I admit this shows a bit of vanity. When Seminary life went online, we all began doing classes and meetings from home or office. I spent some time, not a lot but some time arranging and rearranging my background to make it look interesting. My background is the credenza in my office, on it and the wall behind is carefully arranged memorabilia. “Oh Dale, what an interesting life!”
“Does This Bookcase Make Me Look Smart?” in yesterday’s New York Times said a bookcase background would make me look more authoritative. Amanda Hess tells about two Twitter accounts. One is “Bookcase Credibility.” “Its tagline is ‘What you say is not as important as the bookcase behind you,’” and “Room Rater assesses lighting, angles, tidiness and accessorizing and then assigns a score out of 10. (David Frum could use a ‘plant to soften the space’: 7)” (May 4; C 1, 4). I guess this posturing is innocent but it reminds me of “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matthew 7:1).
It’s the person, not the carefully curated background that counts. How many backgrounds are we seeing from deep within the city, from rural poverty, from children not learning online, from first generation ethnic communities, from people who’ve lost their jobs and haven’t gotten their stimulus check? The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the inequalities in our society. Dale has the luxury of arranging his memorabilia. Others we don’t see can barely make it. A haunting question: Does the church have a heart for the backgrounds we don’t see?
What background would Jesus have chosen if His ministry had to go online? This isn’t totally hypothetical; we do know a background Jesus was often in. “While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ On hearing this, Jesus said to them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:15-17). I’m going to keep that passage in mind when I see people’s backgrounds.
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