Protest, Pandemic, and Perspective (Part 3): Choices and Their Consequences

Two young women holding protest signs on the back of a Toyota Tacoma (I liked them instantly) on Saturday (click to enlarge)

My Dad still reminds me from time to time that a life isn’t defined by a single decision no matter how big that decision is. He says it’s defined by the little choices we make; the ones we’re asked to make repeatedly, day after day. These little decisions, they stack up. You make enough of them in certain ways and it defines your character. Are you going to be a person of integrity or of selfishness? Are you going to care for others or more about yourself? Are you going to try to make the world around you better for you or better for everyone? Huge questions that are answered by how we answer the small questions. Are you going to return that $5 bill you saw someone drop? Are you going to be nice to the clerk in the store who’s moving slowly but looks like they’ve had a hard day? Are you going to stick up for the kid being picked on by all your friends or are you going to pick on him too? If you did something wrong whether you knew it to be wrong at the time, will you take responsibility? Even if you don’t have to? Even if you can get away with it by not? These are the decisions that define a lifetime.

I saw many signs from many ethnicities and faith showing support and solidarity with each other. Here two young Muslim women encourage the crowd Saturday afternoon. (click to enlarge)

One of the things I’ve learned throughout being a pastor is that usually no decision I make - whether its something small in worship or a big decision about the direction and vision of our congregation - no decision I make is going to please everyone. Someone is always going to be mad. Don’t believe me? Sometimes my beard length is a controversial discussion. Some pastors find this paralyzing. We love our people. We want them to love us too. Even the ones we don’t like. (Yes pastors have people in their congregations they don’t like. Jesus tells us to love everyone. He doesn’t say we have to like them.) We want to be accepted and we want to be universally liked. It used to paralyze me too. I didn’t want to rock the boat. I just can’t help it. I blame my Dad for making me like this. I follow my convictions. If I think something is the right thing to do, I’ll do it because it’s the right thing and face the consequences later.. But what I found is that I couldn’t be universally liked and also do what I knew in my heart to be right. I came to a conclusion, though. If no matter what I decided or what I did someone would be mad, then it didn’t matter. I could just do what I felt was the right thing to do. I didn’t have to worry about IF it would make someone mad. I knew it most likely would upset someone. Making everyone universally happy with me and my decisions just wasn’t and isn’t on the table.

I’m bringing this up because when I pulled out of the driveway Saturday morning, I had no idea what I was actually going to do. I knew I needed to go to the church and record the announcements for worship and get that done. I knew that I had to eventually make it to Chicago by Wednesday morning at the latest to get my clothes and cameras out of the hotel room. I knew that sometimes there’s talk and sometimes there’s action and I don’t believe a minister can be effective if the only ministry s/he is doing is in the confines of the church whether that mean the building or the community. I knew if I went to Chicago and there were protests or riots or both that there would be people in my congregation who would be more than upset and decry my bringing politics into the pulpit or that my actions were reflecting the church and people would think my stance is the church’s stance and therefore their stance.

Those people aren’t entirely wrong. It may be a small public, but I’m a public figure just by the nature of my vocation. It’s one of the hardest things for me about being a pastor I am unapologetically who I am. I make a lot of mistakes and try to own them but I can’t help but be myself. I’m not good at trying to pretend I’m someone I’m just not. I’m goofy and weird and embarrassing at times. I like encountering and wrestling with ideas and opinions and rarely take the critique of ideas personally where sometimes people do. If you say someone’s idea is stupid and wrong, even if you show why, they can still think you mean that they are stupid and wrong; not just their idea. I love my tattoos and getting beat up on the jiu jitsu mats. I’m not what you think of when you close your eyes and try to picture someone named “Quincy Worthington” who’s a Presbyterian minister. What I’m getting at is that I realize that my congregation already puts up with enough just by having me as their pastor. So, I try really hard to pick my fights. Find the important ones, let go of the small ones. I don’t post politics on social media too much. I don’t endorse candidates or put signs on my car or in my yard. This year we had two church members, one a Democrat and one a Republican, running against each other for the town board. I love both of them to death and was mad they put me in the situation of privately having to choose. So, I totally understand why members of my church get frustrated with me when I am highly visibly posting or engaging in things that can be controversial even if I don’t feel that it’s all that controversial for a minister to stand on one side or another of any particular issue. But I also come from the same tradition as Karl Barth who decried that every preacher should preach with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

I finished recording the announcements, took a deep breath, stood in the sanctuary, and this verse from Genesis 4 that’s been ringing in my head for a week came to the forefront, “The Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”

Cain said, “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s guardian?”

The Lord said, “What did you do? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.”

A woman’s sign expressing her frustration Saturday afternoon (click to enlarge)

It’s that last part… That indictment: “What did you do? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.” It’s the little decisions that form your character; not the big ones. It’s the decision to get in the car and go knowing that there may be a cost but going anyways because you think it’s the right thing to do. It’s these decisions to go to the need of a distressed brother or sister - whether they’re a protestor, rioter, or police officer - because you feel the calling of Jesus to go instead of staying home where you’re comfortable and safe, where you sometimes suffer the tears of a fearful daughter for her father because you want the world to be in a way where she doesn’t have to make the tough choice of trying to be an agent of God’s peace in a world thrown into chaos. I believe in my heart that’s what it means and looks like to pick up your cross and follow Him. So, I decided to risk it and go to Chicago Saturday as I pulled out my clergy shirt from my office closet because I heard a story about another little girl with the last name of Floyd and her daddy wasn’t coming home and if chaos broke out when I was there, if the world caught on fire in Chicago that evening and I was there… If I could keep somebody safe, if I could be the voice of cooler heads prevailing, if I could be a presence of peace, of ministry, of help, if I could maybe make some sort of positive difference at all, then didn’t I need to go? I decided to go back into Chicago Saturday understanding there may be a very real risk to my safety and my reputation because I couldn’t get that voice out of my head: “The Voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.”

The whole ride up there I thought who was I kidding? I’m going to get up there and maybe there will be a march and that will be it. It’s dead in the city. No one is there. The highway was open, there weren’t many cars out, no congestion or busloads of people heading into the city. I was going to get to my room, relax the rest of the day and then call Beverly and convince her to come up Sunday so we could at least have a day together just her and I. The moment I got into the city itself, I started to suspect that it wasn’t going to be a quiet afternoon. I was heading through the financial district to get to my hotel when a “gang” of bicyclists blocked the intersection traffic for a parade of honking cars with protest signs driving through. “Hey,” I thought, “How smart is that? They organized bicyclers to help with traffic and keep people safe and are physically distancing by making it a protest drive!” I was kind of excited to take pictures of this parade. It was fun! Even the people who were being blocked by the bikes seemed to understand and from what I could see, they were smiling.

Some bikers helping with traffic and protesting Saturday afternoon (click to enlarge)

I got to the hotel, parked the car, got up to my room, changed into my clergy shirt (when I was 18, we called tattoos “nerd armor” because only tough guys had them. So people messed with you less. Now that everyone has matching tattoos with their mother, my clergy shirt is my nerd armor. People are less likely to punch you if you’re wearing one <- notice I said LESS. I choose words carefully!), and grabbed my camera stuff. I set out to find the fun car protest. I didn’t find it. Instead I found myself turning a corner and running into a full-blown protest.

A bus that was spray painted and people climbed on Saturday afternoon. The driver was still inside. (click to enlarge)

Now when I say protest, I mean protest. I’ll use the word riot freely later but in my mind and in what I saw there are distinct differences between protest and riot. Protests aren’t necessarily peaceful just by their nature. There’s rarely anything peaceful about demanding change. There’s nothing peaceful about confronting systematic racism or facing down dehumanization. The protests I’ve been a part of have all stared down power in the face and that creates conflict, not peace… However, I believe in my heart that protests are non-violent. I believe protests exist to make a point. They have a higher goal and purpose. Riots exist to make chaos and that’s usually the only goal and purpose of a riot - destruction and chaos.

I couldn’t hear what was said but the two men pointing at each other started cracking up right after this photo was taken on Saturday… (Click to enlarge)

Let’s just get this out of the way now. I saw people spray paint a bus, a police vehicle, and several buildings. I saw a few water bottles flying through the air. I saw people trying to turn a vehicle over for about 10 minutes unsuccessfully. I smelled a whole lot of pot smoke in the air which is still illegal to smoke in public in Illinois. Are those actions antithetical to a protest and more inline with a riot? Well… Maybe not the last one but yes. But that’s the worst I saw. It was really just a few kids spray-painting and when they saw me in my clergy shirt with a camera, they quickly stopped and ran away giggling. They were kids doing stupid kid things. They weren’t organized extreme leftist or terrorists. To be perfectly honest, a vast majority of the time, I don’t think anybody even knew where we were walking. We were just walking following other people, allowing the police to kind of corral and and guide us where we could go and couldn’t.

“Oh crap! Here comes the minister!” (click to enlarge)

Some people yelled some pretty awful things at the police officers who stood stoically. Some people would talk with them and most of the police would engage in a conversation. Even though they were in riot gear, I never personally felt threatened by them. They seemed to just be there. I couldn’t figure out any rhyme or reason to why they chose to block of certain strips of road or certain blocks. But they were just there. I can’t say I had a sense of mutual respect between protestor and police officer. It’s kind of hard when NWA’s “F*ck the Police” is blaring half the time to say it was respectful. But I had the sense Saturday during the day that both protester and police had the understanding that the other one was there to do a job, and they were going to do it. The protestors were going to protest. The police were going to make sure it didn’t “get out of hand.” Almost everybody understood the roles each were playing.

After a few hours of walking and taking pictures with a mask on, trying to stay to the outside to avoid as much human contact as possible and draining an entire small bottle of hand sanitizer that fit in my pocket, I headed back to the hotel to recharge both the batteries and myself. I got some dinner, checked in with my family, and took a quick nap thinking that if that’s really what the protest was or is, then it really wasn’t going to be that bad. I set the alarm on my phone for an hour or two feeling my eyes get heavy, I started to drift a little bit, and as I closed my eyes for that brief hour I had no idea that when I opened them both the city and my perspective would be vastly different than when I closed them….