Last week, I started up a spiritual conversation with man who was sitting across from me at the local Starbucks. He was editing a Christian book for his father, who was the chaplain of a major university in the city of Dallas. I asked this young man if he was a Christian and he said no. After we talked awhile, this young man admitted that he was a practicing homosexual and he didn’t think it was right for Christians to say that homosexuality was wrong. I hadn’t told him that homosexuality was wrong at this point, but I asked him, “Well do you think that there is anything absolutely wrong with anything?”

He replied, “No, it’s just a matter of perspective and personal experiences. Different people feel different ways about certain actions.”

I responded, “Well, what about child rape? Would you admit that’s absolutely wrong or is that just relatively wrong?”

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These days it is difficult to fully embrace the idea that we live in a “post-racial society” when we in the Black community still see our young people shot down at the hands of police officers (click here. This young man was from one of my home towns on the Central Coast of Ca. where I did Young Life for many years). It is difficult to imagine a society where “race” and the “color” of our skin are not looked upon as the measure of a person/ people group. It is challenging to see through a lot of the subtle, overt, and venomous racism that swirls in our media, political rhetoric, and societal structures almost every day.

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Last Spring, barnstorming across America with my atheist college roommate and our dialogical documentary Purple State of Mind, we felt a bit like presidential candidates. We engaged in heated debates on college campuses. We stopped by churches and synagogues to rally the faithful. We answered phone calls on local radio shows. While Barack and Hillary were swiping at each other, John Marks and I were taking heat from animated audiences.

Skeptics wondered why John seemed so negative, almost acting like a bully. Christians wondered why I took so much abuse from John without punching back. Both sides were disappointed that their representative failed to defend their side with more authority. The crowds wanted a bloody boxing match. Instead, we offered a perverse bit of peace, love and understanding. Tired of the gridlock created by the culture wars, we offered a different way of being, advocating active listening, promoting a purple state of mind.

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