Yellow and Proud of It

Recently on my Facebook wall someone accused me of being a coward.

I'm not beyond cowardice. I'm a fallen human being, prone to wander. I am also not beyond courage. Courage is when you are afraid but you act anyway. I do not agree that it is accurate to assess me, on the whole, to be a coward. Certainly the grounds of the accusation this person was making were spurious.

On a separate occasion a few months back, I became aware that someone had categorized me as yellow. To that, I actually wholeheartedly agree. Indeed, I aspire for this to be true.

Here's what happened. In 2019 I became aware that someone had discovered a list of the 2017-2018 trustees of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I do not know who in the previous administration prepared this list, and I do not know who saw it. Every trustee on the list had received a color code.

Green

Could be counted on to vote for whatever the administration wanted.

Red

Could be expected to vote against whatever the administration wanted.

Yellow

Unpredictable as a trustee. Vote would depend upon the strength of the evidence presented.

They had me in the yellow category. It is my ambition to be yellow in this sense. I have never received any accolade in any way that I have served the SBC that is higher than this one. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, whoever made up this list and categorized me in this way.

Indeed, that's ultimately the reason why I was called a coward on social media. It is not my knee-jerk reaction to read someone's agenda-driven slander-post and just sign my name on the dotted line. This, of course, bothers agenda-driven slander-posters. Show me something other than guilt by association and the genetic fallacy. Make a sound, reasonable case to me and you stand a good chance of persuading me.

I'd have been deeply ashamed to have been labeled either red or green. We need more yellow in the Southern Baptist Convention. Let us move forward into this decade with that as our common resolve.