The Road to Here

I don't know if your team won tonight or not, but the Soul Bowl - I mean the Super Bowl - is over. It's been called the Soul Bowl by some because there was finally a black head coach on the sidelines of the Super Bowl. Not just one, but two. Tony Dungy coached the Indianapolis Colts (the winners BTW) and Lovie Smith coached the Chicago Bears. It was historic for those reasons and several commercials even made note of it.

During the game, several of us were talking about this particular situation. The subject of Doug Williams came up. Williams was the starting quarterback for the Washington Redskins. In 1988 he became the first black quarterback to win the Super Bowl. I shared my particular memories of that event as a white person. I was a college sophomore and I remember thinking it was no big deal. Williams was a great player and he deserved to win and to be awarded the MVP trophy. I also remember how important it was for my roommate and other suitemates, all of whom were young black men. It was a memorable event for many different reasons.

Nineteen years ago, I was just young enough to have missed the struggles that many of our brothers and sisters of color endured. I did not know of a time when an otherwise gifted person was denied a position solely based on skin color. College sophomores today of all colors struggle to know what the big deal is about the Soul Bowl because for a majority of them, the struggle for civil rights is history. And I think that is mostly a good thing though we cannot forget how we got Here.

I have been part of several online and offline discussions lately about matters of Christian theology, faith journeys, and the stance on particular issues by particular churches. There are some changes that need to be made because we are now Here, not Back There. However, some of these changes and the supporters of these changes almost appear to want to demolish the road behind them. They want to forget how we got to where we are.

Faith in general is like that. So much of what we believe and say about our faith journey is the product of 2000 years of Christian history, thinking, and sharing. Before that you have another 2500+ years of Jewish history, thinking, and sharing. The things we believe as Christians were not all formulated during a two week retreat and then posted for the world to see. They took years to develop. Most of us have no idea that for 300 to 400 years, there were constant debates about who Jesus really was and how he worked, etc. Some things got Here a long time ago and so we forget the development of those ideas. We then neglect to give ourselves to develop some of these ideas or fine tune some of what we believe today.

Faith really is a journey. Wherever you are on your journey, celebrate the Here where you are without forgetting the There where you used to be. Look forward to the place you will be in the future. Yet rejoice that you might be able to forget that you weren't always like this. Just a though.