Divine purpose helped bring Chicago’s most-dangerous block back to life
For years, I have watched so-called experts look at the 6400 block of South Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive — O Block, Chicago's most dangerous block — and write it off. They prescribed programs, funding and initiatives. The funerals kept coming. Not much changed. They were wrong not about the problem but about the solution.
What was dying on that block wasn't something a program could cure. It was hope.
I have seen children come into this world with a brightness in their eyes. That spark of life that you see in the big ole eyes of a baby. God-given, undeniable, unmistakable. Every one of them. And as the baby grows into a child or teen, I have watched that spark deaden into coal blackness. What happened in between? What killed that spirit? Was it hopelessness? Hate? The slow, grinding daily message that the world had already decided the child’s limits?
Once that spark goes out, is that it? Is it over? The hope forever gone?
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I've sat with hardened felons fresh out of prison, men who were determined or resigned to go right back to the life of violence and crime. Most of them had no hope left. None. They were coming back to the streets that took the hope away from them. I’ve looked at these men and I have told them the truth. I believe God has created a uniqueness in each one of us. He put that spark in the eyes of the baby.
I’ve told these men that we have to find what that uniqueness is in each one of you. I've told them it won't be easy. But each one of us has a purpose, and we know God didn't put us here to be killing, robbing or hurting. That's the devil. If you're doing that, you're doing the devil's work. God is light. God is hope. And my job, my purpose on this earth, is to bring that hope back.
That is what drove me to the roof.
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After burying another young man from our congregation, I climbed onto the top of a dilapidated motel across from New Beginnings Church. That motel was known in our neighborhood as the House of Satan, where gangs ran guns, drugs and prostitution out of every room. I stayed for 94 days in the dead of winter. It was not a stunt, but a declaration that we will not accept the death of hope in this community.
Out of those days came Project H.O.O.D. — Helping Others Obtain Destiny. And when people ask me why I'm building the 90,000-square-foot Robert R. McCormick Leadership & Economic Opportunity Center on the very ground where that house of darkness once stood, I tell them that this is my purpose in life. I was brought to Chicago from my previous homes in Indiana and Tennessee to keep that light of hope burning in the eyes of our children all through their growing up.
I want them to focus on what it takes to become a strong individual. I want them to focus on their passions. I want them to develop a value for themselves, for who they are and who they can be. Because here is what I have learned: hope in oneself creates so much value that a person would never do anything to jeopardize it. They come to value themselves far too much to risk the dark side.
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A boy who knows he was made for something will not pick up a gun to take that from someone else. A girl who believes in her own God-given destiny will not settle for the streets.
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Someone who truly values himself is an asset to society, not a liability. It is only when we develop and strengthen ourselves that we can help others. That is not a slogan. That is the engine of transformation I have watched work, day after day, in the lives of people everyone else had given up on.
Today, O Block no longer ranks among Chicago's most dangerous places. Not because of a government program. Because people in this community refused to let the light die. Former gang members are now mentors. Fathers have come home to their children. Young people are graduating into lives that mean something.
Government can build buildings. It can craft policies. But just look around at the results. It took the hope and agency away from the people. Those who could, fled. The government cannot restore the human heart. It is God and faith that does that deep work of reminding us that we are not accidents of circumstance but image-bearers with divine purpose.
America does not need more despairing diagnoses of its inner cities. Why do we keep paying think tankers to repeat the obvious? We need communities that refuse to surrender. Hope is not passive wishing. It is the gift of God within all of us. We must push the evil out so that goodness in our society, goodness in our fellow man can let that light shine in each one of us.