WALMART: SUPERSTORE DISORIENTATION

I almost called the police this past Saturday. If you shop at Walmart, you might empathize with me: I walked into the store at one angle, got jumbled up inside, and came out at an angle slightly less or more than the original only to find myself in an unrecognizable part of the parking lot that did not house my car. I didn’t panic at first because this has happened to me before, usually when I am by myself. On my phone. When my wife or children are with me, they typically navigate me in the proper direction.

I usually have good reasons for exiting the store at an angle differently than my entrance. The people in front of me are slow or at a standstill, talking. Maybe I’m avoiding some girl scout or church group at the entrance who wants to single me out for a donation. A time or two, I admit, I have avoided someone coming through the exit door, so I made a last minute decision to go through the entrance losing myself in oncoming traffic, bouncing around like a pin ball only to find myself in some foreign part of the parking lot.

Saturday, however, I had no distractions. I was not on the phone. In increments my Spidey-sense told me something was wrong. The first stage of my panic was one of ambivalence. The parkingscape of a super store constantly changes, so I merely did a 360-degree visual sweep of the lot only to realize I had no idea where I had parked in the first place.

When the visual sweep proved to be unsuccessful, I thought I would retrace my steps to the entrance, hoping to recreate the angle at which I entered the store. However, on my way to the entrance I saw a car I thought was mine about forty feet away. I proceeded to it only to realize at the last second (before I put my key in the lock) that it was not my car. So I tried to nonchalantly walk past it but not before I made eye contact with a “witness” or two sitting in their cars staring at me (and who this very minute might probably be blogging about how they thwarted a car theft on Saturday at the Walmart in my city).

Now, I’m slightly irritated. I knew in general where I had not parked (on the far side off the parking lot), so I started walking up and down the aisles of cars, sweeping my head back and forth to catch a glimpse of my wife’s Volvo. Walking the aisles echoed the religious comfort that most certainly I would find what I was looking for if I walked long enough, if I looked long enough, if I really wanted to find my car. Not wanting to give the impression I was looking for just any kind of car with an unlocked door, I walked across the far side of the parking lot to see if that would give me a different vantage point. It did not.

As has happened before, nonplussed concern turned into heightened alarm. Just as I was about to pull my phone out to call 911, I saw my car. It was two or three aisles over at approximately a 23-degree angle from where I was standing. Its butt was sticking out, and I recognized its blue glint and could see the back windows, blurred foggy by children’s fingerprints. You think I would have been happy, but I found myself chastising the car.

“Why are you there? I didn’t park there” my mind involuntarily suggested.

Now that I was in recovery mode, I walked towards it with purpose, hoping that all previously concerned citizens having observed my aimless power-walking these last seven minutes, would see that I was walking towards my car with my keys. I pulled my keys out, jingling them loudly.

Of course, once you reach the car, it all makes sense now and you can laugh at yourself. You realize why you decided to park, what time it was when you parked, what song was playing on the radio when you parked, your locking the doors, your mental catalogue of the items you planned to get and the order in which you planned to get them, your resolution to be in and out in fifteen minutes. All of the little stories finally make sense because you have your bearings once again.

I objectified the lost person in the parking lot from the confident person now behind the wheel. How comforting familiarity can be. In the comfort of my familiar bearings, I honestly would not mind being lost a hundred times if it would but preserve in me empathy for others. As it is, when the lostness is upon me, it is hard to connect with others in the middle of my own panic.

IMMIGRATION & COMMANDMENT THREE: NO MISUSE OF GOD'S NAME

Perhaps, the biggest blunder of American Christianity is that our traditions, which often hail from a Christian context, go on existing apart from that Christian context. Though it can be said that America is the greatest country in the world because its citizens have equal rights, we have experienced a subtle change in the Christian trend of ontological equality which is to illustrate how intrinsically no man stands above another. 

If the Church is the thermostat of culture, then what happens in our little congregations are miniature case studies for happenings on a larger scale in the world. Could an Hispanic come into our congregation and naturally feel welcomed in our community as easily as he does in our public schools, movie theaters, and Walmart stores? What about any another ethnic minority? Would an illegal alien feel that he could come to the church for basic assistance, for counsel, and for safety were it needed (and it is needed)? 

Of course, we intend that such people would feel welcomed, and we might even have the bias that they should feel welcomed. However, if they do not, then we have not successfully illustrated our intentions. If the suburb dictates how the church will function, then there is no way our congregation will embrace the Great Commission in a real-world way. If a political framework dictates who comes and goes from our church, then we are not thinking broadly enough. 

Assisting in Iraq is wonderful, but that is not what I am talking about. Iraq is here, yet they are not amongst us in natural relationships and proportionate to their available numbers. It is this real-world inhibition to the Biblical equality of mankind which passively assures that fraternities largely based upon race are allowed to continue even though Modernism with its emphasis upon empiricism has long been dead. It is not just that Blacks want their own Church. It is not just that Hispanics want a Church in which they can speak their native tongue. It is not just that the poor do not want to worship with us because they are embarrassed. No, it is that they feel less than human amongst us. They feel they must hide something intrinsically ethnic or situational about who they are. It is an ontological problem. 

I am afraid that the existence of so many diverse churches in our city (communities that do not naturally interact with each other) underscores the variant ontological philosophies of mankind that we have: each with their own racial, regional, national, political hierarchies of importance, and each with the idea that everybody else needs to be converted to their point of view. So I suggest that to create a genuine equality in our community is for man in the church to be treated as man. Of course, that is a tall order and we are only responsible for our own congregation. One practical way to begin is by challenging the politically correct stereotypes that curb, blur or erase racial, ethnic, political or otherwise situational distinctions. 

I once was told by a man in church that he would never comment on my hair (or lack thereof) because he considered it racist to speak about Black people's hair. Though I appreciated the sentiment that he did not want to offend me, I was chagrined that my hair (or lack thereof) presented him with such a tortuous, internal conflict. In other words, to reciprocate his do-not-offend sentiment, I felt compelled to reciprocate by making my hair (or lack thereof) a non-issue or by living with the consequence that my hair (or lack thereof), though it be a truly insignificant thing in the larger scope of who I am, can never be mentioned before my brother for fear of causing him to stumble. 

Take this real-world example and replace it with more substantial interests of the immigrants amongst us: leisure, music, customs, child-rearing, worship styles, politics, business, clothing. You have a church that feels pressured to either choose to ignore immigrant distinctions or to pressure them to adhere to our very own, making them a sub-image of our own image. The church cannot be the tool to blur or otherwise diminish these distinctions. The church cannot photoshop such distinctions away. 

BORDER TALK

Cold War era European border crossings remind me of Walmart at 9:30 P.M.: you see people you only every imagined but never thought existed. When traveling the former East-bloc, the safest places to me were away from the borders. Borders held up vagrants, riff-raff, criminals, con artists, predators, not to mention emotionally anxious people who would do perhaps anything to have a guard let them through. Gypsies, too, though they are not all suspicious characters. In 1990, however, the hair on your neck would bristle when their men would nonchalantly mill around you, feeling you out without even giving you a glance.


Germans call a border a Grenze, which sounds like onomatopoeia for the gutteral warning it is. If ever you could bank on a tense moment, your heart rate was sure to increase when pulling up to an East bloc border. My father was a pro at getting through these borders. Each trip to the East, he would pack the vehicle with Cocoa Cola and candy bars. The drive to Baia Mare, Romania was typically 24-hours, so I originally thought the sugar was meant to keep the drivers awake. We tended to plow right through, swapping drivers every few hours or so. Giving the destabilizing nature of the East, it was inadvisable to stop along the route for the night.


My dad had another idea for the Coke and chocolate. As our car approached the dirty, mercantile-grey Hungarian-Romanian border, an emotionless border guard would sinisterly wave us to the “preliminary” border. The guards were often middle-aged men, but many were boys or looked like little boys anyways (Our Eastern neighbors didn’t use steroids in their foods, so a 30-year-old woman looked 14-16 and a 40-year-old man looked 18-22. One Christmas I went carolling hand-in-hand with a “little girl" I thought to be 8 or 9, only to find out later that she was older and sure I was going to marry her). If inclined, the guards would harrass and intimidate you. The rules for this were random which, I learned, is why my dad had the Western goods stashed in the front seat. Sensing resistance from our guard, my dad would quiety slip him a Coke and candy bar. Instantly the overall mood would change.


The first emotion was surprise. At that time the East bloc did not commercially sport colors as bright as the red can of a bonafide American Cocoa-Cola. Amidst the toxic, industrial, grey tones, a Coke can was truly an aesthetically pleasing work of art.


The second emotion was one in which the guard was visibly tortured. Here was contrabrand he could sell on the black market for hundreds of Romanian lei (We would exchange our American dollars for lei on the black market. You couldn't beat the exchange rate). If caught, however, that Coke could could cost him his job or worst. The Romanian revolution in which the Romanian dictator Ceaucescu and his wife were chased around a courtyard and shot to death on Christmas Day 1989 had only taken place six months before my first trip in May 1990.


The third emotion was the passing from agony to resolution. The guard stashed the items into a shoulder-strapped bag he wore cross-torso, which, in retrospect, was probably used for contraband purposes anyway. Now becoming an accomplice to us Americans, he would smartly salute or wave us through.


I was morally conflicted when we would jettison past kilometers of cars in the slow lane, being given that ambivalent stare-down from Eastern drivers who assumed we made an exchange of some sort with the authorities. The slow lane would be at a standstill, and people would be outside their cars walking, smoking, talking, and eating. Speeding by, I would cheerfully smile at them as if to say "You have to understand one thing about us Americans: RONALD REAGAN."


One time it didn’t work so easily for us. According to 1990 Romanian border-customs, Americans could not enter the country unless given an invitation from a distinguished resident of Romania. We had our letter of invitation, we had our passports, and we had an inventory of everything we were bringing into the country. Nevertheless, at the discretion of the border guard we could be made to empty our car and reinventory everything on spot. This was unacceptable to my father and a dread for me, because I would secretly pack items not on the official inventory. Like the extra deoderant and hair gel I would stash for my friends.


What the guards really wanted was a portion of the goods we were bringing into the country. But they wouldn’t ask for it, I suppose because then they could be accused of extortion. They had other ways. They would detain you, interrogate you, disappear into the little sentry box for copious periods of time, occasionally peeping out the window at you, laboriously practice their English on you by dramatically flipping through each passport, butchering names on purpose so you would end up correcting their English enunciation and then they would in turn correct you for correcting them. They wouldn’t ask for anything, but they would jostle you into a position in which you would suggest that they take what they wanted.


On this one occasion the guard did not sense our cooperation. He disappeared as we watched ongoing action ahead of us. Another Romanian guard had ordered everyone off a Hungarian bus—thirty people or so. A young man, who was hiding inside, tried to run out one end of the bus to bolt for the border. Why, I don't know. He was easily apprehended, slapped, and punched right in front of us. At that point we struck some sort of satisfactory deal with the Romanian guard and were soon on our merry way.


Culturally we have been at a border ourselves, riding an epochal wave into a new era. No one really knows the rules of the game because people groups, being separated by at least 150 –1500 years of dictatorial oppression are all now thrown into the mix by the upheaval of an atheistic system underpinning a variety of oppressive regimes no longer compatible with the new world climate of democracy or, as I like to think of it, "spirit." Stone Table, the school I founded in 2000, is a place where we intentionally teach students to disentangle the “rules” of the new cultural game and guide them to design innovative ideas and products that can facilitate the inescapable changes before us, bending them into legitimately beneficial forms NOW before competitive, authoritarian forms become galvanized for the next 200 years, largely because of Christian pessimism and apathy.


I am quite certain that is a legitimate part of the Great Commision: spatially pushing back the barriers of oppression from your mind to your bedroom to your driveway to your front yard, and so on and so forth, creating increasingly larger spaces or "forums" where persons, families, people-groups, and nations can be funneled into a new cultural light supportive of generic, Biblical ends. After all, those ends are intrinsic to the universe anyway, so peace on any front (be it psychological or international) only seems possible by aligning with that liberal reality.