Loving Each Other with Our Minds…

In an age where phrases like “I am confused” or “what do you mean?” have become a common way to deflect in conversations, we find ourselves in a world that is both saturated with information and starved of clarity. We see this phenomenon everywhere—across our screens, in our discussions, and particularly in the socio-political climate where deception, manipulation, and the distortion of truth have become almost routine. We navigate a space where facts are spun into fiction, where words are wielded not to illuminate but to obscure, and where we are often left grasping for understanding in a fog of "fake news" and rhetorical sleights of hand. 

Dr. Farah Jasmine Griffin’s traditional African American story telling in Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life (2021) breaks through the haze with the insistence on learning through the humanizing themes in African American literature, not as a passive acquisition of knowledge, but as an active, loving pursuit of truth that informs her work. “All people feel despair, long for love, create beauty, and face death.” Her father’s teachings planted seeds early on, framing teaching and learning as an act of love—a gift that transcends time, culture, and circumstance. As Kirk Franklin’s song offers, this gift is what “it really means to love”.

Interwoven into her parents’ “Romeo and Juliet” love story, we are invited into her context, the stuff that makes up her sensibilities as a perceptive scholar that stems from early cultivation of the mind. Her father, Emerson Maxwell Griffin's words etched in their books serve as a guiding light, a call to persevere in the face of confusion, and a reminder that comprehension is not merely an intellectual exercise but a deeply human connection. Mr Griffin wrote, “Baby read until you understand, ask your teacher if you don’t understand. She will like you for it…” Griffin's recollection of her father’s approach to education reflects a love that is tender and revolutionary—a love that acknowledges the persistent efforts of ancestors who were historically denied access to education and whose thirst for knowledge was often met with disinheritance through racially calibrated comprehension tests.

Innumerable barriers to U.S. education have been erected such as the laws against reading and writing. It’s astonishing the lengths to which authorities prevented Black people from participating in civic engagement by implementing timed literacy tests in order to vote including a question like: 

“Write right from the left to the right as you see it spelled here.” 

And these are the tensions into which Griffin emerges, on the cusp of the civil rights movement. It is this love perspective that helps to anchor us in moments where it seems easier to look away, to claim confusion, or to retreat into ignorance.  

Unfortunately, just as we learn about the depth of her bond with her father, we are made to grapple with both the incomprehensible tragedy surrounding his death when she was a child and somehow find a blessing that Mr and Mrs Griffin were so intentional in how they raised their daughters for as long as he lived. His death prompts us to consider the ways in which human services often falter in the quality of care they render to people on the margins. 

When a loved one is lost, nothing makes sense. 

Through our writing we bear witness, our lives are texts as pupil and educator, as we stand before each other in the academic space. Who we are, our contexts, shape our perception, our experience of the world around us. Having a reflection of ourselves in the academy, gives us a sense that we belong… that we have the stuff to make it through somehow.

Griffin’s work, rooted in the tradition of African American pedagogy, directly confronts the stereotypes that obscure Black brilliance, particularly the notion of Black father absenteeism. Her father’s role in her intellectual development challenges the prevailing narrative, illustrating how Black parents have always been educators, mentors, and the keepers of culture, even when systems sought to deny their children’s potential. Being a Black educator protecting righteous minds has always been a form of fugitivity, a sacrifice that requires love and saying the names of those who have gone on. 

This brings us to a critical point: the crisis of comprehension is not just a matter of intellectual rigor; it is a moral and theological issue of how communities assemble. Isaiah 1:18 (KJV) reads “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord…” We must recognize that our ability to reason together, to communicate clearly, and to discern truth from falsehood is essential to cultivating virtues like honesty, humility, and trustworthiness. The task before us is not just to "read until you understand" but to live in a way that makes understanding possible, for ourselves and for those who come after us.

The book was published just after I was grieving the loss of my father, who passed during advent season… A radio man whose journalistic prowess shaped how I listen to and analyze music to this day. Like Griffin’s father, my father Rev. Dr. Alvin Augustus Jones last moments were in the care of the police during a wellness check. He loved books and debating with me about various concepts, especially matters of faith. Losing him caused a deafening silence in my intellectual world, a vacuum that I needed a model for commemorating how he shaped my intellectual life. He was a promoter and amplifier for our community. He loved to banter about biblical text with me with no judgement. 

Griffin too thinks about silence, the silences that her family lived with, the silences due to shame that are all too cumbersome and never allow people to love us in our entirety. I wish for you the opportunity to speak for yourself.

So, what do we do when the sacred texts do not bear witness to our lives? How do we decipher the existentially incomprehensible portions of our sacred texts? The parts that actually do not make any sense because your life, your knowing challenges the text’s premise.

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak…And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

I never knew my mother to be silent in church. A woman before her time, my mother is a walking contestation of that text. She is a third-generation preacher and prophet who was raised in the Chesapeake Bay and eventually moved to Washington, DC. My father said her met in the church, he saw her move about the church, and he experienced her preach, and was sold out. I can hear my mama now, engaging all of the biblical literalists who questioned her theological right to proclaim the gospel. She’d say,

“The Lord is my light and my salvation—
    whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life—
    of whom shall I be afraid?”

On sight, he decided that they should do life together. And if there was any learning going on, he was eager to be her student, for sure! They chose ministry together and allowed the fruits of their ministry to speak to and dismantle the biblical literalist protest about how she took up space.

And yet, I learned that I had no idea what made her such a powerhouse. It was the power of the Creator in her and her commitment to make the life she forged for herself to count. Though there were freedoms she experienced in finding her voice in ministry, in a long line of women in ministry, there were ways in which society taught her to be silent about her life. It wasn’t until my dad’s passing that she was freed to divulge her beautiful story of how she got over.

My mother Rev. Dr. Martha Jones is a living epistle, read of humanity. 

Let me tell you: It is not just church people, it is people in society that force us into confinement whether it be because of status, respectability, or peer pressure.

Let us reflect on how essential it is to practice comprehension, reasoning, and understanding as followers of Christ. The ability to reason together, to seek understanding, to be forthcoming, and to communicate truthfully is the bedrock of our walk with God and our relationships with each other. 

Our faith calls us to rise above the fog, to discern truth from falsehood, and to speak truth with love and courage. We are called to be beacons of clarity, vessels through which peace, not confusion, flows. Proverbs tells us, "In all thy getting, get understanding." It is through this understanding that we cultivate virtues like patience, humility, and integrity, and it is through these virtues that we bear witness to the love of Christ.

Griffin’s journey, as we have seen, is a testament to the power of understanding, to the relentless pursuit of truth. Her father's words, "read until you understand," are consistent with the heart of our Christian journey: a call to never settle for half-knowledge or misunderstanding but to seek the full truth, even when it challenges us. 

When we apprehend, we can love more deeply, forgive more readily, and move forward with a spirit of peace. Let us carry with us the resolve to seek understanding, to live in truth, and to be the light that shines through the confusion of this world. For there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and in that freedom, we find clarity, we find purpose, and we find peace.

Amen