![\"coates.001\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/230\/2016\/12\/coates.001.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nEzra Klein interviewed Ta-Nehisi Coates recently and the audio is up on the Ezra Klein Show<\/em> podcast. Here are a few quotes & a comment about it.<\/p>\nKlein credits Coates for having what he calls a tragic imagination\u2014a sense that things don\u2019t always turn out well in the end. Sometimes things go tragically wrong and that\u2019s the end.<\/p>\n
Klein and Coates both contend\u00a0that a tragic imagination is\u00a0one of the major differences between a Christian and an atheist. The atheist is under no obligation to assume things will turn out well. Coates, in fact, rejects Dr. King\u2019s famous statement that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.Coates and Klein seem to say that other black political leaders like Obama and Corey Booker seem to embrace King\u2019s\u00a0idea because of their Christian faith.<\/p>\n
Can Christians have a tragic imagination?<\/h4>\n
That assumption has really been messing with me since I first heard them make it yesterday. Are Christians really under the obligation to end every conversation with hope? Do we have to reject the tragic imagination? I don\u2019t see that in the prophets. Hope eventually, maybe, but not always hope right now. Christians are under no obligation to say, \u201ceverything will be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coates says\u00a0that \u201ceverything will be fine\u201d is the very self-deception that keeps us from actual reality. Most of the reasons we are struggling as a society\u00a0are not really that difficult to know. They are just incredibly painful to know. So we find more convenient things to believe. For instance, why is it that by far the largest risk factor for spending time in jail is to be\u00a0black, male, and uneducated? Coates says,<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I came to feel was that the answer\u2019s actually not that hard. It\u2019s actually quite knowable. But it\u2019s terrible<\/em>! It\u2019s terrible to contemplate. It\u2019s terrible to consider. And so we fall back on all these other explanations.\u201d \u2013 Ta-Nehisi Coates<\/p><\/blockquote>\nKlein gives Coates credit for mining these realities and actually\u00a0reporting on\u00a0things that seem too terrible to contemplate. Klein says,\u00a0\u201cThere are some things in American politics, in American life, in American culture, some true things that it is very inconvenient to believe, it\u2019s maybe even counterproductive to believe even though they are true.\u201d\u00a0For instance, on matters of race, Klein says:<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a story about racial progress and unity in America that is not just convenient to believe, not just pleasurable to believe, but actually in some ways effective to believe. It might be the thing that is best to believe in terms of getting the sort of outcomes (like having an African American president) that you want. And then there is a story that is true and in some ways better at predicting day to-day events\u2014certainly right now\u2014that nobody wants to hear. To me the last year or two has been a collision of these two visions.\u201d \u2013 Ezra Klein<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Are Christians really under the obligation to end every conversation with hope?<\/h4>\n
If there is a\u00a0difference between the story that is\u00a0convenient to believe, and the story that is actually true but is too terrible to contemplate, then isn\u2019t it\u00a0the work of the church to make that case? Aren\u2019t we the ones who give voice to reality?<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the voice of the prophetic arm of the\u00a0story. We have to be the ones who are willing to say everything\u2019s not just automatically going to be fine. If you scapegoat immigrants. If you abuse the environment. If you continue to imprison black men at alarming rates, then things will not be fine. Things will, in fact, fail in epic proportions. This is inconvenient to say, inconvenient to believe, but so is resurrection, right?<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t want to listen to the whole interview, I think the first 15 minutes are well worth your time.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ezra Klein interviewed Ta-Nehisi Coates recently and the audio is up on the Ezra Klein Show podcast. Here are a few quotes & a comment about it. Klein credits Coates for having what he calls a tragic imagination\u2014a sense that things don\u2019t always turn out well in the end. Sometimes things go tragically wrong and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":5297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1614,1611,1612,1613],"tags":[162,1609,723,132,1312,1110,1380,1610],"class_list":["post-5296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ezra-klein","category-justice","category-race","category-ta-nehisi-coates","tag-ezra-klein","tag-imagination","tag-justice","tag-martin-luther-king-jr","tag-race","tag-racism","tag-ta-nehisi-coates","tag-tragic-imagination"],"yoast_head":"\n
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