“One: Unity in a Divided World” by Deidra Riggs

I am Facebook friends with a considerable number of Christian writers and poets. Many of these friends I have met face to face, talked with, had deep conversations about serious issues with, worshipped with, and prayed with, together and in a larger group. Over time, as relationships grow and develop, you believe you know people, or know them better.

Then came the presidential election of 2016. I discovered that, for many of these friends, I didn’t really know them at all. Ferocious anger, rage, hatred, outbursts, disdain, and even sarcastic snark poured out all over my Facebook newsfeed. One friend, a minister, said on Facebook that you couldn’t be a Christian and have voted for Donald Trump.

It turns out I didn’t really know my Facebook friends after all. It was disheartening and discouraging.

It is this response to the election that kept recurring as I read One: Unity in a Divided World by Deidra Riggs. Riggs also feels and grieves the division and divisiveness in the church, but she’s experiencing it from a different vantage point. But she always has good, important things to say, and I knew I would learn from reading her new book. And I did.

In One, Riggs is talking to and with the church. Using both Scripture and personal anecdotes, she addresses the deep divisions, the lashing out at each other, the intense political arguments – all that stuff on my Facebook newsfeed. What she says is that we are supposed to be known by our love – not by wearing “Make American Great Again” baseball caps or how many “#Resist Trump” groups we join. Sadly, that is not what’s been happening.

“Our identity is who God sees when he looks at us,” she writes, “and God is not a politician.”

What are the things that divide us? Attitude. Perception. Race. Income. How we understand evil and injustice. Fear. Politics (always politics). Culture. History. We put God into boxes of our own making, without realizing that God is always bigger than those boxes. Far bigger.

Deidra Riggs

Of all the divisions that exist between Christians, race is likely the most stubbornly resistant, and by a wide margin. We still worship largely as white churches and black churches, Riggs says, and the situation hasn’t changed much in the last 50 years. There’s a lot of history to be overcome. That division is a loss to all of us. We are all made in God’s image, she points out, and God doesn’t make mistakes.

Riggs devotes a chapter to discussing the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, a black teenager shot by a white policeman. Two competing narratives emerged out of that death, one considering Michael Brown as victim and one considering Brown as thug. Riggs went to Ferguson in the days after the shooting, and was profoundly affected by what she found there.

I expected to be challenged and jarred when I read One. And I was. She quotes groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center that raise my hackles. But perhaps that is the point – perhaps some issues require groups to be out on the edge to gain attention and for the issue to be taken seriously. Sometimes you need people in your face to understand that there really is a problem here.

Riggs is a writer and speaker. She's previously published  Every Little Thing: Making a World of Difference Right Where You Are. She's spoken at Tedx conferences and women's retreats, and is the founder and host of the One Conference. She and her family live in Lincoln, Nebraska.

One is well worth reading and digesting. It provides insights into some of the thorniest problems faced by the American church. It points to possible solutions. You don’t have to agree with everything it says, and you probably won't. But you will see the value it offers. Deidra Riggs and I might disagree in a number of areas, but we have the important ones – and the important one – in common. And she is well worth listening to.

Related:

My review of Every Little Thing.

The web page for One: Unity in a Divided World.

Top photograph by James Maxon via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

“Every Little Thing” by Deidra Riggs

We live in an age of brittle celebrity. You can become famous for, well, being famous. Some of the most popular shows on television are aimed at catapulting unknowns into stardom, and while these shows may be about the people we see on the stage, we know it’s really about us. You don’t publish a book, a play or a song without a pre-existing platform, and in the circular reasoning of book publishing, you gain a platform by first being famous. And what is the evolution of prayer books and rosary beads to smart phones if nothing else but a search for personal meaning? We have all become journalists and photographers and our subjects are ourselves.

The Christian community is marginally in a better place but not immune, although one could argue we should be. Mega-church pastors become Christian celebrities; some Christian authors sell books simply by putting their names on the covers. And we buy and consume according to Christian fads, trends and what’s hot at the moment, much like our secular cohorts do. And perhaps we wonder if only Christian celebrities are the ones who can accomplish the big things for God.

And then comes along a book, a small book, a book about the small things, the little things, the small steps, the people whose names will never be plastered across a mega-church marquee, a book that says what we Christians know to be true: it’s not about who you are, or how big your following, or how big your platform, or how recognizable your name is in George Barna’s polls. It’s about your willingness to serve right where you are, because God doesn’t care how famous you are.

“Most of us will make a difference in this world,” writes Deidra Riggs in Every Little Thing: Making a World of Difference Right Where You Are, “but not because of some grand or large-scale initiative. No, most of us will change our corner of the world and make an impact that stands the test of time through the small and seemingly insignificant (to us) interactions and decisions and conversations of our average days. We make a difference where we live, and incrementally, that place begins to shift (emphasis added).”

Deidra Riggs

The lady knows of what she speaks. She writes from life experiences – jumping from an airplane, the chopping down of a beloved cherry tree, fear of the water (as in ocean), moving from a comfortable Philadelphia suburb to what looks like the end of the earth (flyover country, aka Nebraska), a baby daughter rushed to the hospital. She ties each life experience to Scripture, and she does it in a conversational way, a real way, like you’re sitting with her at the kitchen table and she is telling you her story and it turns out to be your story at the same time.

Riggs is a writer and editor, and she’s also the wife of a pastor. That move to Nebraska? Her husband accepted a position at a church in Lincoln. Initially, things didn’t go well, whether it was the mice in the pantry or parishioners leaving the church with no explanation. She will tell you, and she does: she was miserable, and kept questioning herself, her husband, and God. Seven years passed before she reached the point she did when riding her bike one day: “This is good.” And she could see what God had seen – the difference she and her husband would be making.

Every Little Thing is more than a good book. It’s something that even many Christian books aren’t: it is a true book. It is the experience and wisdom of one woman speaking our common language of the heart, our common language of faith.

Photograph by Lode Van de Velde via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads: #HelpOneHaiti

In September, a group calling itself the #HelpOneHaiti team traveled to Haiti on a short-term mission trip. I know three of the 10 members of the team – Dan King, the head #fistbump of Bibledude.net; Deidra Riggs of Jumping Tandem; and Duane Scott of Scribing the Journey. They experienced a transformative visit, and returned to the United States with a vision.

And they returned with an idea.

They’re going to build a school.

Rather than me tell you their story, I’m devoting today’s post of Saturday Good reads to them – and let them tell the story in their own words.

Dan King gives an overview of the project at Bibledude.net.

Deidra Riggs didn’t want to return with a story about hopelessness, and she didn’t.

Duane Scott provides a lot of details (and photos).

So take a look at what they have to say.

Warning: it’s contagious.

The Faux Pas That's Now a Family Legend

In the time B.K. (before kids), my wife and I lived and worked in Houston. I was at Shell Oil, and she worked at the Houston Chronicle in the department that wrote and produced the travel sections and special editorial and advertising sections.

Her department had five or six people, including her boss. One of her co-workers, whom we’ll call Mollie to protect the identity of the innocent, had gone to college with us at LSU. And Mollie said she would be late one morning, because she had to first take her beloved but old and ailing dog to the vet to have him put to sleep.

My wife knew the people she worked with had a tendency to the cruel and cretinous. She could imagine what jokes they were going to come up with. And so that morning, before Mollie arrived, she put the fear into them. Don’t you dare make light of this, she warned. Don’t you dare make a joke about it. This is really upsetting, she loves this dog, so back off and give her some silence. Even back then, she was known for “the look” – which I had been the squirming target of many times, and our sons would be even more – the look from Mom that says don’t even think about it.

Her co-workers got the look. They promised to behave.

Later that day, my wife and Mollie would be going to get their pictures taken for passports, needed to do many of the travel stories they were being assigned. So they both planned to be a little more dressed up than usual (this was back in the days when people dressed like they were going to work in an office, because they were).

The department was working, when in walked a somber Mollie, quiet after bringing her dog to the vet and dressed for her photograph.

My wife, my poor wife who wanted to be encouraging and sympathetic, who had warned the cretins within an inch of their lives, decided to say something nice about Millie’s clothes.

“Mollie! You look dressed to kill!”

The words were out before my wife realized what she had said. There was a moment of silence. No one said a word; everyone focused on the typewriters in front of them. My wife thought she might have dodged the supreme embarrassment bullet, that everyone had missed the gigantic faux pas she had just committed – the very one she had warned the others against.

And then she saw shoulders shaking, as people tried to stifle themselves. She saw people shaking. And then it couldn’t be contained, as a huge wave of laughter erupted.

When she told me later what had happened, I tried to be sympathetic. But I was laughing too hard.

I got the look.

Two of my High Calling colleagues, Sam Van Eman at New Breed of Advertisers and Deidra Riggs at Jumping Tandem, are hosting a feature on laughter, Like Therapy Only Cheaper. To see the stories told by others, please visit Jumping Tandem for the links.