Black and White and Jackie

I was 12 - on a Southern vacation with my folks. I've never forgotten those signs I saw on the bathrooms.

"Colored." "White."

We didn't have those signs in the racially mixed neighborhood where I grew up. So I didn't have a file folder for "colored" and "white."

Jackie Robinson did. As America's first Black baseball player in the Major Leagues, the baseball field was a battlefield. Before President Truman integrated the military. Before Rosa Parks. Before Dr. King.

Jackie faced a firestorm of brutal insults. Racial taunts. Death threats. But he passed the test. And opened a door that helped change a nation.

America's talking a lot about Jackie Robinson now. Thanks to the movie titled after his number - "42." We're discovering the powerful human drama behind a decisive victory in America's long journey to racial equality.

And two brands of courage that are in short supply these days. Courage that's still game-changing - in a family...an office...a church...a neighborhood.

Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers' general manager in 1947, had the courage to sign Jackie Robinson - and shatter baseball's color barrier.

His was the courage to defy a culture that's just plain got it wrong. A status quo that many have accepted as "just the way it is."

And, man, do we need that courage today. To defy a messed-up "normal." Like letting our children do and see and listen to what's popular but poisonous. Joining in - or condoning by our silence - the gossip and backstabbing. Compromising the divinely established fence around sex called marriage. Accepting that a certain amount of deceit and surrendered integrity is "the way it's done these days." Or even today's more subtle - but just as destructive - versions of prejudice.

Branch Rickey displayed the courage to defy the ugliness around us. Jackie Robinson displayed the courage to deny the ugliness inside us.

In a fateful three-hour meeting in the Dodgers' front office, Rickey told Jackie Robinson, "I'm looking for a man with guts enough not to fight back." And he showed him the words of Jesus: "You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the cheek, turn to him the other also" (Matthew 5:38-39).

And that's what Jackie Robinson did. Time and time again. And opened a door no one could shut. In the face of endless provocation, he refused to succumb to the anger, the retaliating that must have been boiling inside.

Courage to defy a widely-accepted wrong. Courage to deny my right to fight back, lash out, hurt those who hurt me. That doesn't come naturally. It comes supernaturally.

Branch Rickey made it plain to everyone that the Bible was his playbook and Jesus was his Manager. Jackie had a history of doing damage to white people who insulted him. Until a Black pastor showed him a Jesus whose love really changes a man.

A Jesus who didn't just talk about forgiving. He did it - all the way to the cross where He died so we could conquer our inner ugliness called sin. That's who Jackie downloaded when he got on his knees every night to find the strength to do another day. A very personal, personal Savior.

He's the One of whom the Bible says, "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength" (Philippians 4:13). He changes a man from the inside out. So that man can change his world.