Tom Burkhardt
  • Home
  • Photos
  • Video
  • Blog
  • News
  • Contact

My Problem With the Truth

9/22/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture

So this post is about me listing everything I’ve ever done wrong and divulging all of my secrets…..just kidding, that would take far too long and I’m sure nobody wants to hear that.  So already only one sentence into a story about the truth I told a big fat lie.  Going forward from here I’ll do my best to as the kids say, keep it real.

“The truth will set you free” is an often used phrase that I’ve really been struggling with lately. The problem I have with it is that those words aren’t always applicable and are in fact sometimes completely opposite of what is perceived as being true.

 Many people recognize the quote from the Bible when Jesus said in John 8:31-32 “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  In the Bible Jesus is referring to himself  as the capital T "Truth".  Something I agree with, but won't be talking about much in this post because I'm talking about the ever important "truth" as used in. "tell the truth."The phrase has also more often been used in variations outside the context of a strictly Christian application.  Just a few real examples are a commercial campaign for STD testing, a Facebook page about extraterrestrials and paranormal conspiracies, and a bunch of movies, probably most notably in Liar Liar. So it’s definitely fair to say that the phrase is open to interpretation primarily depending on the context in which it’s used.

I’m going to talk about it as it relates to matters of the heart, and in the way that’s been keeping my brain from shutting off even when I’m trying to relax. That happens to be supes annoying as I rank relaxing high in my priorities list. In case you’re about to tune out because you think I’m going to preach…don’t.  I’m just a guy working through some stuff that I think you might relate to and will hopefully be helpful.

I’ve been watching the news a lot lately and the sheer volume of heartbreaking stories is, well heartbreaking. There is a constant stream of reports on violence, refugees, poverty, disease, war and dark predictions of increases in all of those areas. The news actually finds a way to double it all up by not only showing the stories, but also scrolling equally bad stories along the bottom so you don’t miss one single awful thing. When I’m watching television, to get my mind off of it I’ll switch the channel to some sort of escape like sports, people buying things out of a rigged storage locker, rich people/celebrities judging other people who are neither of those things, or happy people flipping houses in exotic locations. If I’m on the internet I might click off of CNN and on to a video of a pig snuggling with a kitten or a tiny hedgehog getting belly rubs.  Not that there’s anything wrong with videos of any adorable animal, but my point is I’m trying to escape. I’ve tried to switch the gears in my mind a lot of directions so I’m not constantly focused on the things in the world that I’m not sure how to make better. I don’t like a lot of what’s true about the world right now. There are a lot of things that are dark, depressing, desperate, scary, and a great number of other adjectives that can’t be exactly described as freeing. In these cases the truth hasn’t set me free, instead it leaves me feeling convicted. It makes feel like I want to do something to make it better, but it’s just too big. I sometimes find it easier to block it out of my mind and heart so that maybe I just take a jab to the gut  of general awareness instead of a taking a knockout blow of total understanding of the gravity of the situation to the face.

I’m not a stranger to letting things impact me emotionally in a way that moves me to action. I have a little bit of a history in outreach and have found myself in different places around the world with amazing people who are trying to help other people and animals. But I’m also not a stranger to looking the other way, not letting people get too close, tell me too much, or just acting to busy, self-involved, or behaving like my needs were the most important needs in the world. I’m not saying this as a judgement, but I’ve heard people actually say “I can’t visit an elderly home because it will hurt me too bad if someone dies” and “ I really can’t bring myself to feed the hungry, because seeing homeless kids breaks my heart.” Again, this isn’t something that I haven’t also seen in myself when I reflect and realized  I’ve looked the other way because I wanted to build a wall and protect my heart on more than one occasion. I am fully aware how much a participant in putting on blinders to problems I think are too draining to try to fix.

So what good comes from being moved anyway? Aren’t we just better off if we isolate ourselves and don’t let our hearts get broken? Why love or care for anything if ultimately is cause heartache? Can I even do anything to make a difference and if I can’t why should I try? If I try to help what good will it do if nobody helps me?

These aren’t just dumb questions or a setup for some perceived masterful gotcha writing device reveal where I say how ridiculous those thoughts are and then suddenly you see my point. The reality is that they are questions I’ve personally wrestled with way more times than I can count.

 At the end of all that wrestling though I almost always find that the decision to not open your heart to love and care for others because I don’t want to become emotionally invested is the wrong choice.  I feel like we were designed to love and be moved for things beyond our own pursuits and interest. I personally want to do better to find a way to be okay being hurt, or scared if ultimately it means someone feeling loved and protected. I want to be someone willing to change the world and not just be a bystander unwilling to help and just hoping I’m never in their position. I think it’s better if we learn to not be afraid to show or tell someone how much we love and care about them. There isn’t a way to know if risking our pain for someone else will make a difference, but that isn’t a reason to not take the chance in making things better or to acknowledge how you feel fully. I don’t think it serves us to let it go or pretend not to feel moved. Heartbreak I think is probably a pretty good indicator that we are deeply connected and passionate about the person/people/causes that brought  that tight feeling in our chest and the tears in our eyes about in the first place. Our reason to make the decision to help the widow, the prisoner, or the orphan is because we are doing it for them and not for ourselves and that will undoubtedly be difficult sometimes.

So the truth might not always be pretty, and recognizing it doesn’t always give us freedom, but I think taking action in regard to the truth does.  While this blog wasn’t written just for Christians I did reference a scripture in the beginning in which Jesus instructed his disciples to follow his teachings to find the truth. What I find most compelling and easiest to share in what he taught and his ministry was how he taught us to actively love those in need. Christian or not I think allowing ourselves to actively open our hearts and help others even if it isn’t easy, is a great way to start to feel free.

0 Comments

Spoiler Alert- God loves gay people as much as he loves Kim Davis

9/9/2015

2 Comments

 

So Kim Davis was just freed from jail to cheers, nonstop news coverage, a smiling teary eyed presidential candidate in Mike Huckabee, anti-gay posters, crosses raised on sticks, and even Eye of the Tiger being blasted on speakers. Up to this point I haven't really talked too much about the issue publicly. Not that anyone has been begging for my opinion, but as Kentuckian and more importantly as someone who professes to try to follow the example of the life of Christ, I thought I’d weigh in.

To give just a bit of context I was born in and lived in Kentucky until I was 25. From about the age of 9 to 19 I lived in a small town called Irvine in Estill County. Estill County had a population then of about 15,000 people.  As a point of reference Rowan County, the county at the heart of the Kim Davis controversy has a population of around 25,000 people.  The people in Irvine were for the most part great.  Some of my absolute best memories happened there and with awesome friends,co-workers, and mentors. I’m actually still friends with a lot of them and many of them are doing admirable things in the world.

 One thing that you couldn’t say about the county though is that it was diverse. During the entirety of my time there I didn’t personally know one single non-white non-straight person.  To my knowledge the only black person that lived in the town was a KY State Trooper that had been assigned there.  To say his reception there wasn’t warm might be the understatement of all time. I also didn’t know of one person who was openly gay, much less two openly gay people who could possibly marry each other.  There were plenty of people who were called gay and lots of derogatory versions of gay meant as insults, but that was mostly only when it was being used as a taunt or a way to bully people. At my high school a kid who studied too much…gay, the girl who kept to herself….gay, the male teacher who lived with his elderly mother who wasn’t married….gay, the boy who was in to the arts….gay. Those were comments from bullies who tried to lift themselves up, by tearing someone else down because of their own lack of understanding. I remember a time personally when I had just sang my first solo at an assembly at school. My mom had come to watch and as I went back to my seat smiling and proud of something that had made me incredibly happy I was greeted by an older kid who called me gay as soon as I sat down to the delight of his fellow cronies.  I was torn down completely. Not because I had any questions about who I was, but because I felt ashamed and ridiculed for being different.  In general it was a pretty isolated town and there was no shortage of things outside of it's reach that may have seemed foreign and threatening to the majority of people who lived there.

I moved to Los Angeles 13 years ago this month, and since that time I’ve had the great honor of being surrounded by awesome diversity.  I’ve attended a couple of amazing churches that represent every ethnicity and walk of life imaginable.   I’ve seen what Christ like love looks like and how it’s shown through Christians who are interested in lifting other people up and loving them no matter what they look like, where they come from, or their sexual orientation. I've had a chance to travel and serve the poor, needy and hurting in my city, country, and world since then with those same people.  I’ve learned that God’s love is inclusive and not divisive. I’ve been taught by pastors who aren’t afraid to say that if Christians are supposed to be a reflection of Jesus’s love, then many of us just don’t get it. What seems to be reflected in many cases are our own judgements and prejudices.  I mentioned before that growing up I didn’t have any gay friends so I don’t mind saying now that some of my best friends/best people I know are not only gay, but treat others with kindness, reach out to the world to make it better, love God, and are simply outstanding humans.  I’ve also worked in the entertainment industry here in Los Angeles and met many non-Christians who are doing some of the greatest things to help lift others up who are struggling that I’ve ever seen.  

The main reason I’m writing this blog is not really because I’m trying to debate someone’s belief or opposition to gay marriage.  Honestly, far more intellectual and articulate people than me are having this debate.  I’m writing because the Jesus I follow is the one who taught about what real love should look like. I’m seeing way too many people claiming to represent how Jesus would respond while  acting in a way that based on what I’ve read in the Bible about his character, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t act.  It doesn’t seem that love is the driving force behind the movement. What I’m seeing shouted out and blasted on the news is that “Jesus is for us, not for you.”

So do I think Kentucky Christians should be rallying support for principles that Jesus taught? Do I think presidential candidates should be flocking to those communities to bring national attention to issues that matter? Do I think the Church as the embodiment of Jesus’s physical presence on earth should be leading the way? Absolutely.

I spoke earlier about what I hadn’t seen in my small community, not because it isn’t important or relevant, but because it wasn’t an issue that most people in the community could even connect with in a way that gave them any real perspective. What I did see with my own eyes was heart breaking poverty that caused kids to go hungry, drugs and alcoholism that tore families apart, senior citizens neglected, and every level of brokenness imaginable. I wonder why these can’t be the things we’re outraged about and hope that someday these are the issues we can’t stop fighting for until they’re erased.

2 Comments

A Crying Baby and a Fight on a Plane

12/16/2014

0 Comments

 
Recently my wife Sandra and I had the pleasure of taking a cross country flight from Denver to Tennessee.  When we boarded the plane everything was pretty standard to previous flights we had taken.  Because I checked us in late as usual we were boarding in group four and were among the last to get on the plane.  We inched down the aisle to our seats as passengers politely smashed their carry-on bags in to other people’s carry-on bags in the overhead compartments.  We sat down in our seats and prepared for our normal mental journey of nervousness during take-off, restless anxiousness during the flight, nervousness during landing, and then finally peace once we land. Unfortunately, on this particular flight the part I liked best, the peace when we landed, would be rudely interrupted by a pretty epic blowout airplane fight.

Almost as soon as we began to take off, immediately after our pre-flight I hope we make it prayer, a baby started crying.  Okay, crying probably isn’t a fair assessment, he was wailing. Wailing like taking this flight was the worst thing that ever happened to him.  Being that he was still an infant I’d say that it was in fact the worst thing that ever happened to him.  I said to Sandra “poor little guy, I feel so bad for him.” After all, I knew exactly what was going on and I wasn’t thrilled about flying.  I couldn’t imagine how he felt.  I don’t have kids, which also means I’ve never had a baby, but I found myself wanting to somehow make it better for him.

Right after I expressed how bad I felt for our tiny crier, the middle aged woman behind me expressed how she felt loud enough for the entire plane to hear. “Shut that baby up, I have to work when we land and I’d like to get some rest.”  Her traveling companions, another middle aged women and a large burly overall wearing man shared a laugh with her while the rest of us in the surrounding seats shared a variety of reactions ranging from head shaking in disbelief to mouths opened in a shocked expression of “did she really just scream at a crying baby?”

  I guess the baby wasn’t too bothered by it because as we continued to climb, he continued to cry.  Encouraged by the laughs of her equally unsympathetic row mates the women made a bunch more uncaring attacks on the baby and her family. Some of which included “You shouldn’t bring a crying baby on a plane” “Just shut the hell up” “I didn’t pay hundreds of dollars for a flight to hear your baby cry”.  With every new idiotic and insensitive statement she made I grew increasingly angrier.  As I said, I don’t have kids, but I have lots of nieces, nephews and friends with kids.  For some reason I was taking this really personally.  I just couldn’t understand how an adult might not able to give a little break to an infant.  Finally though as we reached our cruising altitude the baby calmed down, stopped crying, and the women behind me stopped her rant…temporarily.

Shortly after the “it’s safe to take off your seat belt” announcement had been made, I had an opportunity to look around the plane.  When I looked around to peek at the baby and his family I discovered a fact that would have made me even madder had I been aware of it at the beginning of the flight.  The baby was accompanied by only his mom who was cradling him in her arms.  There was no dad, boyfriend, sister, friend, or sibling etc. to help on the flight.  I obviously have no idea what her situation was other than she was flying with a sweet baby who was having a difficult flight all by herself.  For the moment the baby was asleep and the rude lady seemed to be minding her own business.  I didn’t hear a peep from either of them until our final descent.  That’s when my little friend started crying again and Big Mouth seemed ready for her encore.  I’m not a scientist, but guessed at this point the baby was experiencing painful pressure during take-off and landing which made me feel even worse for him and more irate at this lady.

The comments she was making now were just more of the same from before.  No new insults or original take on how important it was for to have an uninterrupted flight.  Just the same selfish babbling from a bully.  I couldn’t believe nobody was saying anything to her.  Wait, I wasn’t saying anything either. 

We landed safely, but the baby was still crying.  Meany was still spouting and I honestly couldn’t tell you what she said, because my blood had past simmering and was at a slow boil.  I looked over at my wife and said “do not let me lose it on this lady. I don’t want to get in trouble, but I can’t take much more”  We were taxiing now and surely she would just let it rest.


 However, one more cry lead to one more attack on the silent mother and her baby which lead to my flash boil.  I stood up and responded with “Would you please let it rest!  You have no idea how difficult it would be to be in that mom’s shoes.  Do you think for one second she wanted her baby crying or struggling during the flight?  Do you think her day hasn’t been rough enough already?” I took a breath because I realized I had asked her a bunch of questions, although I think many of them were rhetorical and intended for everyone on the plane to consider. She barked back “The kid wouldn’t shut up!  What would you suggest?” It was difficult for me to respond because I was trying to balance letting this woman know how awful I personally thought she was with actually trying to get through to her for some reason. I wanted to exercise the same grace I had hoped she would have extended on the baby. I didn’t know what her journey had been her that day and why she was so terrible.  Maybe there was a reason she was especially on edge.  Maybe it wasn’t simply a matter of someone being incredibly cruel.

I told her “I would try to exercise compassion because I realize she’s going through a lot.  She’s not a parent failing to discipline a bad kid.  She’s a mom doing the best she can.”  I’m not sure if I really thought this would make sense to her, but she was quick to point out that it didn’t.  “Well, I don’t care about her and I don’t care about you.  I’m entitled to my opinion and if I want to tell her about it I will!” Oh man, I was bordering on losing it. “You are entitled to your opinion, and your opinion is awful and cruel and heartless.” I stopped myself.  I realized I was about to unleash a tirade of epic proportion on this lady that I wouldn’t be proud of later. I could feel my teeth grinding and my eyes tightening in on her.  I’m not sure, but I think fumes were coming out of my ears. The final thing she said directly to me was “well you’re entitled to your opinion and if I want to tell her to be quite I can.” Before I could say anything my wife stepped in and said “Well you’ve made it very clear to everyone that you hate kids.  Now you can shut your mouth.”  Sandra had simultaneously saved me from going past the edge and ultimately left this lady with nothing to say.  She stumbled to respond and had some incoherent stunned response like “Um, well I uh am glad you got to be on t.v.”

Luckily when Meany McGee seemed to come to the end of her unintelligible argument her wonderfully huge and burly traveling companion piped in to add his awesome thoughts on the subject.  He loudly piped in with “the problem with America is there are too a$holes.”  Wow!  This guy was completely right and wrong on many levels  “You’re saying that people who stand up for the bullied are assholes? “People who try to encourage compassion are assholes? If that’s the case the problem might be there aren’t enough assholes.”  Not gonna lie, I was ready to preach it right there.  The guy came back with a louder version of his previous response, but also added “that’s why I moved to North Dakota.”  He might of said it again after that, but I’m just not sure.  The sensible part of me was saying “You’ve said enough, you’ve made you’re point, no more can be gained from arguing with this guy any more.  There was also another side of me who was very close to starring in multiple YouTube Videos titled “Guy Beats of Bully on Plane”.  Fortunately the under controlled version of me won out and was even nice enough to let the cage tiger version of me stare the guy down for a solid minute.

I’m not writing this blog because I want you to have some high opinion of me.  It’s very possible that you think what I did was just as annoying as what they did.  I also haven’t always done the right thing every time I’ve had an opportunity to.  There are plenty of times I haven’t stood up when I should have.  I also am not trying to portray myself as tough.  Just to illustrate that point, I caught myself wishing I had the Justin Bieber Christmas CD in my car today.  The guy on the plane may have very possibly kicked the crap out of me.

  I’m writing this blog because I’m not certain if we have an A-hole problem in America, but we certainly have a compassion problem.  This incident was just kind of an eye opener for me.   If 200 people on a plane can’t take up for a woman traveling alone with a baby, who else won’t we stand up for? I’ve been increasingly frustrated that so many people struggle alone when there are so many of us who have the ability to lend a hand.  What I did isn’t the only way to help people.  Plane confrontations actually probably rank pretty low on the scale of things that will make a difference.  But even the smallest thing you could do to make the world better will help as long as we’re trying.   I’ve seen too much head turning because a person or group in need doesn’t look like us, isn’t the same color, doesn’t practice the same religion, or doesn’t share our beliefs about sexual orientation. There are too many things that divide us when we should be more united than ever.   I can’t continue to keep my eyes shut and my mouth closed in the face of increasing injustice and a glaring lack of people helping people.  I count myself among those who can do better and from here on out am going to find active ways to be a contributor to a kinder way of doing things.  I get that this started out as a funny story and has now morphed into a full on rant, but I had to say it. So let’s collectively practice compassion even if we start small like when we’re on a plane or in traffic.  I’ll specifically promise to practice it by cancelling my trip to North Dakota to visit Burly Beard to make good on that stare down.

0 Comments
    Picture

    Me

    Literally anything can be in these blog entries.  Because I'm a weirdo, my brain toggles between comedic observations to ideas on ending global injustice. I'll do my best to keep them entertaining and/or thought provoking.  

    Archives

    September 2015
    December 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed