Velocity
Velocity: 15 November 2020
Ever heard of Khan Academy?
It’s a nonprofit with the mission “to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.” The online platform has videos and lessons covering content K-12 and early college and has recently been working with the College Board to offer free SAT preparation classes.
After listening to Sal Khan on the How I Made This podcast, I Googled it and clicked the first link that came up, an eight-minute Physics lesson on the difference between vectors and scalars. I was impressed. It was clear, easy to understand, and if I didn’t understand a part, I could rewind a bit and listen again. But it was the last minute or so that hooked me when Khan made a distinction between velocity and speed. Speed is a measurement of distance/time and can be calculated from the scalar. Velocity is also a measurement of distance/time, but the difference is that, consistent with the vector, velocity includes the element of direction.
An example of speed is 65 miles an hour. Velocity, on the other hand, is 65 miles an hour north. Or to the right. Or from Greenville to Montreat.
Learning How to See, produced by the Center for Action and Contemplation, is another podcast I’ve been enjoying. Brian McLaren, Richard Rohr and Jacqui Lewis discuss how everyone struggles to see clearly because of the biases we each carry. Biases are like lenses through which we view any situation and most of our biases are acquired without our intention or consent. That makes them hard to notice, because they feel ‘normal’, and harder still to address because change is uncomfortable.
Naming the biases (Mr. McLaren describes 13) gives me a way to understand the polarization, fear, and intensity of our present moment. As someone who, in my personal life and as a through-line in my blogging, advocates for the primacy of Love, respectful dialogue, and inclusion as both the path and the destination of our shared humanity, the litany of biases feels like the Rosetta Stone.
How might these two podcasts relate to our current American state of affairs?
Consider Complexity Bias: the human brain prefers a simple lie to a complex truth. Right? It just explains so much!
Part of the difficulty is who is telling us the lie or the truth. If it’s a trusted person or political party or preacher, then it’s very hard for us to disagree—especially if the statement (or accusation) is something we already believe. Which made all the election messaging so much worse. For example, it’s just not wise to accept a Democratic candidate’s explanation of what the Republican candidate’s platform is; or vice-versa. But nuance is so much harder. In our sound-byte, small attention-span, pandemic-blur culture, it’s a race to the bottom with messaging. (For an example of Republicans defining Demicrats, look at this vote wisely meme.)
We stick to our safe groups and don’t question the message or the messenger. Who is our most trusted messenger? A few years ago I saw this bumper sticker on a car coming out of a church parking lot: Do you follow Jesus this close?
No. I don’t think we do.
How about this bumper sticker: Closer you get…slower I go.
This is a fair summary of our American situation. The focus is on speed, not the direction of Jesus, which is to say, Love.
In our political parties or echo chamber affiliations, everything feels under siege and precarious and our leaders pander to our fear with a gospel of scarcity. And so the closer you get to me and to changing what is working for me, the slower I will go to keep you from getting what you want. In Congress that looks like gridlock. Or purposefully slowing down President-Elect Biden’s transition team while privately acknowledging the legal outcome of the election. In church that looks like changing the conversation to individual sin (eg. sex!) whenever our corporate morality (eg. racial inequality) is called into question.
We just don’t like to dwell in the uncomfortable truth and messiness of life. We want to skip to the next thing, read the next Facebook post, scroll for the latest tweet, binge-watch The Great British Baking Show, start the new backyard project, obsess over TikTok. We are all about speed. We like to say how far we’ve traveled.
How can we interject Love? Here’s Richard Rohr’s take: “When we live out of the truth of love, instead of the lie and human emotion of fear, we will at last begin to live.”
If I am living in the spaciousness of Love, then I have room for your feelings/policy opinions/worship preferences/etc. and we have room to disagree—respectfully—about how to move forward (direction) together.
As Christians we should help focus people on the direction we’re going. Are we moving toward or away from Love? Toward or away from the Sermon on the Mount? Toward or away from the lessons of the parables? Toward or away from the non-violent teachings of our crucified-for-us (without resistance) lord and savior?
It’s really hard for empirical, capitalist Americans to follow a poor, pacifist, includer-in-chief savior. We would much, much, much rather deify and worship him, even though the only thing Jesus ever asked of us was to follow him.
“Go and do likewise.” That is the vector of the gospel message.
Here are some scalar values of our culture: Wealth, pleasure, knowledge, commerce, science, worship, politics. They have a magnitude (size) and they tell us the distance we’ve gone in the world—we’ve moved this brick from A to B. With another measurement, time, they can tell us our speed: how fast we went from A to B. He made his first million by the time he was 30. She was the youngest biologist ever to receive this award.
Our society is too enamored of speed. It is a bias fed by social media and celebrity culture. In fact, social media and celebrity culture are too often the engines propelling these scalar values (speed) into vector values (velocity). They propel us in a direction—and usually that direction is away from discernment, or nuance, or complexity.
Mahatma Ghandi famously outlined seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle.
Any of that feeling particularly relevant these days?
I think the work of the Church is to propel people in a direction of Love. Love, in a political sphere, might be called: diplomacy.
How did Jesus put it?
“You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take you coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:38-44)
I didn’t see a lot of that in the election mailings. I don’t see a lot of those images on Facebook or TikTok.
Consider this statement from journalist Sydney J. Harris (1916-1986). I’m breaking it into sections so that you’ll not gloss over the complexity. He’s talking about countries, but substitute political parties, or religions for more nuance.
“Patriotism is proud of a country's virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues.
The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country's virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, the greatest,
but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.”
Only goodness is.
Or, as Jesus might say, don’t worship me. Follow me. Go and do likewise.
Here is my challenge for all people of good will. Propel the world toward Love. I’ve come to think of it as our Velocity Challenge.
Velocity = conviction + the direction of Love.
