One of my favorite TV shows in my later-youth years was Hill Street Blues, a follow-the-police-as-they-make-their-rounds series in the mid-1980s. The acting was great, the plots realistic, the characters believable. But what stands out in my memory most is one particular piece of advice given by Sgt. Phil Esterhaus at the end of roll call before all the officers were sent out to their assignments; he would say, “Let’s be careful out there.”
Good advice for those protecting our society; good advice for anyone these days as well.
It’s a dangerous world out there, with assassination attempts, warfare, saber rattling, extreme heatwaves, mass shootings, and all manner of calamity both natural and human caused. The list is long of things going unbelievably wrong; it is not an easy time to be alive.
And yet, it has never been an easy time to be alive — not for everyone, not all the time. I think of things like learning about the first Thanksgiving where pilgrims and Native Americans shared in a table of plenty to celebrate their mutual respect and peaceful relations … I think of the Beaver Cleaver years of the 1950s when many seem to think we had it all together with dad coming home from work to a mom-created hearty dinner and table set for the family to sit together and catch up on the day … I think of the excitement of technological advances like the internet or medical treatments for HIV and COVID vaccines or the acceleration of green energy production. All of these seemed so good, so wonderful for ourselves and our world.
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But they weren’t wonderful for all; in fact, a closer look at history would argue they were horrors to many.
That original Thanksgiving meal — if it occurred at all — was likely a very rare instance of respectful interaction between colonists and Native Americans; most of colonization relied upon removal or elimination by force of the original inhabitants of this land; millions died or were displaced.
The Cleaver family represented a time when women’s rights were comparatively nil and hidden mental, verbal, physical and sexual abuse rates comparatively high (rates that were “grossly underestimated,” according to a 2013 study by National Research Council, “Estimating the Incidence of Rape and Sexual Assault,” Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2013.)
The internet has given rise to exponential misinformation; medical treatments are often out of reach for all but the wealthiest of patrons or surrounded by anti-vaccine rhetoric; the rare earth materials that electric vehicle batteries rely on are largely sourced by mines in countries that employ “modern-day slavery” methods for extraction.
All is not well out there — in fact, it has never been all well.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a “well” out there; in fact, that’s where people of good faith and aligned conscience find their place in this world — in the goodness made possible by hope. Hope is a forward-looking orientation that gains its momentum from previous discernment, looking to the things of the past honestly to learn what was not the way things should have been in order to lean into a future more centered on the way things ought to be. Hope stands as a contrast to wishful thinking in this “leaning,” for hope is meant to be an orientation of engagement, something we work toward, rather than simply think about. It is in this sense that we may always move more effectively forward, in that we as people of good conscience and truth insistence — that is, as people of faith — know what’s worth hoping (read, “working” and “living”) for.
So we will continue to go out there into a world of challenges, perhaps unique to our age but not unique to the human condition.
But let’s be careful out there. Follow the practices and approaches that have carried so many others forward in hope (yes, the Hill Street Blues cast, but also the cast of all those who went before us in faith):
1. Don’t go alone (all police had partners; all people of faith need community);
2. Go well equipped (with common sense, compassion, attentiveness, morality, and discernment);
3. Know who has your back (family, yes, but also community of faith; and especially God); and, perhaps most importantly,
4. Know why you’re going out there (to help make goodness possible in the world; to share the love everyone needs in their life; to make hope something real).
Let’s be careful out there; but let’s not fail to go out there; hope depends upon it.
Rev. John Daniels is pastor at First United Methodist Church, Missoula. He can be reached at john@fumcmissoula.com.
