so on do not address the deep needs we have that can only be addressed by the work of the Holy Spirit to form and shape us according to the reality of the implications of the Jesus death and resurrection. These easy balms may seem to fill the whole but they will never deliver what they promise. What really creates change is radical reorientation around the truth of redemption.

This morning, Atlanta’s mayoral runoff election between city councilwoman Mary Norwood, who is white, and former state Sen. Kasim Reed, who is black, was still too close to call. In the general election last month, Norwood won 46 percent of the vote, while Reed finished second with 36 percent, splitting the black vote among other African-American candidates. Since no candidate received a majority, a runoff between the top two became necessary and was held yesterday. The real possibility of a white mayor in Atlanta is representative of a steady transition in the city’s demographics.

Atlanta residents have been proud of having decades of black leaders in government and business, and the city hasn’t had a white mayor since Sam Massell was defeated in 1973. According to census data, the city is composed of about 57 percent African-Americans and 38 percent whites, and between 2000 and 2007 the black population declined from 61 percent. Why? Over the past 20 years, whites have been moving back into the very neighborhoods they fled when blacks moved in following the civil rights movement. Atlanta’s “gentrification” has created quite a backlash of resentment and confusion among many blacks in the city.

When I fly into Atlanta, like I did this Thanksgiving, I remain amazed at the huge mural of an young African-American girl with outstretched arms facing the escalators and welcoming passengers to Atlanta as they head to the baggage claim area. Growing up there I was nurtured in a community of African-Americans where lifestyles of blacks like those presented on The Cosby Show were not fictitious. I even have a black doctor/lawyer couple in my family. Atlanta is a city where the black middle-class thrives and a place where blacks are key leaders in many sectors. To see a leadership change in the mayor’s office would mean a new way of thinking about the city. I am not surprised, then, to find these demographic changes stirring real emotion.

In 2003, Footnotes, a newsletter of the American Sociological Association, published some of the angst that people felt back when the gentrification started: “The white folk moved out and are now paying anything to move back,” said Frank Edwards, an Atlanta resident. “Regentrification, that’s just a nice word for taking black folks’ property,” said Billy McKinney, a former Georgia State Representative.

In Atlanta, Kirkwood, East Lake, and East Atlanta are predominantly black neighborhoods that began to change nearly 20 years ago, as the newsletter noted:

Between 1990 and 2000 the white population in these neighborhoods doubled. The most dramatic racial change was in Kirkwood, where white residents increased from 1% to 14% of the population between 1990 and 2000. This area had not experienced such a shift since the 1960s. Between 1960 and 1970, these neighborhoods changed from being almost 100% white to almost 100% black. In Kirkwood, for example, 91% of residents were white in 1960; by 1970, 97% of the population was black.

If the final ballot count results in a victory for Norwood, this may signal the end of an era of black middle-class dominance in Atlanta. As whites move back into the city it will certainly continue to change the racial makeup and priorities of city government. Demographic shifts are a normal part of urban life, and Atlanta’s residents, like many other minority residents of large cities, are facing the reality that there are two-sides of the “change” coin that President Obama emphasized during his presidential campaign.