Last week as I was driving in Irvine towards my church I noticed something a little weird, a sign in the city’s dying grass reading, “grass in renovation.” At first I thought it must be a joke that some college student had pulled, but then a week later it was still there. On top of that, more had shown up. Now, if you have lived or worked in Irvine for more than a week, you know that the cops and/or the city of Irvine don’t stand for much, not even a silly fake little sign in the grass.
As I drove to my favorite local coffee shop today, I passed by another sign stuck there in the grass reading, “grass in renovation” and I started to become disheartened. I started to wonder what this simple sign says about a city? What does it say about this city’s residents? Why would a city feel it needs to defend its dying grass?
What I realized is that somehow the city of Irvine believes that the reality of dying grass shows a sign of imperfection. That somehow in the death of grass our fear of imperfection and death meet?
Death and Imperfection
A couple months ago I read through a book called The Promise of Despair by one of my favorite youth ministry thinkers and theologians, Andrew Root. In the book, Root talks about how the idea of “death” scares us all…well…to death. That our culture has become really good at running away from death. Not just the end-of-life kind of death, but the I-do-not-know-if-I-want-to-make-friends-because-they-might-leave death, or the my-body-is-getting-really-old-and-I-must-change-that death.
Doing ministry in Orange County I have noticed something I have only seen one other place I have done ministry, Utah. In Utah the Latter Day Saint Church runs most of the state. A majority of the population belongs to the LDS Church or is expected to fall line with the culture the LDS Church has placed on its members. The idea of being perfect.
Take Salt Lake City, Utah for example. Salt Lake City is divided into two areas: West Salt Lake and East Salt Lake. The dividing line is the 15 freeway. The freeway operates kind of like the train tracks in Pretty in Pink, the rich upper class live on one side of the freeway, the east side. While, the not-so live on the west side of the 15 freeway.
In the center of the town is Temple Square, the home base of the LDS Church. Around Temple Square the streets are clean, the homes are well kept, the people look pretty, and if a homeless person if found near the square, they are relocated to the west side.
Why might Salt Lake City do this you ask? To keep up the image of the city, an image of perfection, and image where death and hurt doesn’t exist.
During my first week in ministry in Irvine I was talking to some students. They were telling me a little about Irvine. In the midst of the conversation they told me a story about a time they were talking to a homeless man. During their conversation an Irvine cop drove up, strongly urged the teens to leave, and placed the homeless man in his car. I asked the students where they took him? One looked at me and just said two words, “Santa Ana.”
Are we so scared of death that any imperfection could possibly remind us of the fate that awaits us all? Could it be that we desire to present this image of perfection to everyone because we are scared of the reality of death?
As someone who does ministry with Jr. High and High School students and their families, I started to think of the effect this has on teens and families. What might it communicate to teens that grow up or parents that raise a family in a culture where perfection is the expectation and death is covered up?
I was at lunch with a student a few months ago that had spent the weekend at her little brother’s baseball tournament. I asked her how it went, and she just looked at me and said, “it was okay, but it is so hard to watch my dad yell at my brother because he didn’t get a hit at his last at bat.”
What happened to failing being a part of life? What happened to the reality of death?
So many of my student say that they number one reason they feel stressed is because their parents are requiring them to do more: more AP classes, more sports, more dance, or more SAT prep classes. Students feel that if they do not do these things that they will not only not get into the college they want, but that they will disappoint their parents.
Could it be that parents are not pressuring their kids because they want them to be perfect, but they want to protect them from death?
Students are not the only ones who feel the pressure to be perfect, parents do too.
A few months ago I sat talking to some parents about rising teens in Irvine. As they talked one parent looked at me and said, “it is hard, you go to the store and see a parent whose son goes to school with your teen. They tell you all about the school that their oldest kids just got into, the grades their teens get, or the sports game their teen won...Sometimes you get sucked in.”
Conclusion
Death can take many forms, but at the heart of death are hurt, tears, and pain. The sad thing is that by trying to keep those things away, many times we just cause them.
This begs the question: In the purist of perfection are we bringing death?
In the Bible, the word-translated perfection only occurs once in the whole Bible as a command, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). All others times in the Bible the only person that is even called perfect is God. Even in this verse is the idea that humanity is not able to make him or herself prefect, but that it is God who will make them perfect.
No one can be perfect. No one will be beautiful forever. No one can be happy all the time.
We will all fail. We will all be sad. We will all fall ill. We will all die…Even grass.
I encourage you not to buy into the idea of running from death toward perfection, because there is beauty in death. There is beauty in death because God has entered into death and saved us out of it. As Romans 4:25 reminds us, “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”
Therefore, with the words of Jesus I encourage you to run into death so that you may have life. “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.” (Luke 9:24)
