Embarrassing confessions.
The first CD I bought was Biggie Smalls’ Life After Death. I sent in for one of those 12 CD’s for 1 cent scams, not knowing I had to buy a membership. When the box came, I thought the only error I made was ordering two copies of the same CD. My parents, however, explained the $39.99/mo mistake I actually made: a valuable lesson in reading the fine print.
I don’t remember having a talk about the content of my musical interests, though I’m sure they said something about listening to music free from drug references and unhealthy sexuality–you know, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and 80’s Hair Metal.
Two years later, using money meant for snacks during a class trip to Chicago, I bought the first CD that I didn’t have to return: Krayzie Bone’s Thug Mentality.
For the next four years, I cycled through rappers hearing the music but not thinking about the lyrics. When I left swim practice, I sagged my pants after stepping out of my size 26 speedo. When I pulled into my $8000/year private school, I bumped gangster rap out the rolled down windows of my ’96 Dodge Caravan (forest green and affectionately called ‘Gary.’) When I got home, I internalized the persona and carried a stiff upper lip toward my parents and younger siblings while I strut through the halls of our upper-middle class home in a well-manicured Cincinnati suburb. When I went out, I hung around guys from the same privileged background as me while they smoked weed and shattered mailboxes. Oh, and we learned how to spell ‘Blood’ with our fingers. I also think we learned the Crip hand-sign too. We threw up both. Real gangsta’.
If you cringed or scoffed, I don’t blame you.
I was so disconnected from the laughable facade I had built that I couldn’t see the detriment it did to my worldview: I held a terribly inferior view of Black and Hispanic people, though I thought I was idolizing them. I appropriated their dress and language and culture. I, unwittingly, glorified a lifestyle that I never truly experienced, and even if I did, I could easily escape. The same could not be said for the people for whom this music truly resonates.
I have a lot of thoughts about the phenomena of white suburban youth dipping into gang culture while simultaneously enjoying all the privileges keeping them from the poverty that would trap them. And having taught in two of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago, “trapped” is a milquetoast word to describe my former students’ situations. But that’s a longer article for a different time.
I go into this reflection because our 11th graders went on a field trip to Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. I posted this on social media, but I’ll restate it here: I found the ministry to be one of the single-most inspiring things I’ve witnessed.
And I wish I could replicate it for every private Christian school, especially those serving the most affluent.
On its surface, Homeboy Industries is a perfect illustration of a new creation. Flipping through a photo-book in the gift shop, a fully inked body transforms back to baby-like purity. Ex-gang members with profanity, gang-signs, and death written across the expanse of their bodies suddenly appear with a blank canvas.
But of course, the removal of tattoos signifies something deeper–a transformation of the body, soul, and spirit that coincides with the change of employment prospects and living situations–a metamorphosis that our teenagers need to witness because it comes from a profound brokenness experienced by very few people.
It’s one reason we need to experience places like Homeboy Industries, especially our affluent private school students. We need to challenge the images of gang life we hold, either in esteem or derision, and we need to challenge the belief that some people are beyond redemption, especially since large swaths of people are being demonized (not just their actions).
Another striking aspect of Homeboy Industries: the visible, permanent effects of gang-banging. The tattoos could be easily (albeit painfully) removed, but some scars don’t leave: vestiges of surgery bisecting the skull, chunks of body cut out, missing limbs, partial paralysis. I hope I would have immediately reconsidered blaring Tupac’s “Gangster Party” if I had gone on such a trip fifteen years ago.
But we shouldn’t look with pity on the homies at Homeboy Industries. Our wonderful leader, Jen Mounday, shared this quote: “Compassion is not a relationship between the wounded and the healer. It’s a covenant between equals.”
Let’s face it, our teenage self is rarely the best manifestation of ourselves (in addition to the acne and gangly limbs). If we, as teens, were to tattoo the various things we were slaves to, all the transgressions we carried out, how marked we would be! Check: if we all did that.
The field trip to Homeboy Industries wasn’t for some evangelistic endeavor. We weren’t going to teach anybody there something that we didn’t need to learn ourselves. Instead, we needed to be humbled to this idea that we must take the posture of listener and learner before anything else.
In merely hearing the testimonies of the homies we can reflect on our own history. The recurrent themes in the past lives of the homies are selfishness, brash decisions, and myopic thinking. Sound familiar? Truly, the difference between many of us and the ex-gang members at Homeboy Industries is that most of us have had checks (literal and figurative) that keep us from feeling the weight of our consequences. We’ve had people to shield us from the wolves who would snatch us and hold us captive. We grew up in lush meadows rather than torn-up deserts. When we strayed, someone found us and ushered us to the next field, full of life and prosperity.
But even if we have temporarily escaped the negative effects of our misdeeds, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That’s why we need illustrations to shatter the perceived invincibility and infallibility that comes with youth before it hardens our pride to the point where a divine power-drill is all that can break it–before we spend so much time on this Earth apart from God that we doom ourselves to separation for eternity.
Once we’ve broken ourselves to the reality we all appear to head towards certain death– some earlier than others–we can be put together with the hope that we find in Christ Jesus, who makes all things new (Revelation 21). This transformation is alive at Homeboy Industries, and I pray our students, our school, and our communities will discover this renewal.
