Should We Choose

“So do you really believe that in the future we’re going to have the kind of trouble you write about in your books?” a student asked Octavia Butler at one of her book signings. The student was referring to the different issues found in The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents that highlighted increased possibilities of difficulty and perhaps desolation for human beings should we continue to ignore the issues that are demanding our response.

“I didn’t make up the problems.” she pointed out, “All I did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.”

“So, what’s the answer?” he demanded. Her reply: “There isn’t one.”

“No Answer? You mean we're just doomed?” He smiled, as though he thought this might be a joke.

“No,” Butler responded in all her wisdom. “I mean there’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead, there are thousands of answers - at least. You can be one if you choose to be.” [1]

Beloved, the problems are plentiful. I don’t know that anyone, being honest, can glance even for a moment at the state of our world, our earth, this country (USA), and not see that the problems are plentiful. The upheaval of any form of democratic foundation—with the recognition that any foundation was already built on the sinking sand of slavery, genocide, and oppression. The idolatry of efficiency that ignores the earthly ramifications of technological advances and silences the communities that are most deeply affected and are mostly quickly disregarded. Our obsession with building followings over relationships has created epidemics of deep loneliness and isolation. Our policies continue to be anti-people, and capitalism is forcing folks to choose between lights, groceries, and gas—and that is for those who have enough to have a choice. Black children are disappearing and dying while white families argue about protecting their kids from backlash more than they advocate for why this is more normal than not. 

I often refer to Octavia Butler’s conversation with this young man. His attempt to make light of what she made her life’s work reminds me how high the stakes can be when we think the issues are separate from our own practice. It can be easy to joke about doom when prophets, so often Black women, are simply telling the truth about what they see and what they know in their bodies and beings about where we are and where we may be headed. As a Blackqueerwoman in the United States, I am constantly struck by how much work is required to remember the full sacredness of my own humanity. To live into the practices, I know to be true to my flesh—community, generosity, justice—when it would be too easy to succumb to the seductions of isolation, hoarding, and apathy. The work required to pull out the words, policies, practices, theologies that are meant to dismember my flesh, and to trust the expansive presence of the divine found at altars, in prayer, and across brunch tables with beloveds to be the gorilla glue that holds it together. 

And yet… 

We are not a people without hope. This era asks the question Butler posed as a statement, “In a world full of these problems, will you choose to be one of the answers?”

This isn’t a call to sages on stages. It is a call to practice and to be the community that breaks into new worlds. The community that starts with the inherent dignity of all people. The community that doesn’t posit God as a rich, white, straight, male, neurotypical, English-speaking figure, among other limiting identity markers. The community that believes justice and Jesus are inextricably bound. This is where theological education is most important. 

At its best, theological education creates space to analyze the things we have been taught about God, one another, and the sacred systems of texts and doctrines, while acknowledging how they have shaped worlds. From there, we can decide, with an intensive look in our own mirror and a wide window to the world around us, how we will commit to living toward an answer. An answer of justice. An answer of liberation. An answer of hope actualized. An answer of freedom. It invites us, again and again, to ask, “How do I practice, proclaim, advocate, organize, teach, commune, pastor, chaplain, love, and engage in a way that is a world-bending witness toward collective flourishing and a beloved community?” 

Butler was a world builder and bender through her words. We have an opportunity to find our path and the practice to do that work from our particularity. We must be honest about the issues and, together, imagine what could be possible, living our lives as unfolding answers. We have an opportunity to build a more well world—should we choose. 

[1] Octavia E. Butler, A Few Rules for Predicting the Future: An Essay (San Francisco: First Chronicle Books LLC, 2024), 7-11. Paraphrase