And The Second Is Like It

³⁶ “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” ³⁷ And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22 ESV)

Have you ever thought about what makes the second commandment like the first?

I mean, surely they are very different, right? Concerned with completely separate domains, right? The one a vertical surrender to the perfect almighty invisible God, the other a horizontal relationship with tangible, fallible human beings. Surely the first is far more important? Surely we must focus on following that one before worrying about the second?

But what does Jesus say? When we feed the hungry we are feeding Jesus? When we take in the stranger we are showing hospitality to Jesus? (Matthew 25)

What does John say? If we don’t love our visible brother, we can’t love the invisible God? (1 John 4:20) If we have this world’s goods and ignore a brother in need, the love of God can’t abide in us? (1 John 3:16-18)

You can’t love God without loving your neighbor! You can’t follow the first commandment without following the second!

The order still matters – it is love for God that gives you the ability to love your neighbor as yourself – but they cannot be separated. When you love your neighbor, you are not merely demonstrating your love for God, you are literally loving your God!

As Yourself

I wonder if sometimes we miss how radical Jesus’ words are because we forget the full phrase and just think of it as a command to “love your neighbor.” Without even thinking, we almost water it down to just being nice to other people.

Lots of people, whether they claim to follow God or not, like the idea of “loving your neighbor,” especially as long as it doesn’t require you to sacrifice very much. Anyone can do that. But very few people seem as interested in loving your neighbor as yourself. Now that’s radical!

What does that really mean?

The early members of the Bruderhof community frequently wrestled with how to take this passage seriously. Homage to a Broken Man recounts some of their thinking during the social upheavals in Germany between the world wars:

What could Jesus’ command to “love your neighbor as yourself” mean, if it didn’t mean making sure that one’s neighbor had the same access to education, healthcare, housing, and food?

“If I demand a better standard of living than my neighbors, how can I claim to love them as myself?

Such words may strike you as extreme. But even if you don’t think that’s the answer, I think the question is worth serious consideration.

Read the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Read the words of John and James in the epistles. Meditate on them.

What does it mean to love your neighbor?

What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself?

Homicides

Homicides in St. Louis are back up to double-digits this month.

All black lives.

O Lord, forgive us,
For not caring,
For not knowing their names,
For assuming they just got what they deserved,
For not feeling the pain of each mother’s grief,
the injustice of murders that will never be solved,
For believing it’s somebody else’s responsibility,
For pretending it doesn’t affect us,
even as it affects where we are afraid to go in our own city,
where we are all connected,
through millions of lines of relationships and roads,
and tax dollars.

O Lord, forgive us,
For seeing the violent but never the victims,
For only acknowledging the race of their killers to condemn those who don’t,
For calling them speckled hypocrites as we look through planks
and charge them with only caring about *some* black lives,
As if somehow it is better to care about none of them.
(How beautifully consistent.)

O Lord, was that too harsh?
Forgive me,
And make me quick to listen,
it’s so much easier to criticize,
to divide into tribes and lash out at others,
some with bullets,
some with angry words,
though you said that it was all the same,
and all of us are brothers, neighbours,
and all of us are all to blame,

O Lord, forgive us,
We know what not we do.

Helpers Against The Darkness

We strive for a holistic pro-life worldview, where women in difficult situations protect the precious lives inside them, yet not as something endured alone but with the full support those families need to thrive.

So we are very excited about the new Community Birth & Wellness Center being established in Ferguson to serve women in the North County area. Today we visited an open house and met several women – midwives, doulas, doctors, administrators – working to improve personal and natural care for pregnant mothers to better address infant mortality and other health concerns in the region. (Some areas of St. Louis, largely poor and African-American, have some of the highest infant mortality rates in the nation.)

It was most encouraging simply to see connections happening and overhear conversations about visions, plans, operations, ministries, resources, I’m involved with such-and-such, let me give you my number, you should really talk to so-and-so…

With all the recent global massacres, national shootings, and local violence dominating the headlines, I was reminded of that quote from Mr. Rogers:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

There are lots of bad things happening in the world. And there are lots of people sitting around blaming them on other groups of people with the wrong political views. But there are lots of helpers! Oh, so many helpers!

It also reminds me of that line from a mewithoutYou song:

I used to wonder where You are / These days I can’t find where You’re not

God is stirring so many people to use their gifts and talents and passions and resources to do things of eternal value. He connects people in beautiful ways to fulfill his purposes in the earth. There are lots of bad things, yes, but there are so many good things responding to them. They’re often harder to see, often don’t make as much news, so often built of quiet acts of service and sacrifice by humble souls in the night. Be encouraged, my friends. You are not alone. There are millions of lights fighting against the darkness. The darkness shall not overcome it.

I Still Believe In Reconciliation

I still believe in reconciliation.

That might sound like a fantasy to you depending on what sort of news you’ve been hearing around St. Louis in the days surrounding the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death.

Maybe you heard about the Ferguson protestors who roasted a pig labelled “Darren Wilson.” I pretty much hated everything about it. Conservative blogs like Brietbart and TheBlaze sure didn’t miss the opportunity to highlight it. I didn’t read the articles. I didn’t want to see a small number of black folks reveling in their hatred of police. I didn’t read the comments, either. I didn’t want to see a small number of white folks reveling in their hatred of black folks. I didn’t want to see everybody confirming their beliefs about the worst in each other. I still believe in reconciliation, but that wasn’t helping.

Maybe you heard about the protestors who blocked Interstate 70 for a little while. I didn’t really like much about that, either. I guess the protestors thought they were bravely generating empathy for black lives by creating a brief inconvenience to comfortable suburban drivers as an illustration of the deep inconvenience they feel all the time. I guess some of the people I saw reacting – commenting how this incident further cemented their determination to move farther away – didn’t quite get that memo. Whatever the most gracious interpretation of either was, reconciliation didn’t seem to be getting much closer.

But I still believe in it.

Partly it’s because my hope does not come from this world, but from the One who is “reconciling all things to himself,” who has given us “the ministry of reconciliation,” who teaches us to love our enemies, who says peacemakers are blessed, who wants his kingdom of righteousness and justice to come to earth as it is in heaven.

But partly it’s because I know it’s happening. Right now. In other cities.

I just read a long piece by Leighton Woodhouse about the improved relations between Watts residents and the LAPD.

The decline in violence in what were once the garrisons of L.A.’s most murderous gangs has been accompanied by a steep rise in public trust in the police officers that patrol the three communities…

Cops pulling up onto schoolyards near the three projects today are more likely there to tutor teenagers than to frisk them…

“My concept was, these cops would not be promoted based on how many arrests they made,” Rice said. … CSP officers’ performance is evaluated on how they avoid making arrests, as well as on what programs they develop to keep kids safe when walking to school through gang territory, or how many kids in their jurisdictions stay in school, or how much trust residents say they have in individual officers… These were not the cops people in the projects had known all too well for decades…

The byproduct has been an environment that people want to be a part of… “People feel like change is here,” said Rice. “And so they invest in it. They’ve been given the room to rise to the occasion.”

Commander Tingirides took me out in a black LAPD Dodge Charger on a drive through the projects. Most of the people we passed waved at Tingirides, or cocked their chins at him in salutation. “That would have never happened a while ago,” he told me.”

…I asked Tingirides whether the suppression-trained Metro cops looked down on CSP’s pacifist approach. “It doesn’t matter,” he told me. “That’s the direction the department is going in.” CSP’s crime reduction figures are so unmistakable that Beck has been able to say to the rest of the force, “Look what they’ve done in Southeast.”…

“We’re able to talk it out to where you’re not going to see this community blow up, or burn up stores. They believe in the system. They trust the system now.

Big reductions in crime. Big improvements in community trust of police. How did this happen? The police captain and community leaders got together and listened to each other’s grievances. There are a lot of details about why this happened, how it happened, how it continued, and what happened afterwards, but the core of the matter is so simple!

They listened to each other. They just listened! And they kept listening, and they began to understand each other and see how they could work together to change the neighborhood, and they got creative and got to work.

You know what didn’t happen? Every unemployed person in those projects didn’t suddenly get a good job. Every parent didn’t suddenly start “raising their kids right.” The school didn’t suddenly get as many dollars per student as the nicer ones. All the big-picture problems of poverty and education and everything else didn’t go away.

But you know what else? Solid police-community relations and falling crime sure clears the way for better progress on all of those big-pictures problems that remain.

I don’t believe this is a fluke. It’s the same sort of turnaround David Kennedy described in High Point, NC and in Over-The-Rhine in Cincinnati. It’s the same turnaround that I know is possible in St. Louis.

It almost sounds too easy, too wishy-washy feel-good hugs-and-kisses in-denial-of-dark-reality whatever. I might not believe it myself if it didn’t seem to work, if I didn’t keep reading about places that are doing it, places where kids now play on no-longer-dangerous streets, places where residents that used to hate police now call in helpful tips. It makes sense. It’s downright Biblical.

I don’t know how to make it happen. But I know that it can. And despite all the shouting and arguing and criticizing and victimizing and blaming and everything else, I think it’s what everybody really wants to see.

I still believe in reconciliation. Do you?

How To Save A Life On The Streets

I’m powering my way through Jill Leovy’s new book Ghettoside. It argues that the low clearance rate of inner-city homicides is a key factor in cycles of violence as rivalrous groups are incentivized to take retaliatory justice into their own hands. The book vividly portrays the deep pain the relentless killings bring to black families and communities, with a David-Kennedy-like nuance that both explains why people have dismissive opinions about things (for example, the alleged “anti-snitching” culture) and why those things are more understandable than they appear to outsiders. The book makes general observations through a specific riveting narrative about skilled LAPD homicide detectives who succeed at solving murder cases through their dogged determination to disrupt the unjust cycles that too often make it too cheap to end black lives.

I am coming to believe that reducing the murders of young black men is one of the most important causes for making St Louis a better place. Lives themselves are intrinsically priceless, and the unnecessary, irreversible loss makes murder a worse crime. Add the deep pain felt by all of the family and friends of the hundreds of victims, add the way community relations break down when police patrol violent neighborhoods with lots of searches and tickets that do little to stop the violence, add the way the fear of violence affects economic development across the whole city, add the way retaliatory justice feeds and augments all of these cycles, add how the cycles have gotten so big that ideologues use the statistics to justify prejudice and neglect… Street homicide is a linchpin in the city’s decay.

I feel like it’s easy to resign ourselves to the belief that inner-city violence is unsolvable. Too many factors of drugs and poverty and poor education and broken families and whatever else and all we can do is chip at all the edges. But I refuse to believe that. I don’t mean that murder can be eradicated anymore than any other sin. But the street homicides that specifically occur at high rates in inner cities, that terrorize communities, that cause anyone who finally gets any means to flee the neighborhood for their own safety and leave the remaining residents that much poorer – Things have not been this way forever, and they don’t have to always be this way.

At one point Leovy compares the inner-city homicide rate to the old Wild West. Were those gunslingers from an inherently more violent race? Did the West settle down because social workers reached enough at-risk outlaws? Or did it settle down because a formal law structure took away motives for personal vengeance? I’m wary of simplistic answers to complex issues, but Leovy makes a strong case that it’s at least a major factor. And, like Kennedy’s book, she proves by example that it’s something cities can directly influence if they would so choose.

In my opinion, the strongest evidence in favor is the fact that any pretext young black men have for shooting each other – disrespect, argument, revenge – would surely apply even more towards patrolling officers. Yet despite widespread resentment (which by the way is also solvable), officers are targeted at far, far lower rates. Kennedy claims that’s largely because gang members know they are far more likely to be tracked down and caught if they attack an officer than a brother they accidentally mistook for a rival gang member. Incentives affect everyone.

Homicide rates across America are down 50% from the 90’s peak, but there are still too many lives being lost, the vast majority of them on the street. We need to stop writing it off as gangbangers shooting each other and start seeing the full spectrum of lives and communities being ripped apart by the violence, and work to understand the things cities have done to make it worse and the things cities can do to make it better.

If you are interested in reducing homicides in our city, go read David Kennedy’s Don’t Shoot and then go read Jill Leovy’s Ghettoside, and then let’s get together and talk about it.

The Theology of Generosity To The Poor

I’m re-reading Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, and it’s reminding me of the details of the perspective I now have about Biblical theology regarding the poor. I thought it would be worth outlining this perspective for future reference.

In the Old Testament, why did God send the Israelites into exile?

For much of my life, I would have said something like, “Because they were worshipping idols instead of him.” Certainly that was a central issue. But I completely missed a major aspect. Maybe that’s what I was taught. Maybe it’s because the History books mention lots of idolatry, and I always found it harder to pay attention when I read through the Prophets. But numerous books have pointed out to me how the Prophets condemn Israel’s oppression and neglect of the poor about as much as they condemn their idolatry. Now when I read them I’m amazed how I missed the theme before – indeed, how central it is to the entire Bible.

In the Law, God commanded Israel to worship him and maintain various personal morals – think the famous Ten Commandments. But the Israelite’s duty to others was more than simply the lack of any harmful activity (like theft or murder). God placed a strong emphasis on caring for the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the foreigner in their land.

“Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor, in your land.” (Deut 15:11) Every three years a tenth of the harvest was to be given to needy demographics (Deut 14:28). Every seven years the land was to “lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat” what grew. Every fifty years, Jubilee was to return land to those who had sold it out of poverty.

The story of Ruth gives us a tiny glimpse of a very little of this in action. But as things go downhill, the History books mention a lot of idolatry and some of the personal moral failures. They don’t talk that much about how the poor were being treated.

For a well-rounded picture of that, we must include the Prophets. A few examples: Amos said the “transgressions of Israel” included “those who trample the head of the poor into the dust” (2:7). Isaiah declared “woe to those who… rob the poor of my people of their right” (10:1-2) Jeremiah condemned those “among my people” who “do not defend the rights of the needy.” (5:26-29) And it wasn’t just Israel that upset God by their treatment of the poor. Ezekiel stunningly claimed, “this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy”!

Why are we so good at remembering Sodom’s sexual transgressions and so good at ignoring their “sinful unconcern for the poor”? (Sider) Why did I need extra-Biblical books to show me what was in the same Bible I’d read several times? Is it really just because Ezekiel is a more boring book than Genesis? Or, as Sider says, “is it because the former is less upsetting” to our personal lifestyles?

The Prophets also looked hopefully to a future when these wrongs would be righted. Jesus is the total fulfillment of this. When he says “the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” it is not just to save us from our sins and improve our personal morality, it is also to empower us to promote God’s justice and righteousness on the earth – to bring Isaiah’s “good news to the poor” and “proclaim liberty to the captives.” The gospel of Luke is full of encouragement from Jesus to comprehensively consider the poor and needy (6:30, 12:33, 14:13, 16:19-25, 18:22, 19:8-9).

The early church seemed to embrace this wholeheartedly. Acts shows the Christian community sharing resources so completely that “there was not a needy person among them” (4:34) Paul writes a good deal to encourage generosity between churches to meet each other’s needs. (Gal 2:10, Rom 15:22-28, 1 Cor 16:1-4, 2 Cor 8-9) And just about every Christian book on poverty quotes the Roman emperor Julian’s perplexed observation that the Christians “feed not only their poor but ours also.”

So what do we have?

• God commanded Israel to care for the poor.
• God punished Israel when they failed to care for the poor.
• God’s prophets prophesied of a future where his people would care for the poor.
• Jesus came to bring the kingdom and fulfill those prophesies and urged his followers to care for the poor.
• Jesus’ followers did care for the poor, and it was instrumental to the growth of the early church.

From the Old to the New, through the Law and Prophets and Gospels, this idea fills the Bible. Proverbs says “He who is generous to the poor lends to the Lord.” (19:17) Jesus says if we feed the hungry, we are feeding him. (Matt 25:40) This is not itself the purpose of Christianity, but it runs through its core, and it is an inseparable aspect of the kingdom of God in the world.

I feel like it is common to reduce the “kingdom to God” to evangelism. Where there are large concentrations of poverty – especially when there is high crime and other troubles that come with it – we say “those people need Jesus” (as if none of them have him already), and if we don’t think we’re the ones called to evangelize Jesus to them then we think there is nothing Jesus wants us to do for them.

I now think such a view tragically misses the completeness of the gospel. I now see caring for the poor as an inherent part of the kingdom, whereby the infinite generosity of Jesus compels us to be generous to others (see also Matt 18:21-35). And because it is so inherent, it is no surprise when its proper application tends to be accompanied by the evangelistic (that is, soul-saving) aspects of the kingdom as well.

What does that proper application look like for any given individual? Does it mean moving to live with the poor, as an extension of the way Jesus left heaven to live with us? Does it mean selling all we have to give to the poor, as Jesus told one rich man to do? Does it mean inviting the poor to banquets, and feeding and clothing them? Teaching them to feed themselves? What about working to end their unequal treatment under the law? Should all assistance be voluntary, or is there a place for the government – and at what level? Does Jesus imply giving for the sake of giving, or should we focus on poverty alleviation? Do we reach out to the poor near us, or the poorest on the globe? Should we do things ourselves, or can we just support those who do?

People will have differing opinions on the theological details and the actions they imply. There are many different actions God calls his people to do. I think the latest editions of Rich Christians In An Age of Hunger and When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting The Poor… And Yourself (available at most libraries) are a great place to start. They thoroughly consider the theological case for helping the poor as well as humbly exploring what that looks like in today’s world.

Perhaps you disagree entirely. That’s fine. We’re still wrestling with what it all means for us. But I hope this helps you see how we see things, and maybe it will encourage you to wrestle a bit, too. To quote once more from Sider,

Living differently – doing all God wants us to do to change structural injustice – by no means involves trying to do everything. We each have our own unique gifts and calling… Everyone should prayerfully ask God what limited, specific things God wants him or her to concentrate on. Being called to do all God wants us to do to correct social sin is not a heavy burden. It is an invitation to joy and meaning in life, an occasion for blessing our neighbors, and a wondrous opportunity to be a coworker with the Lord of history.

Seeing What Others See

Last weekend I went on my first ride-along with a St. Louis County police officer. I did this because I wanted to gain a better perspective on policing to inform my growing sense of my calling towards reducing crime through restoring police-community relations.

I rode with an officer who seemed more than happy to have someone who wanted to hear his thoughts about a variety of topics as they related to his job. He had strong opinions about many things I have come to have, shall we say, a more nuanced view on, but I mostly listened and asked questions as we zipped back and forth between unincorporated and contracted parts of the precinct (in which I learned even more examples of the ridiculousness of our municipality setup). Yet even though the experience revealed many seemingly inflexible viewpoints, it increased my hope for reconciliation.

As I sat in the car during domestic disturbance calls from citizens in very broken situations, I gained a better understanding for the way my officer’s views were influenced and reinforced by the things that he sees. It makes sense for him to believe the things he believes about the causes and responsibilities of poverty and crime and other issues based on the things he experiences. Interestingly, there was one issue that he had some family-related experience with that gave him a more nuanced and deeper understanding about it than he might have had if he had only seen it from an officer’s side.

David Kennedy’s book taught me some things about why officers believe things they do based on things they see, and I accepted it in the abstract, but it was helpful to experience it first-hand, however briefly, at a more visceral level.

I believe the same principle applies in the other direction, although unfortunately – and this speaks to some of the asymmetries involved – there are no ride-along programs for Section 8 housing residents. The officer expressed some frustration with the choices and behaviors of some of the citizens he encountered. While it made sense for him to have these feelings based on what he saw, I believe the actions of those citizens also make sense based on what they see.

I don’t mean all views are equally valid in a postmodern kumbaya sort of way. I do mean that the more we see what others see, the more we can learn which parts of our views are wrong or incomplete and align them closer to the truth.

As I’ve explored a deeper understanding of urban poverty in books and conversations, it has fascinated me how conservatives and liberals apparently manage to see such different things. Conservatives often view poor, inner-city blacks as lazy ingrates who want to live off the government, and these views are often founded in selective yet legitimate experiences. On the other hand, I have read liberal writers gush about the exceeding intelligence, ambition, effort and resilience of many of the poor they have encountered, whom they see as limited by a comparative lack of networks, resources, and second chances.

It almost strikes me as comical. Without accounting for degrees of difference or the factors that influence choices over time, I accept that there are probably both “lazy” and “hard-working” poor. How do conservatives manage to see all the former while liberals manage to see all the latter? I honesty can’t explain it. I guess I still need to see more of what others see. I suspect it has something to do with how our pre-existing biases play into the projections we make about partial information or ambiguous situations, and the sorts of experiences we selectively remember or forget (to say nothing of the rumors we are more likely to believe).

Shane Claiborne has said that “our politics are often shaped by what we see out the window.” I believe the key to reconciliation is to recognize that other people have seen other things, and to try to see what they see to arrive at truth together.

The Rest of the Iceberg

A few days ago some St. Louis residents protested recent violence in the area. As far as I know, this event did not receive any media coverage. Like many other protests, rallies, marches, vigils, prayer meetings, forums, and other meetings, these events tend to be small and localized, but they happen all the time.

If we don’t know anyone who lives in the “inner city” or spend time with anyone who does, we will not have an accurate impression of what it’s like to live there. We may get our impressions from the tip of the iceberg that makes it on the news.

But news has an “action bias.” If no one gets hurt and nothing gets destroyed, sometimes the media doesn’t know anything happened, and even if they did they might not care because millions of people wouldn’t tune in to watch it.

So if we only see the tip of the iceberg, we won’t understand it, and we will ask questions that don’t make sense.

Where is the outrage about black-on-black crime?

It’s under the surface. It’s in the rest of the iceberg.

Hmm. Ok. But why does it look so different?

That’s a slightly better question. Keep looking under the surface. The more you see, the more you’ll understand, the better questions you’ll ask.

The same principle applies to police. You will not understand the action-bias tip of the iceberg if that’s all you see.

How do you find the rest of the iceberg? There is no substitute for real experience, though that takes time and can be hard to come by. I’m working on getting more experience, but in the meantime, I’m trying to listen to voices who already have it.

I’ve found it helpful to follow @AntonioFrench on Twitter. The St. Louis city alderman expresses concern about violence from police and citizens alike. Though he is a Democrat, and I lean conservatively in many ways, I acknowledge his genuine interest in the well-being of his constituents, and I enjoy the way his feed frequently exposes me to good perspectives I otherwise would not see. It’s a peak at the rest of the iceberg.

On the police side, I recently found the subreddit ProtectAndServe. The posting officers have zero tolerance for inflammatory remarks, but they are much more open to reasonable dialogue and discussion than other more extreme corners of LEO’s on the WWW. Just browsing a few threads has increased my appreciation for some of the many – uh – micro-aggressions of the profession. The top thread early yesterday featured officers expressing frustration about white residents who call in “suspicious activity” that ends up being black folks literally doing completely normal things. It’s another peak at the rest of another iceberg.

Of course, it’s really a sea of icebergs full of a variety of experiences and perspectives, all representing different aspects of the truth. The more we venture beyond our own pieces, the closer we’ll get to the reconciliation we all need.

Redemption in East St. Louis

I love visiting the Christian Activity Center, as we did yesterday for the second time. It requires intentionally driving into East St. Louis, which feels like an act of defiance against the powers of fear and brokenness. It feels like an act of restitution for the times I’ve joked about the city as a place you never want to go. Such humor comes at the cost of reinforcing the empty expectations our region has for it, and it’s a disservice to the thousands of real human beings struggling there.

(Maybe it’s prideful and self-serving to make such a deal out of a simple geographical act; besides, America is so safe, and its violence so personally connected, that even the most dangerous places present very little risk to privileged daytime visitors. But fear is real, and so is defeating it.)

It was great to again see what the facility is doing to comprehensively meet the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs of hundreds of children who otherwise would have little chance of success. It was also great to finally meet Chet, the director, and learn about his vision for the city.

They have recently purchased a four-block section that they hope to turn into a safe, outdoor community space with sports fields and gardens and more. They’ve already secured donation pledges for many of the larger pieces and are looking for additional support to complete it.

The story of the land’s acquisition offers interesting musings on capitalism’s effects on poor, neglected areas. One of the barriers to growth and development in East St. Louis (according to Chet) is that all the land is tied up in ownership by gobs of people that don’t live there but are holding onto random slivers in speculation that somebody else’s investment might turn the area around and increase its worth. Yet none of the individuals are taking steps themselves to invest in that change, and their distance and isolation makes it harder for anyone else who wants to do so. Meanwhile, they’re all paying ridiculously high property taxes (since there’s nothing else in the city to tax) to hold on to this privilege of potential future earnings that they are essentially collectively preventing. It borders on absurdity.

Chet had to buy the four blocks from 70 different landowners across the country, convincing each that the status quo was not benefiting them anyway. He had to use a machete to clear the growth in the neglected plots and discovered a house hidden in the thicket that for decades no one had even known existed!

Chet and the Christian Activity Center has already turned 6th Avenue from a prostitution ring to a playground. It’s hard not to hope for the success of their vision for 7th and 8th.

You can donate to the Christian Activity Center here.

Prayers From Last Night’s Violence

Two police officers were shot in Ferguson last night (both reportedly expected to live). This follows a University City officer who was shot last November. Lord, protect our officers from bullets and hatred. Give them the wisdom, understanding, and courage to administer justice while healing relationships with our communities.

A five-year-old was fatally shot in north St. Louis last night. This follows two-year-olds shot last week and last October. Lord, protect our children from the crossfire of forces beyond their understanding or control. Bless and guide those working to bring peace.

Give us the strength not to give up on our city. Increase our compassion for those we do not understand. Bring what is hidden into the light that the truth may set us free. Let your kingdom come, let your will be done. Revive us, O Lord!