On Eagle’s Wings

My heart nearly stopped when Joe Biden referenced “On Eagle’s Wings” last night because that song has a unique place in my personal history.

When I was in the seventh grade, I attended a Catholic school in central Kentucky. At the time, I was very strongly Southern Baptist, but county schools weren’t great, so my parents tried something different.

All of a sudden, I went from church services held in a lovely but simple country building to attending school Mass in a vast, elegant structure built in 1816—the first Catholic Cathedral west of the Allegheny Mountains.

The walls of the cathedral were decorated by paintings donated by King Louis. There were quiet and seemingly mysterious areas full of flickering candles where little old ladies knelt all hours of the day to pray. I had never seen stations of the cross on the walls, images that provided a detailed reminder of the passion of Jesus.

The formality was so very strange to me. I didn't know what to do with the bowls full of water or how to kneel before entering a pew. The recitations and responses. The decorated objects. The robes. The robes. It was a different world.

After I had experienced enough masses to know the basic rhythms, my fear began to wear down, and I began to understand a different sort of worship.

Most of the religious experiences I had known before then had involved either the conviction of my gut or the cerebral processing of my mind as I followed pastors and Sunday School teachers methodically through the Bible.

The Catholic worship experience didn’t negate what I had known before, but it did expand a few critical areas of my engagement with God.

First, it changed my sense of connection with other believers around the world. I learned that the same liturgy being spoken by the priest I had come to love was also being experienced by other Christians living all around the world. Baptist churches are fiercely independent—at least they were at the time—so this was a completely new concept for me.

Secondly, not only was my geographical breadth grown, but my sense of orientation in the history of faith also developed. The same liturgy I was experiencing had been used for decades (though prior to Vatican II in Latin), and this helped me feel a sense of connection through time to other Christians from other ages. In the Baptist church, our hymnody provided a bit of this sensation, but because Mass was an entire pattern of responsive service, I began to realize how my faith was part of something far larger and older than anything I had understood before.

Thirdly, it developed my awe of God. I had felt fear of God before, as the Baptist church talks a great deal about hell and salvation. But I don’t think I had ever felt the emotion of “awe” until sitting in a Catholic mass. I realize that some of my friends feel uncomfortable with high church, and I understand why. It’s not for everybody. However, I was enchanted. There was a sort of poetry to sitting in Mass inside this glorious cathedral. A tactile reverence washed over me—a sense that God’s presence was as beautifully-other as it was terrifyingly-holy. I felt a thrilling shyness that was also full of longing. As an American, this part of my heart had never been touched before. I had respect for Presidents, but they were people we elected. We were their bosses, ultimately. A King—a high and mighty king— produced entirely new sensation in my spirit.

But what about the doctrinal differences?

Just like there are serious chasms between the Democratic platform and the Republican platform, there are intense chasms between Catholic and Protestant belief--chasms intense enough that they have led some to kill and destroy, attempting to gain power.

While violence wasn’t a threat during my time at school, there were certainly serious differences in our community that led believers to suspect and even despise one another.

I was a theologically precocious child, so I felt the differences as a nun taught our religion classes. However, my points of difference were warmly welcomed by my teachers. One even let the class know that they should all study the Bible like the Protestants. So even in the midst of this disparity, my faith grew, my love for those of other beliefs grew, and I grew to adore that cathedral. After I stopped attending this school, as a teenager, I would drive over to sit in those pews—surrounded by the sense that order continued amid the chaos—and that my King God was still big, beautiful, holy.

During the years I was attending Catholic school, in the midst of all that I am describing above, a single hymn became important to me. Of course, Joe Biden mentioned it in his speech last night, “On Eagle’s Wings.”

The words are from Psalm 91, and they tell the story of a man who is focusing on God’s ability to protect him in the midst of danger and chaos.

As I sang back through the words last night for the first time in over thirty years, I was so moved. The past few years have been brutal for me. I’m not going to spend much time talking about what I’ve lost because any conservative who has tried to be faithful to Jesus during this season has similar stories.

I will say I needed this reminder so badly. The old forms of shelter and protection I used to know are gone. I don’t mean that my political party lost. I mean that my political party abandoned itself. As far as I can tell, it is no more. It has morphed into something unrecognizable to me.

So here I sit, in a political space as foreign to me as that soaring cathedral once was, surrounded by customs that are terrifying to me, strongly disagreeing with some major issues, finding tenderness here and there, learning new things about new angles on the pursuit of goodness.

I can tell I will be a bit of a foreigner no matter what happens next.

But it hit me last night that we can grow in foreign places, too. Because my King sometimes uses strange and opposing environments to develop parts of us that we didn’t know needed expansion.

I don't know how God works exactly, but nothing could have been more meaningful to me personally than hearing this particular reference last night.

I felt seen by my King and loved by Him. I felt like He gave me a nod saying, "Becca, there will be room here for you to not only keep the faith but also to spread it." Thanks be to God.

“On Eagle’s Wings”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6tvLVmwQug

You who dwell in the shelter of the Lord Who abide in His shadow for life Say to the Lord, "My refuge, my rock in whom I trust!"

And He will raise you up on eagles' wings Bear you on the breath of dawn Make you to shine like the sun And hold you in the palm of His hand

The snare of the fowler will never capture you And famine will bring you no fear Under His wings your refuge, His faithfulness your shield

And He will raise you up on eagles' wings Bear you on the breath of dawn Make you to shine like the sun And hold you in the palm of His hand

You need not fear the terror of the night Nor the arrow that flies by day Though thousands fall about you, near you it shall not come

And He will raise you up on eagles' wings Bear you on the breath of dawn Make you to shine like the sun And hold you in the palm of His hand

For to His angels He's given a command To guard you in all of your ways Upon their hands they will bear you up Lest you dash your foot against a stone

And He will raise you up on eagles' wings Bear you on the breath of dawn Make you to shine like the sun And hold you in the palm of His hand And hold you, hold you in the palm of His hand

Personal confession in a time of national sin

It’s a weird time to wrestle with personal sin.

The lion’s share of American cultural energy points the accusatory finger outward, not inward. The spirit of our age is propelled by fierce external criticism, and with good reason. Never have I seen such a legitimate need to evaluate political and religious culture with discernment, critiquing false teaching and claims, and exposing deep wrongs like I have the past few years.

Believers who are wired as shepherds, full of the fire to protect others, feel a constant sense of alertness. The wolves stalk the flock. They attack the innocent and the naive every single day. Someone must stand against them.

So often these days, I’ve thought of bits and pieces of stories my grandfather told me—a WWII combat veteran. Treks through bogs full of bloated, decomposing soldier bodies that would roll and bob as his company marched through. Implications of weekends of sordid, carnal relief in little European villages, young men taking in the escapes common to those who know they might die tomorrow. Moments of disrespect, rebellion, violence, indulgence all wrapped up inside of a context of giving one’s life for the freedom of others. Even as a child, I felt the morality of wartime somehow existed within a pocket of grace. These men were only human, after all.

Yet, holiness isn’t a sliding scale. We don’t trade small indulgences for large sacrifices like Monopoly houses for hotels. The purity of a single heart matters, even in the midst of a savage battle.

This premise drives my favorite television series, Foyle’s War—a British detective series about a small town policeman trying to maintain micro-morality in the context of the global strife of WWII. Episode after episode, Foyle faces questions of individual ethics, these dilemmas sometimes intersecting with threats to national security. Does it REALLY matter if a single individual cheated, stole, killed, if ultimately a greater cause was served?

The viewer is often challenged by the question, “Do the ends justify the means?”—ultimately reminded that if micro matters of goodness and truth are forfeited for the Almighty Cause, in the end, there would be no base culture left worth defending, for the bad guys and the good guys would become one in the same.

I feel a similar struggle in 2020.

I have no doubt that wicked—even satanic forces—are working in America right now. I see two great evil ideologies, one on the political right and one on the political left, striving for control.

The former bastardizes Christianity in an attempt to gain worldly power, promises to give safety in exchange for moral dishonesty, and dresses up greed in affectations of false patriotism. It excuses longstanding abuses of race and social class with blame and pride—feeding the public with propaganda and conspiracy.

The latter elevates human autonomy as the ultimate solution for the problems of humankind, promising to be trustworthy with the distribution of resources, assuring humanity that it has the capability to identify and enforce ultimate moral truth. It offers to function like man-god on earth, glossing over longstanding, inevitable human realities about greed and corruption. It is unquestioningly confident about its own moral conclusions while standing fiercely opposed to the possibility of contradicting truths.

While the right claims, “We own God!” the left claims, “We are God!” It is so easy for me to see what is wrong with both extremes—easy to see how they are simultaneously roaring, speeding like two trains toward a broken track over a precipice.

I could spend every hour of every day (and sometimes nearly do) trying to drive my Gandalf staff into the earth with utter confidence, unflinchingly staring down the Balrog of either side, declaring, “None shall pass.” However reality is, I’m not Gandalf. I’m more of a Boromir—a mix of wound, and noble intentions, and resentment, and fatal flaw.

And in the midst of this epic battle, I have to admit that I’m making mistakes that require grace.

Every day, I try to wake up and choose ferocious courage, even though I struggle with all the emotions many other Americans are experiencing right now. I feel homeless politically and spiritually. I feel some fear about how the next few weeks may play out. I limp because of core relational wounds that have resulted over the past few years, several of which I cannot mention in public writing. Just saying this much will resonate with some of you, though. You’re living in that tension as well.

All of these present pains sit upon a larger and older context of disappointment—stories of betrayal and dishonesty within communities I once trusted that have now fallen to bits. A lot of those old disasters were never resolved. And I’ll admit, I tried harder for resolution in some situations than others. If you’re into the Myers Briggs, I’m INFJ, and we have an infamous “door slam”—a moment of finality that comes after years of attempting to make an impossible relationship work—an almost involuntary resignation to a lack of resolution. We care too much, it nearly kills us, then our hearts give up—and as I look over my past, I see a trail of critical moments in which this happened.

But sometimes those lost situations resurrect like ghosts, faces flashing, heartbreak hovering anew, questions rising about what might have been done to prevent it all, and guilt for whatever emerged from my own heartache that should have been more measured, more patient, more forgiving.

Aside from all these conflicts, looking back over my life, I also see moments of unholy indulgence, a soldier’s weekend attempt to run away from reality that was too severe, too lonely, too violent, too disappointing, too hopeless. I see the weight of cynicism and despair pressing me down with whispers of, “Nothing is true, nothing is good, just give up.”

I see my own terror at the prospect of meaninglessness and solitude, and intermittent but desperate attempts to scramble into an imaginary or alternate reality in which I could be small, safe, surrounded by tenderness and comforts. I wasted money purchasing of objects that connoted security because I wanted to hold something in my hands that felt beautiful or protective. I fluctuated between charging into unbearable pain for the sake of an eternally-good cause and retreating hard into the pleasures of earth when martyrdom grew too difficult. Back and forth. Deep sacrifice and hedonistic respite.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a person of inherently mild manner—one who naturally deflects and pacifies, never touching extremes of any sort. I imagine the regrets of that temperament feel more like a dull ache, heavy, like a weight hanging from inside of a chest. For someone like me, though, regret feels like looking back over a vast expanse of sea wreckage, horrible memories bobbing like shards in the waves.

Even the suggestion of personal sin feels primitive this days. Not only have we abandoned the prospect of divine holiness because it doesn’t jibe with our assumptions of justice (How dare God be other. How dare he be pure in a way that is beyond us? How dare the Creator of the universe insist upon moral reality that comes hard for me?), but also we have greater enemies to resist beside that which lives inside us.

The great THEY threaten the great US. We can focus on our own failures when the battle is over. I have no doubt that they are so wrong. They are so dangerous. They need to be held to account. They need to be resisted.

However, sometimes your spirit moves where it wills.

Last night I couldn’t sleep, hit with the micro context of my own failures inside of the macro context of wars we all must fight right now. It was horrific, heavy, dark, exhausting.

For those long hours, I forgot all about the sins of both the political right and the political left and stood facing the errors of one human being who has stumbled along a broken road, failing over and over again.

Like those terrible but powerful last four chapters of C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, I felt like I found the enemy staring into a mirror instead through the rifle scope. And so, I was thankful when dear friend sent me this video after hearing about my need to be reminded of this fundamental truth.

"They" are bad. There's no denying it. Sometimes so are we.

And yet, we are loved. So dearly loved. The warriors. The wimps. The careful. The cavalier. Oh Come, All You Unfaithful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-QHbpYjuIg

The Theology of Trolls

Trolls on social media are finally getting due attention. 

Warnings are sounding like crazy right now—fake accounts are being created by America’s enemies, with the sole purpose of stirring up division in our nation. 

Divided we fall, so the more extreme our views become, the more exaggerated our cross-partisan attacks become, the easier we are to overthrow. A popular “Can you spot the troll?” quiz is spreading like wildfire, showing us how difficult it is to spot artificial humans created to stir up strife. 

Here, fake news meets fake activist. And many of those accounts are horrifyingly convincing. Through these reports and exercises, we are being shown how our rage and hate make us vulnerable to the manipulation of those who  have devious international and economic ends.

I suppose we should have known better long ago. After all, we live in the age of mechanized fakes.

Amazon is full of fake Birkenstocks, fake elite hair products, fake perfumes, and even fake cleaning solutions. Reviews show us the frustration of consumers who took the bait, looked for a deal on a trustworthy item, and found it utterly lacking.

Scammers fake important messages from the CDC, the Census Bureau, credit card companies, and disaster relief.

False compassion products claim to provide for marginalized people overseas while absorbing vast percentages of profit.

Ebay is full of fake vintage collectibles, fraudulent signatures, and knock-off “antiques.”

Anything that is good, effective, sincere, desirable is reproduced in false form to accumulate power and profit.

The beautiful and the worthy will always be imitated by what is horrid and selfish. So, it should be no surprise that wicked people would find a way to replicate and commandeer fake versions of the gospel.

And this is nothing new. So many of my non-believing friends argue, “Look what horrors have been done in the name of religion!” However, experientially, I must conclude that a long history of knock offs points to the likelihood of a valid faith rather than to its falsity.

Applying the pattern of nefarious imitation that we see occurring in politics and consumer sales to the life and mission of an authentic Jesus, we should expect the past 2000 years to be filled with knock-off Christian causes attempting to worm their way into profit and power. If Jesus was a good and authentic messiah, then everyday experience teaches us that evil should have commandeered his reputation to support racism, crusades, oppression.

This is exactly what has happened. And it is exactly what’s happening still.

As believers, this means we need to hone serious troll-spotting skills in our spiritual lives as well as in our consumer and political lives. We need to be able to identify signs that the name and purpose of Jesus are being used to accomplish goals that have nothing to do with him. 

We need to realize that bad people using Christ’s name will be tricky—just like political trolls. 

1. They will  be smart enough to appeal to noble causes and impulses. 

2. They will be smart enough to include enough facts/verses that make themselves seem legit. 

3. They will be smart enough to feed fear and self-righteous rage.

4. Their ideas will be embraced and forwarded by people we know and trust, multiplying like a virus in once-healthy communities.

So, as you learn more about trolls in the political realm and wrestle through social media infiltration by America’s enemies—remember to apply this wisdom to trolls in the spiritual realm as well.

Know your Shepherd well enough to separate the true work of Christ from those who want to use his reputation for their dark ends.

And never, ever feed the trolls.

Image Credit: Morguefile lauramusikanski

Spiritual Breathing and Christian Politics: A Path to National Healing

Conservative and progressive believers alike claim to be pulling America back to the heart of the gospel with their political stances. And yet, Christians in both parties often miss a critical element of gospel mechanics.

We advocate for laws that defend the truth of God. We advocate for programs that promote the mercy of God. But we chase both goals without walking in regular confession—opposing the fundamental dynamic of a healthy spiritual existence.

When I was on staff with a campus ministry years ago, one of our leaders often talked about the concept of “spiritual breathing.” For a Christian to be healthy, there should be a constant, breathlike pulse in our walk with Christ. We should run to him with an honest admission of our shortcomings—the exhalation—alongside the application of lavish grace for our weaknesses. The inhalation of the Holy Spirit provides power for moving forward.

Over and again, the New Testament shows us that there’s room for our failures in the love of God. However, we must be honest about those shortcomings—and also willing to connect with a Savior who not only forgives us but also enables the power of the Creator to flow through us so that we aren’t trying to operate as branches severed from the Vine. (John 15). God tells us that if we try to go solo here, we will not bear any fruit.

But we never seem to actually believe that, do we? We sidestep the indwelling and run straight to the performance. We’ve got this, God. Hold our beers.

This is a grave error, for the Christian life was not intended to be a solitary labor but a life of union. Our time on earth is not a set of performative hoops through which we jump—but an initial restoration of the broken connection between God and man, leading to a lifetime of connectivity that leads us deeper and deeper into reliance upon and enjoyment of our Savior. Our individuality is like a beautiful vessel that fills with the might  and creativity of the Livng God. 

The Christian life is a dynamic in which the Lord provides safety and welcome for our weakness alongside strength for our labors in Him. Any other system called “Christian” is not.

How strange, therefore, that we see so little of this essential dynamic in Christians on either political side claiming to implement Christ’s values in American culture.

Confession and admission of need are non-existent, as far as I can tell. Everyone is boasting about his or her team. Everyone is claiming to stand for Christ. Everyone is defending his or her own earthly allegiance. 

I see so many people using the name of God in politics but almost no one speaking about or demonstrating how Christianity actually works.

Take a principle so fundamental to the gospel as confession.

Imagine how the New Testament commission to deal with the log in our own eye before picking at the splinter in another’s would change the entire landscape of political discourse. If Christians on the right and Christians on the left would begin to evaluate our own parties and platforms with the scrutiny we apply to our opponents, we could each help lead our parties out of the toxicity in which our nation now seethes.

Instead, I see chest beating and bravado all around. 

A powerful leader on the right has waved a Bible about in public while boasting about never having confessed his own sins. He just decides to do better. (Anti-gospel. Anti-Christianity.)

The Christian GOP spends every single day pointing fingers, shouting, claiming holiness while manifesting so many traits the Bible defines as darkness. Pride. Contention. Strife. Slander. Hate. A lack of mercy. 

Could it be more possible for the GOP to align more closely with the posture of the Pharisee in Luke 18:11– the man who prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector.” 

Leaders on the left tend to spread a gospel of “I’m okay, you’re okay,” instead of getting down into the nitty gritty of (1) the grave severity of being born autonomous, (2) our deep need to be reconnected to a holy and loving God, (3) the singular importance of Christ’s reparative sacrifice for us, (4) and what it truly looks like to take up the cross of discipleship while walking in the indwelling of a holy God.

The Left welcomes the social justice elements of Christianity that humanists in our culture embrace; however, the idea of God’s holiness and our natural lack thereof often seems to be missing. This beginning is going to make it difficult for deep, subsequent confessions to occur. If we’re not okay with being not okay at the onset of our Christian journey—if we don’t have a plan that’s far bigger than us for our brokenness—we can’t invite God the healer into the heart of our problems.

While the American evangelical Right has lost the plot by abandoning all nuance, the American Christian Left seems to be drowning itself in it.  If the Christian Right proclaims, “God wants us to be powerful,” the Christian Left seems to proclaim, “God wants us to be affirmed.”

In terms of personal confession, I tend to gravitate between both extremes. Although I am more politically conservative, my irritation with the dishonesty and immorality of the current GOP drives me to fight in my own strength. And, because I am a nuanced (tormented) thinker, I tend to feel hostility toward God’s moral authority. I’m definitely the pot shouting to heaven, “Why did you make me/us like this if you didn’t want us to operate accordingly?”

I can see both weaknesses because I have both weakness. You may have the standard sins of a Republican or a Democrat. I have the standard sins of both.

Imagine how much would change in our nation if Christians on the Right and the Left simply began to do what was taught in campus ministry so long ago.

1. Ask God to reveal the sins of our own political party. (Yes, the sins. If you knee-jerk at that archaic word, you must not spend as much time on Twitter as I do.)

2. Admit those sins both to God and to the public. Express remorse and regret that our own team has fallen short of goodness. Admit publicly when our own leaders make horrible mistakes. Call them to change. Be more broken-hearted and sorrowful about the wrongs our people have done than those done by others.

3. Remember that Christian goodness works like the Jewish Passover—not in one’s ability to beat his or her chest and proclaim righteousness—but justification through the blood of Christ marking us.  If the blood of that lamb isn’t on the door, we aren’t saved from destruction. Are these archaic terms? Yes. They are also absolutely critical for making it out of this mess we are in.

Awareness of the prime importance of the blood of Christ should completely change our posture toward our own political party. If a party is more “Christian,” that means it is admitting that it is broken, justified by the blood of Christ—not that it has a right to flaunt its own self-righteousness. 

The “culture war” mentality has confused us by equating the Judeo-Christian ethic with true Christianity. Yes, ethics are involved in Christianity. But these result from an indwelling God—they aren’t implemented from an external framework.

Those working to implement the framework without the indwelling are branches separated from the Vine. They will bear no real fruit.

4. Walk in the power of an indwelling God who has forgiven and is forgiving us—not taking refuge in the power of wealthy and powerful men—not in the snarling possession of districts—not in the boastful sauntering of our own goodness or in the abusive slander of our political opponents— not by claiming to be protectors of the Christian ethic but protected by a God far more powerful than any political movement will ever become. 

Our power must result from the inhalation of the resources of God—not from earthly leverage. To fail in this regard is to embrace idolatry. It removes Christianity from our political activity and commandeers the name of Jesus while rejecting Union with him.

I see so much talk about what it means to be a Christian nation, but almost all of this occurs without actually digging into a God who is alive and offering to empower us.

I have no problem saying the words “one nation under God” when I repeat the pledge, but I don’t think that phrase captures how the faith actually works. Christians are not simply “under God,” they are “filled with God.” 

To be an American Christian is to be engaged in the regular work of spiritual breathing—exhaling sin, inhaling his power. Right or left, it must begin here or it’s not Christian.

The stances our parties hold may be moral in some regard, but if they are separated from the Vine—if they are merely humanistic goals with a Christian label slapped on them—they are going to be distorted and fly off in harmful directions.

Photo credit: hotblack at Morguefile

Why the Trump Movement Didn’t Save America Like It Had Hoped

Most of Trump’s fans went into 2016 convinced that America’s old ideals were undeniably good.

His voters did not need to be persuaded that capitalism, the Second Amendment, and the individual’s liberty to exercise religion were positive things. When Trump arrived on the scene, his voters believed strong private businesses were more trustworthy than bloated government programs, that patriotism was more important that globalism, and that our Constitution was reliable.

They voted for Trump because their trust in these things was already established. They weren’t looking for someone to convince others that such things were good—they just wanted a leader who would have the power to stand behind and enforce their beliefs.

This was their critical misstep.

What did these voters miss? Sheer power will never lead a nation like America. The flex of a favorite king may feel good to us temporarily, but this energy counters the inner mechanics of our republic.

We are not a monarchy, so a leader of this nation must do more than simply believe “the right things” or “enforce the right things.” Americans (right and left) are born knowing that we do more than follow. We challenge domination and resist oppression. So, a good President must also accept the perpetual responsibility of persuading the whole nation of the goodness of its ideals.

Whatever else the executive branch does, the lion’s share of a President’s job is to fight to cast a beautiful vision, calling the people as a whole to evidence that what is “American” is also trustworthy.

Trump completely ignored this critical responsibility.

We’ve been given photos of a goofy old man hugging a flag and ridiculous, partisan pep rally cheers about loving this nation. But we have had no attempts to educate or unify the masses under a vision that would help ensure liberty and justice for all.

The single most important thing a President does was abandoned entirely.

Trump sucker punched where he should have courted.

Trump tried to lead by flexing his biceps and beating his pecs instead of using the wisdom of a seasoned sage who has taken the time to study and fall deeply in love with America.

His smoke and lights WWF boast-show has been good enough for his fans because these people were already convinced that America’s foundations were safe and helpful.

They were giddy at the chance to cheer for the guy strutting around the ring in the shiny leotard. Meanwhile, millions and millions of Americans who didn’t head into 2016 believing that the guidelines driving our American experiment were reliable have felt bullied and bruised by Trump.

Instead of taking the time and energy to cast a vision all citizens could get behind, he’s proven that the establishment is callous, arrogant, ignorant, and self-protective. By this, he has fueled defiance against America’s core.

For millions of citizens, he has confirmed that “something is deeply wrong” with the old ways. Because the Emperor is wearing no clothes, anyone who acknowledges this ugly reality is tempted to entertain a thoughtful progressivism that seeks new solutions instead of looking to old ones.

What’s done is done.

At this point, I don’t think the damage can be reversed.

So many writers attempted to warn Trump fans that this was happening, but they were simply too drunk on power to exercise humility or wisdom. But as younger Americans try to process the past four years, maybe there’s a benefit to simply saying, “This is what happened,” after the trauma.

Sometimes I daydream about what the past four years might have been like, had we chosen a kind, intelligent statesman who would have used the time he was given to guide and nurture a growing nation.

I daydream about a visionary who would have poured out a constant stream of beautiful words and strong ideas, honest confessions of sins, and connections between universal truths and proposed policies.

I imagine what power there could have been in listening to the pain of America and verbalizing her wounds so that the hurting knew they had been understood.

I think about what kindness could have done.

I think about what restraint could have done.

I think about what maturity could have done.

I think about what a real President could have done from 2016-2020 to save America.

I’m so sorry we didn’t have that. I’m sorry we had someone who damaged our foundations instead of working to promote them.

Citizens who truly love America have a lot of work to do now because of this—in fact, we have so much more work than we had going into the Trump presidency.

Photo credit: DodgertonSkillhause on Morguefile

A Few Thoughts on the Removal of Monuments

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the removal of monuments.

Because I’ve engaged in quite a bit of pointed banter about this topic, I’ll admit something that might be a bit shocking to my friends. I do carry some fear about how deconstruction of America’s symbols might eventually snowball.

What kind of fears cross my mind? Here’s a partial list.

-“I’m okay with removing the worst statues. But where does removal stop? Are we going to take down every statue of every person who has done anything wrong? So, dogs then. We can keep all the statues of dogs.”

-“If we aren’t going to remove all the statues, which wrongs are going to be ‘bad enough’ to justify removal? Who makes that call? Who gets the power of deciding the reigning ethical standard for our nation?”

-“If we take away Confederate generals, are we going to take Jefferson away next? He owned slaves. Abe Lincoln also said some pretty bad stuff. Are we going to remove his monument? Is England going to take away everything Churchill because of the genocide in Bengal? Are we going to erase all of the symbols that have made us who we are?”

-“Is this the beginning of a Marxist takeover? There’s so much chaos. There’s so much anger. All this disruption fits into the Engels/Marx plan for dismantling a country—is the removal of our monuments just one more step in that process?”

-“So, let’s say we remove the monuments. Then what about other images that threaten people? Are we going to take down every cross and every posting of the Ten Commandments?”

-“What if a church building offends someone because of mistakes Christians made during the Crusades a thousand years ago? Are we going to knock down every place of worship?”

My left-leaning friends are probably laughing at a few of these latter fears. “Oh, come ON, Rebecca! That would NEVER happen in America.”

Yeah, I hope not. But when I look at the ferocity of anti-American frustration seething in our nation, and when I consider how hostile forces might hijack the legitimate furies we feel, I’m truly not sure where it could lead. I mean, I’m the sort of person who uses a meat thermometer when cooking hot dogs, and I carry a tiny magnifying glass everywhere I go—just in case I need to survive by starting a fire. Don’t tell me what probably isn’t going to happen.

I see why people are concerned about this movement. Simultaneously, I am frustrated with Uber-right wing voices manipulating good people by fear—convincing them that every potential move of ethics or compassion is a “threat of losing this country.”

We’re losing basic humanity as a direct result of our fear. Last week, an old man (who disagrees with my ideology) was shoved to the ground by police, hitting his head on the concrete and sustaining brain damage. How does the man with the most power in the entire world handle this? He accuses the old guy of being an Antifa agent—based on gossip.

Hippie? Maybe. Liberal? Maybe. Antifa? Shame on Trump for that. Shame. Shame Shame. And shame on Christians for allowing wicked and terrible leaders to call that sort of language “conservative.” There’s nothing conservative about slander—in fact, it’s the posture of hell.

Well, this post is off to a great start.

Now that I’ve managed to make my friends on the left think I’m paranoid while infuriating every Trump fan who is still reading my blog—let’s continue.

So—what to do about the monuments? What can we possibly do that will both (1) acknowledge the potential future dangers of deconstruction but also (2) stop the harm that is already spreading as the worst monuments remain? Because here’s the kicker—to deny that certain monuments are still causing harm is naive.

Imagine being an 11-year-old black boy on a school field trip, forced to keep quiet and be respectful while looking up at a statue of a man who helped enslave his ancestors. That child’s great-great-great-great grandparents were raped and beaten because of that man. His family was ripped apart because of him. Now his teacher tells him to stop wiggling and “honor your forefathers.” That’s wrong.

Imagine walking through a park every day as a 13-year-old black girl, seeing a Confederate general who risked his life to fight in a war ensuring that your great-great-great-great grandmother could remain someone’s sex slave. When this grandmother got pregnant, her young daughter would be torn from her and sold at five years old—never to be seen again.

The girl hears a tour guide explaining to a small crowd that this man was a good man, a godly man, a man with a deep walk of faith. “So,” the girl thinks, “God was on the abuser’s side as he treated MY family, MY people, MY race with brutality. The harm he did MY ancestors just doesn’t matter as much as the good things he did for the white people who really count in America.”

Imagine a world in which random old women at the grocery call you the n-word, and where people who own stores suspect you of shoplifting, and where young couples change sides of the road when you walk by because they assume you’re going to hurt them.

Imagine hearing car doors lock when you walk by them. Imagine facing surprise when you are “articulate.” Imagine a whole life lived in which so much tells you that you aren’t able, aren’t welcome, aren’t trusted. You live this life while walking through a world in which public lands (that you also own as a citizen) and public monuments (that you also own as a citizen) constantly remind you that so many of the same sources of power that dominated your ancestors still hold that power in the world today.

So, no matter how nostalgic we white folks feel about that old stone dude on the horse—there is a real and active impact on the black community when we keep certain figures on platforms in the public square.

“But we cannot erase history,” you say. Let’s think about that a moment. Erasing history would truly be a serious danger—if the facts were being undermined or smeared. However, many of our monuments “erased history” when they were erected. They didn’t tell the whole truth from day one. Instead, they were formed in ways that conveyed only the strengths of a historical figure. They didn’t show his sins and brokenness alongside of his honor.

Unilateral mystique was created around men who offered both huge victories for liberty and also destroyed liberty. And because most white people like the idea of heroic white forefathers, we’ve let a lot of that truth slide for an awfully long time.

Several years ago, a well-known “Christian” video series was sold to masses of evangelicals, warning white people that their history was being destroyed. A fake historian created this series, using information that has been discredited over and over again. Still, he succeeded in convincing many evangelicals that America’s white heroes were every bit as godly and noble as we had always hoped—and that anyone who said otherwise was a lying enemy of our land.

He was wrong, though. Not only was he historically inaccurate, he was also supporting a mythos that doesn’t jibe with what the Bible tells us about human nature. The Bible shows over and again that all human heroes are broken men. Fallen men. Some did some good things. Many did wrong alongside of that good. And while we see chapters like Hebrews 11, praising men and women of faith, those verses fall within a greater theological context showing just how capable they were of goofing things up.

The Bible rounds out the honor of its heroes with good-old-fashioned honesty. America hasn’t done a great job of this, as a whole.

I wonder sometimes what our statues might have looked like if we had applied the principles of democracy to our art instead of simply adopting the established aesthetic of monarchies.

So many of our early monuments were modeled on other monuments of Greece, Rome, and England. We wanted that loftiness and culture—but alongside elegance, we also caught the “look” of kingship.

Brainstorm with me. What if we had instead created statues that represented the humble ideals of a democratic republic? What if we had created statues that looked like humans instead of sovereigns and gods? What if we had never stretched the truth? What if we had never built a nation on exaggeration?

This post is too long, and you’re going to complain. So, I’m not going to unpack the billion other thoughts I have on the matter here. But quickly, I’m going to suggest three steps of action that I wish “the powers that be” would consider.

1. Don’t depend on statues to do what reading must. Most Americans don’t know the difference between Marxism, Socialism, Fascism, and our own Constitution.

A ton of people complaining about statue removal didn’t even know these monuments existed in the first place. Daily, I see people forwarding memes that prove we have utterly failed at educating Americans in their own government and its inner workings.

Monuments aren’t going to protect a culture that doesn’t know what the heck it is or how it is supposed to work. Currently, we are so stupid, a full-out Marxist/Fascist/Socialist/you-name-it could slip into our midst pretending to be a patriot, using words and images that “seem” American, while utterly undermining our entire system. We address that risk by deep education—not by fighting over symbols.

2. Let’s develop a reasonable system for monument removal/replacement that asks questions like:

-Is this monument ethically and historically honest? Is it telling the truth about history? -What does this location convey?

-What does this posture convey?

-What does this size/height convey?

-If this person has also done something wretched, is there sufficient acknowledgement here visually to present the dark as well as the light? If not, can elements be added to tell a more truthful story?

- Is there a venue that might hold this monument in a manner more historically accurate than this?

-Is this the sort of person we would want modern children to emulate?

-Do other monuments in this region tell other aspects of the story? Are other heroes with equal credibility treated with equal honor?

3. Let’s stop letting extremists manipulate us.

Let’s all admit that America has external enemies who want to undermine our basic stability. Let’s admit that some of those enemies want to stir us up to chaos and self-destruction. Let’s admit that if we attempt to remove every statue of every person who made a mistake, all our monuments will be gone. Let’s admit that every move of gratitude for a hero is also a move of grace.

But let’s all also admit that some of what we have raised up in honor should be brought down in shame. Let’s realize that not all monuments are created equal—some are darker than others and some are harmful simply because they stand. And let’s love our fellow citizens enough to do unto them as we would want done to ourselves.

Let’s care about them. Let’s get inside of how they are grieving and struggling. Let’s feel the pain they feel when they see lies told 200 years ago told again today.

We have work to do here, and it’s not going to be easy. It’s a mine field in so many ways. But just like American colonists ripped down the Manhattan monument to George III in 1776, we may yet have some “old kings” to dethrone. Let’s get together and figure this out. It’s not all or none. It’s learn. It’s empathize. It’s discuss. It’s walk in love for our fellow man.

Painting: “Pulling Down the Statue of King George III, New York City.” By Johannes Adam Simon Oertel 1852-1853

I’m not a huge fan of “Jesus Loves the Little Children.”

I’m not a huge fan of the song “Jesus Loves the Little Children.”

Don’t worry, I’m not taking a hard stand against it. I’m not saying it’s a bad song. I understand why people love it.

But every time I hear someone sing those words, I think of a saying the old country people used to use:

”The problem with kittens is that they turn into cats.”

The little Asian babies. The little Native American babies. Hispanic toddlers. Precious black three-year-olds. Nobody looks at the tiny folk with disdain.

But the problem with little people is that they turn into adults. Adults we suspect. Adults we accuse. Adults we fear.

I remember hearing little old white ladies talk about adorable “pickaninnies” you “just wanted to squeeze” in one breath while using the n-word in the next.

I have a brown son, and when our old choir would sing “Jesus loves the little children,” I’d lean over and whisper-sing a lyrical shift in his ear.

“Jesus loves the little children,

all the children of the world,

speckled, striped, and polka dot—

Jesus loves us all a lot—

Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

We’d both die laughing with that subversive giggle you can only share in church. “Moooooooom. Be good!”

It’s how I handled the painful zing of knowing my brown baby would someday be a brown teenager or brown adult, facing every stereotype and suspicion of his nation of origin.

Give him ten years, and some of the white folks singing this song wouldn’t be digging deep into their pockets to hand him a peppermint. Instead they would mention “The Chinese Virus” and crack jokes about eating cats.

Jesus loves us all a lot, kid. When you’re more than just a cute brown baby. When you’re speckled with teenage acne. When the stripes of lines start to mark your face. When you’re polka dotted with liver marks on your hands. When these white folks no longer think you’re cute, Jesus will love you, kid.

Because the love of our God is so much bigger than the easiest of affections for the smallest of the red, and yellow, black, and white. Jesus loves the large black man you fear on the street. Jesus loves the immigrant trying to swim to freedom. Jesus loves the Chinese scientists.

Jesus loves adults who scare me,

All the grown ups of the world.

Those who protest, march, and disagree

Jesus loves as much as me

Jesus loves each precious grown up of the world.

first time out there

Yesterday I went shopping in a store for the first time since about March 15.

I needed more banana pepper and cucumber seeds after sowing our first batch in soil that had only been tilled once and desperately needed compost. Red Tennessee clay may be beautiful, but it’s rotten for planting. This year, pandemic made early soil prep impossible, so I’m giving it a second shake.

I put off leaving my house to enter the great OUT THERE for hours and hours. A single errand seemed like such a big leap after months of sanitizing delivered groceries. The old days of stay home orders left me no choices. I’m a bit disappointed in how much comfort I felt in resigning to this.

Timothy Snyder’s introduction to Czechoslovakian dissident Vaclav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless says, “Normalization meant accepting the way things were without any argument about how they should be…” Havel saw the dangers of a controlling government pacifying the masses, and I don’t want to be the sort who accepts bread and circuses without making waves.

“Give me liberty or give me death” runs deep in my bones. Yet in this past crisis, when the fool choice of one could harm thousands, I admit I was encouraged by external boundaries. Despite all the fears and frustrations of early Covid 19, at least I had the comfort of not having to decide all things.

Some of my fellow citizens yanked against those constraints from the beginning. I saw the masses revolt recklessly, selfishly, foolishly. So much bravado and so little love. I hated how they behaved. I also understood their concerns, even as I mocked them. Thank God for the rebels. Shut up, rebels. You’re saving us. You’re wrecking us.

All this.

It’s complicated, isn’t it? America is complicated.

I will also admit that for me, deciding whether banana pepper and cucumber seeds are “worth it” is exhausting. See, my adopted child’s lungs were damaged for three years in pollution and poverty. Basic flu could kill him, let alone Covid 19. Because of this new freedom, I’m alone in the struggles of choosing what steps to take. The risk of government dominance is lower. The risk of contagion is higher. He needs liberty and he needs oxygen.

Intellectually, I believe in a parent’s role and responsibility. Emotionally, I feel the weight of choosing redistributed on my shoulders. It was easier to blame others for missteps than face up to making a mistake myself.

Riding in a car was a bigger thrill than I had expected. Motion at the high speed of 35 MPH felt like flying. The sounds of ignition and motors, the engine smell, the sensations of turning, stopping. Windows down. Other people’s stereos coming in and fading out. The sight of their bare feet on the dashboards. Fat arms hanging over car sides. You’d call them rednecks, and they were. But Lord, people are beautiful in 3D. I guess I‘d never noticed before.

Thousands of Covid 19 tests have been completed in my county, and we have six or seven active cases right now. The viral fear of early March is subsiding around here. Those eager to accuse the reentering would call their movement recklessness, and some movement is reckless. But that’s not how I would describe most of what I witnessed.

A lot of the folks I passed looked flat tired—like they’ve come to terms with having to fight through one more danger in a life that was never safe for them—like they’re now feeling the burden of paying off another load of debt from accounts that were already strained. It’s easy to define the evil in fool protestors brandishing big guns and hanging effigies —easy to see the wickedness of an infantile President babbling egotistical nonsense. How I resent those voices.

Yet there are also so many hearty salt-of-the-earth folks who have scratched out a living for decades, accepting danger because life didn’t afford them the privileges of safety. They’ve worked jobs in coal mines, and in road construction, and around sick people. They’ve eaten cheap food that’s always been killing them. They’ve missed medical appointments because staying alive is too expensive.

You tell these folks there’s a .04% mortality rate for their demographic, in the midst of a life that was already far more certain to do them in. You tell them that, and you’ll see what I saw yesterday—people making a life in the middle of a dying world.

I wore a mask. A couple of others did, too. I wish everybody had. It would have been the most loving thing to do, I think. But I didn’t hate those who did not. I didn’t glare at them. I didn’t point or yell.

Pulling through a parking lot, the guy in front of me had one of those metal Darwin “Truth” fish on his trunk—a fish with legs eating a Christian Icthus. ‪His other bumper sticker said, “I hate socialism.”‬ He was shirtless and didn’t wear a seat belt—and I watched him nearly have a wreck, reaching over the passenger seat while driving, trying to grab something out of the floorboard.

Watching him, I remembered that people did dumb, selfish, or necessary things that killed other people before Covid. I remembered how someone I know always gets out on icy roads the minute the public service announcement hits asking people to stay inside. “I gotta 4-wheel drive,” he says. I remembered statistics about drunk driving, and STD’s, and landlords who don’t fix toxic mold, and moms who bring snacks with pecans and peanuts to classroom parties. I remembered the waitress with regular flu working three jobs to feed her kids, serving the old couple at Chili’s.

Reckless accidents. Oblivious oversights. Moments of entitlement. Harm committed out of desperately limited options.

The human race.

There have always been sensitive among us; and there have always been the narcissistic; and there have always been the common folk staying busy, trying to make ends meet.

Aside from ghost peppers and spaghetti squash, the garden store was out of vegetable plants. They were mostly out of vegetable seeds. I bought purple sage, rosemary, marjoram. I held my breath through my mask as I passed those huge fans they always have blowing in greenhouses.

I also bought huge packets of flower mixes—the sort of packets I never buy because I’m OCD and like to plan exactly where things go. When I left the house, I thought I was risking my life for vegetables. I guess I risked it for herbs and flower seeds. Not sure where that falls on the scale of “should have.” It’s what fell out.

Through my mask, I shyly told the girl at the counter this was the first time I’d been anywhere since March. She and the other teenager working laughed and said, “Must be nice. I been here almost every day.” Both were bare faced. “Has it been nice for anybody?” I asked, gently. They smiled, and we got quiet and saw each other.

Maybe I was imagining things because I’ve been out of the loop too long, but in that moment, it felt like we looked beyond everything our too-complicated-to-unpack life situations had driven us to do to survive the past few months. Despite our choices, and despite all we didn’t get to choose, over three packs of flowers and three pots of herbs, we saw human beings.

The Feminine Worth Problem

Years ago, I watched someone with a public platform of identity in Christ chase privately after everything the secular world values in women.‬

‪*Decades younger. ‬
‪*Athletic. ‬ ‪
*Adventuresome. ‬
*‪Blonde. ‬
‪*Strategically-alluring social media posts.‬
‪*Smart enough to engage without being smart enough to truly challenge. ‬

Of course, the standard spiritualized excuses emerged.‬ ‪“But I was hurt. But I finally feel alive. But we have a transcendent connection. This isn’t run-of-the-mill attraction. It’s one-in-a-million. Gift of God, even.” ‬ ‪

I watched. Listened. Felt the Doppler waves of an alternate holiness sink into me.‬

We hear so many warnings about being “judgmental,” but sometimes judgment isn’t driving the heart of what another person’s choices do in us. ‪Humans are empathetic creatures. We internalize what we observe. So, even if we have no desire to inflict our moral laws on someone else, simply processing another system of justification inevitably bleeds into how we feel about our own lives.‬

Our reaction isn’t “You should,” so much as “Because you have, I therefore feel...” ‪

The impact this particular incident had on my own identity was devastating. ‬I was at the vulnerable age of feeling older, less worthwhile, less able to evoke tenderness.‬ ‪I was also at the age of wondering if the sacrifices I’d made for the sake of others mattered. ‬ ‪

Most men say they respect strength in women; however, fewer women see this respect play out in the real world. The twenty-something single girl with a vivacious, curious spirit is still standard old dude enchantment. Same song, second verse. It’s almost every story.‬

For a long time, I struggled to understand why this bothered me so much. I’m not looking for a new romance. Why should it matter what old men do? Then it hit me. Observing what is chased by an individual inevitably provides a diagnostic for what he values.

Men want to be linked with what they see as worthwhile. So when we watch men with power and spiritual authority value the same qualities the secular world values in women, we can’t help but read something of our own worth in those results.

No matter what is “taught” as official principle—the women who watch this dynamic play out repeatedly in real life are shown what matters. The longing and the pursuit are the sermons—regardless of official words spoken, written, or sung.

For just a moment, imagine a culture in which a different sort of woman is desired by men in power.

Imagine that she is older, that she’s lived sacrificially, satisfying her thirsts for travel and deep study in the margins of giving herself away somehow.

Imagine the wounds she’s gained while dying to self evoking the same natural tenderness as the wild curiosity of youth.

Imagine knowledge obtained through scrappy reaching igniting the same intrigue as privileged opportunities for formal focus.

You pick the dynamic, just imagine any world in which selflessness has somehow played out in feminine lives. (And hear me—I don’t mean culturally-oppressive, gender-specific, top-down selflessness—I mean the chosen dying to self Christ asks of all men and all women.)

And now, imagine responsive hearts vast and deep enough to feel affection for a woman whose desires have been placed on altars instead of being electrified by greedy, late-night whispers.

Imagine a world in which the seasoned are idealized by thousands just like 20-something, effortless beauty is idealized today.

It’s laughable, right? If not laughable, it’s burdensome. Like eating your greens, loving goodness is the right thing to do. This is the sort of woman we should value. We really should. No love is more obligatory than love for a martyr.

Yet honestly, the weight of a given life is too heavy to be enchanting. No irresistible tenderness emerges for those who stayed in the in the backgrounds (single or married) sustaining organizations, family members, husbands, or children. No softness quickens for women who read their husband’s grad school books at 4 AM while rocking babies.

The knee jerk for those females is almost always a challenge. “How dare you presume to think! You studied his language and philosophy texts alone in some kitchen while making dinner. You’re not official. You worn-out fool, running your miles around the same small town blocks over and over while pushing a stroller. Time has passed. Beauty has faded. The world has moved on without you.”

Meanwhile, the church teaches “identity in Christ” messages to thousands of women who have watched this exact same dynamic play out over and over, year after year.

We struggle to believe what we are told about the indwelt life, the value of our souls, the beauty of taking up our crosses—not because those concepts are revolutionary—but because we haven’t seen men in positions of spiritual power believe them.

We grasp at teachings taught to us by the same men we’ve watched grasping at the world’s ideals. We notice what’s actually powerful in the hearts of our teachers and compare what we observe to what we are told. We don’t do this because we are legalists who judge. We do this because we are humans looking for what resounds.

We try to go to the God who made Rachel beautiful and Leah plain and stretch to believe beyond what we have seen—imagining that perhaps He is more than just another man whose tenderness swells naturally around a cliche.

Edvard Munch, “Woman on the Verandah”

Dear Mister Rogers

Dear Mister. Rogers,

Forgive me for the delay. I’m the one who dropped the ball. I never responded to your letter. 

Mom and I read it, tucked it carefully back in the envelope, and saved it. We thought one message from you was more than any six-year-old could expect.

But I want you to know, I never stopped watching. 

Even at 16, when I was 25 lbs too heavy for 1988, I’d turn on PBS and cry a little when you sang that you loved me just the way I was. The older I got, the harder that was for me to believe.

Honestly, the older I got, the harder everything about you was for me to believe.

In your world, old friends existed. In your world, neighbors treated one another with welcome.  

(Knock, knock, knock.) 

“Oh, hello! You were just in the neighborhood? Well, come on in. I’m so glad to see you. Stay and talk a while.”

A neighborhood steady as a sleeping heartbeat.

That pulse played in the background while I was surviving a feral public high school, stepping over bloody hallway fights, fingernails and teeth, heads pounded into lockers. I kept moving, staring down stone-eyed hate with defiant apathy. “I don’t care. Don’t care. Don’t care about anything. Caring is what makes them come after you.”

I’d throw myself on the couch when a day was over and flip on the screen. Nothing had changed for you. You asked me if I wanted to feed the fish. Of course I did. 

“Not too much. Just a sprinkle.” 

Your world was a fairy tale. I don’t mean Make Believe, I mean the little house on the street where grown ups exchanged civilities as if there were no need to be afraid of one another.

You showed me that when people are somehow different, we should ask good questions. Then we should listen slowly.

You showed me how being curious and being a know-it-all were polar opposites. 

You never once tried to hide what you didn’t know. 

You delighted in expertise in others. You chased after honoring them by letting their hard work and deep study matter.

You were glad the world was full of people who were stronger than you in some ways. This never once threatened you.

You helped me hold my emotions at arm’s length to get a good look at them.

“Sometimes you feel angry? Sometimes you feel scared. That’s okay. We all do. Your feelings matter to me. Now what? What do we do with all this you feel?”

I was angry today, Mister Rogers. 

I was so angry with what’s happening in the world. I was King Friday, roaring, and puffing, and stomping—trying to make some sort of proclamation that would bring order to everything. 

I was angry because I’m tired, and scared, and disappointed in people I used to trust.

Things are pretty bad, Mister Rogers. 

It’s not just that one bad thing has happened so much as that one bad thing has happened in the middle of so many other bad things, and now the whole world feels like chaos. 

Nobody is curious. Everybody is a know-it-all. Nobody is listening.

People are shouting and afraid. The news, the computers, the televisions are all so loud.

I’m trying to remember what you said to do in times like this. You said there would be helpers. You told us to look for the helpers, but it’s hard to know where to look for them because it’s different this time. 

This time, it’s not like a building is burning and a few people run in to rescue the trapped. This time, everything is on fire. And everyone is shooting. And everyone is ducking for cover. 

There are so many lies, and there’s so much bragging, and there is so much yelling. People are hardly human any more, Mister Rogers. 

I wish you would push a magic button and summon a trolley to carry me away. I want to land in a place where I can sit quietly and watch you and an old friend have a polite conversation.

I wish you could remind us all what it means to retain the best part of childlikeness—but most of all, what it means to be adults. There are so few adults left these days, Mister Rogers.

But maybe, part of your point was leaving this ache. Maybe that’s what you meant for us to keep all along.

Maybe yours was a discipleship of longing. 

“Children, look at community with me. Look how beautiful it can be to honor and welcome one another. Once you see the wonder of mutual respect, you will never be satisfied with anything less. 

“Watch a grown man walk in curiosity, and patience, and restraint. See what it looks like to explore instead of chest-beat, and roar, and ravage.

”Watch faith, trust, and hope move inside a person. Watch me focus while the shrapnel flies. I will lead. You follow.

”Kneel, child. I dub thee a Votary of the Cardigan and Sneakers.”

There it is, Mister Rogers.  That was the point all along, wasn’t it? That was the commission.

Steady. Humane. Tis the gift to be simple, tis the gift to be free.

Thank you, dear soul—dear saint. I’d nearly forgotten.

Rebecca Reynolds

(Part 3) Our End-Times Beliefs Affect How We Interpret Today’s News

Over the past two posts, we’ve considered several ways our end-times and cultural beliefs can impact our knee-jerk interpretations of the daily news. We’ve examined a few aspects of recent theological and political history, and we have named some of the influences that have made us vulnerable to trusting and forwarding materials that aren’t necessarily reliable.

But understanding these factors is only half of the work we need to do. After analyzing and admitting our vulnerabilities, we must then develop a path forward. 

Afterall, the danger is real. Legitimate conspiracies have arisen within human culture. At times in the past, accusations about respected citizens and groups that were first received with suspicion have eventually proven true. 

What do we do with this?

How do we distinguish between a *conspiracy theory* and a *true conspiracy*? 

What do we do when we suspect trouble? How much credence do we give our gut instincts or a sundry collection of seemingly coordinated facts? How do we use our God-given skills of perception, discernment, and analysis to uncover and resist wickedness?

Beyond this, how do we rightly handle prophecies God has given us to help prepare us for the end times? What does God want us to do (or not do) with the glimpses he has given us?

Even if I knew every answer perfectly (which I don’t), I couldn’t address such questions perfectly in a post this length. However, I can drop a few general suggestions that I think will cover broad strokes of Christian behavior in such a time.

1. Because humans are not to be entirely trusted—our mistrust should also apply to our favorite earthly clans.

That seems a bit grim, but hear me out. 

In John 2:24, we learn that Jesus didn’t entrust Himself to humans because He knew what was in the heart of man.  In the verse before, we find out that many people were believing in His name because of signs and wonders He was performing—so technically, there were tons of people “on His side” at this point. Still, Christ knew better than to think too much of a flash of earthly allegiance.

In a divided culture, it’s tempting to assume *our* people are good and *theirs* are bad. Why do we lean this direction? Books, movies, and media have long built interest and momentum around a good guy/bad guy reality, so we have a natural proclivity to thinking along this framework. 

In literary criticism, we have some labels for basic types of narrative conflict: “man vs. man,” “man vs. society,” or “man vs. nature.” The “vs.” is the key here. Such a dynamic helps ground a story and gives readers a change to engage their sense of loyalty.

In times of chaos, the “vs.” mindset is particularly alluring, as it promises to help us find identity, tribesmen, and purpose. Yet, our spiritual enemy has been in the business of destruction long enough to know the value of infiltration. Stealing, killing, and destroying have always involved covert penetrations of noble causes. 

On Jan. 27, 1838, Abraham Lincoln identified this danger while speaking before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois. He said, “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

(The context for this quote? According to Michael Burlingame, chair in Linclon studies at the U of Illinois, Springfield, Lincoln “was denouncing mob violence which would lead to chaos, provoking the public to demand law and order, which would be provided by an ambitious leader who would rule tyrannically. Poignant, eh?)

Lincoln was absolutely correct about the gravity of the danger of internal collapse.
And this warning applies to the information circulated within the cultural groups in which we feel most safe. 

If anything, we should be MORE cautious about information that flows through our own team—MORE wary of quickly forwarding information that comes from “our side.” Why? Because even IF we happen to be right about finding the nobler side of contemporary culture wars (if there is such a thing)—you can put money on this: the enemy of our souls will work much harder to breed corruption, lies, and confusion there than in places of total darkness.

Think about how human warfare works. If temporal battles are riddled with demoralizing, discrediting, deception and double agents—why wouldn’t spiritual battles be full of the same elements?

Instant trust for anyone claiming to be on “our side” reveals a lack of understanding about deep battle strategy. It reveals ignorance about our enemy and his methods. Being shrewd as serpents means we learn to think like military strategists, aware of danger in full 360 degrees.

Theologian and missionary Lesslie Newbigin considered the evaluation of our accepted truths a moral obligation. He wrote, “I am responsible for seeing as far as possible to insure that my beliefs are true, that I am—however fumblingly—grasping reality and therefore grasping that which is real and true for all human beings, and which will reveal its truth through further discoveries as I continue to seek.“ Though Newbigin’s context here is epistemological, his call to objectivity still applies.

If we are unwilling to stand beneath truth, the “god” we are serving in our culture war is no more than Feuerbach’s god of biased, human will projected large against the universe. This deity isn’t the great “I am” who created us—but instead, the great “I want him to be” created by us. 

2. While forwarding information, don’t violate the commandments.  It’s easy to feel like these guidelines are constrictive, but in reality, they offer profound protection.

Sure, obedience to God’s standards may slow us down a bit in our attacks—but, it can also prevent us from behaving like counterproductive fools.

Examples of potentially applicable commands? 

-Don’t bear false witness. Spreading rumors about another human being is wrong. It’s okay to investigate claims, but the destruction of someone’s reputation can’t be undone with an apology. Don’t participate in it. 

-Act in love for those you think are your enemies. Do unto them what you would want done to you, if you had been publicly suspected—but not proven to have committed a heinous crime. 

-Don’t recklessly apply God’s name as a defense or as an attack for an earthly cause. That is using his name in vain. Refuse to do this, and don’t support others who do. 

I’m hearing so much about the antichrist these days, but I rarely hear anyone discussing the book of I John, in which the apostle addresses several “antichrists” that were circulating during his era. In the midsts of these troubles, I John 1:6 says, “If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.”

So, here we see that even in the midst of supernatural, anti-Christ activity—Christians are still expected to trust and obey.

These are difficult commands, and I break many of them weekly. I’m a fighter by nature, and I regularly yank against the leash of God’s guidance. Though I’m conservative politically and theologically, my biggest fears right now involve wolves among the sheep—lethal infections taking root inside the ideologies I love most dearly.

In such times, I go full-out Eowyn. “Let me at them. I will protect what I love.” Waiting for God makes me feel way too vulnerable in a threatening world. I decide that I can do His business for him, thanks. He can catch up to me later.

Yet, how many times have I seen post facto that obedience would have been far more strategic than my impulsiveness? In fact, following God’s commands increases our power in a culture gone mad.  

When we refuse to participate in knee-jerk sins of gossip and accusation, truth filters through chaos, and we are left with pure, concentrated material that is mighty and seamless. Our accusations may be fewer, but they mean something. Our warnings have cred. Our voices stand out starkly against the frenetic rabble.

Whatever work you and I are supposed to do for the Christian cause will fall within God’s Biblical parameters. He doesn’t want to hold us back—He simply knows what works.

3. Don’t conflate advocacy with recklessness.

Zoom out a minute and think about how you would manipulate masses of Christians if you were the enemy of their souls. What sort of emotions would you try to evoke to push them into a reactivity that you could direct to destruction?

If I were both smart and evil, I wouldn’t appeal to darkness—I would appeal to good things and twist them just enough to do harm.

- I would distort healthy patriotism into rabid nationalism.

- I would distort the healthy desire to protect our families into chest-beating acts of chaotic aggression.

- I would distort a healthy, humble understanding of the Constitution into  ignorant, hyperbolic contortions of a few principles alongside the flagrant dismissal of many others.

- I would appeal to empathy, making evildoers seem like victims.

- I would present dangerous acts of Gastonesque bravado as if they were noble acts of courage

- I would label patient discernment cowardly and passive.

- I would create a sense of fearful protective urgency that has zero potential for causing real change once fervor reaches its peak. 

For so many reasons, advocacy feels good. Especially now, when so many of us are stuck and desperately want to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING, it’s tempting to turn our restlessness toward fighting for a cause.

Realizing this vulnerability, taking a moment to think like an enemy, and praying that the God who sees would protect us from being duped are smart moves.

4. Accept that apart from Jesus, we can do nothing of eternal value.

I think it’s nearly impossible for Americans to comprehend this. We are get-er-done, pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, individualists who built a nation on the beauty of autonomy. The American Dream tells us that anything is capable, if we try hard enough. Hustle is our national gospel.

American Christians generally appreciate the offer of eternal life, but we’ve pretty much got the rest covered, God, thanks. 

I have to laugh any time I see “In God We Trust” written on anything because nobody here does. We fight like our lives and cultures depend on our savagery, and Christian evangelicals are smack in the middle of that brouhaha. We will fight for God. We certainly can’t expect Him to fight for us.

We are certain that God needs 500,000 volcanic middle-aged women jacked up on cortisol forwarding half-verified memes, slander, and speculations to bring His Kingdom to earth. One day of national prayer. One national prayer breakfast. Boxes checked. Now, hand me my battle axe.

Yet, what fruit of the spirit are present here? Where are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? What evidence is there that our activity is truly grounded in the core of Living Truth?

Did God drop end-times prophecies into the New Testament because he wanted us to go full out Nicholas Cage, rubbing lemon juice on every news story and holding it up to a light bulb to reveal the secret revelatory code?

Is this sort of behavior what Jesus meant when he said, “I am the vine and you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

Of course not.

Whatever we do as believers—however we are led to fight—we cannot step outside of active, obedient dependence and expect positive results. 

And here’s another kicker—a critical part of abiding in Christ is willingness to carry our cross. 

Jesus didn’t promise us a healthy stock market,  the freedom to exercise our faith without persecution, or the support of friends or family. He said walking with him would be lonely and hard sometimes. He said it might even cost our lives.

Whatever He meant by giving us end times prophecy, His foreshadowing still allowed for all of these hard things.

Moreover, many times throughout the Bible, we see God allowing His people to be thrown straight in the midst of danger, for the sake of His glory. Think of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Esther. Daniel in the lion’s den. Paul in prison. Stephen being stoned.

Could God have interrupted the wicked plans of men sooner? Sure. I think God knew what was coming and chose to let the mechanics of earth play out so that His people could demonstrate true faith. 

Therefore, I think his warnings about the end times are there to remind us (or the believers who are around when this stuff hits) that future difficulty won’t equal a lack of love on his point,

If those writings do speak of some sort of ultimate Tribulation, I think God wants those who remain on earth during these trials to be confident in his power, shrewd, prepared, and sober so that their faith holds even as the world falls apart. He wants His people to be ready to transition to eternity instead of caught up in the promises of lesser saviors and the tsunamic currents of global reactivity and panic.

In the middle of the Arian controversy, the Roman emperor Valens had ordered imperial officers to subdue the new bishop (Basil the Great) through promises and threats. I love the intensity of his response because it shows the focus of a man set on a kingdom beyond political powers.

Basil responded,  “All that I have that you can confiscate are these rags and a few books. Nor can you exile me for wherever you send me, I shall be God’s guest. As to torture, you should know that my body is already dead in Christ. And death would be a great boon to me, leading me sooner to God. Taken aback, the prefect said that no one had ever spoken to him thus. Basil answered, “Perhaps that is because you have never met a true bishop” (Gonzalez 211).

That’s the goal. Honestly, I’m not there yet. In fact, over the past four or five years I have realized how much I’m like Eustace getting dragon skins stripped away. I’m dealing with anger, betrayal, unfaith, and disappointment at levels that have felt unbearable at times. America’s current political climate has revealed so much about my weak spots.

Yet like Gandalf told Frodo, we don’t get to choose the times we are given. And in His infinite wisdom, God placed me in the now. Amid thousands of dizzying news stories. Amid what those news stories reveal about the wounds of the church. Amid my own biases, and weaknesses, and fears.  

It’s too big for me. But I can at least take an honest look at where we are in time and name the forces that push on me. And I can also go back to the God who promises to be with me to the end of the age and say, “Hey, that promise you made about abiding in you or else I couldn’t do jack squat? I’m starting to see how real that is. Everything is crazy, and I keep messing up. Keep me afloat. Keep me close. Fill me up. If there’s something you want me to do, show me what it is and guide me as I try to follow. I’m weaker on my own than I ever realized, and the problems around me are larger than I could have imagined. Minefields everywhere, and meanwhile, I’m explosive. Slow me down. Help me focus where you want me to focus. Help me realize my limitations. Stop me from hacking off ears off with swords when I need to simply follow You to the cross.”

(Part 2) Our End-Times Beliefs Affect How We Interpret Today’s News

My favorite undergraduate professor made one point consistently over the three years I took his classes:

We must always, always consider where we are in time. 

Even if some students couldn’t master the nuances of Shakespeare or Chaucer, he wanted us all to spend our lives intentionally evaluating the forces that have led up to our cultural context—instead of just blindly moving in their currents. 

I’ve never lived through a time in which this guiding principle was more important than it is now. 

http://www.thistleandtoad.com/wwwthistleandtoadcom/writings/

En masse, Christians are reacting without thinking clearly, and they are making themselves vulnerable as a result. They forward weird links and memes. They watch faux-documentaries and frantically forward them without doing even minimal research. They try to shame others by calling them fools if healthy skepticism or a call to objective science appears. They defend their frenetic behavior by making blanket dismissals. So much noise is pouring out, and so little information seems able to penetrate the defensive shell.

I fluctuate between fury at this behavior and deep pity for those who are caught up inside it. I can tell that a lot of once-steady people are scared and suspicious. They haven’t been exposed to good, strong ideas beyond their microcosms in a long time— and meanwhile, they’ve been flattered strategically into allegiance.

For these individuals, trust is based on clan-think, not objectivity. Belief for these individuals happens at a primal place in their guts. They aren’t analyzing. They are like wild beasts that bolt and seize based on instinct and tribal fidelity.

But how did we get here? How did we tumble from seminars on the beautiful humility of objective truth in a postmodern world and almost OCD systematic methods of apologetics into this smug, fear-driven barbarism?

Understanding this transition is critical.

In his book, Culture Making, Andy Crouch describes a key theological-political alliance from the mid 1990’s that provides insight about our present culture. According to a 1995 Coalition document, 80% of Americans were concerned about morality tanking in the national culture. So, the Christian Coalition was going to do something about it.

Ralph E. Reed Jr stepped up to help Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition rise to power in the 1990’s. The goal? To direct Congress by the flex of faith-based voters. According to Crouch, Newt Gingrich and a mass of younger Republicans had dominated in midterm elections, and the Christian Coalition was so affiliated with this victory, Time magazine featured Reed on its 1995 cover along with the title, “The Right Hand of God.” 

But here’s where it gets interesting.

Crouch writes, “Christian conservatives, by themselves, were not enough of a constituency to form a majority bloc in the Republican Party, so Reed and his partners had reached out to the Party’s pro business, antitax wing, a group that would have placed the ‘problem of declining morality’ far down on their list of concerns” (Crouch 224).

In other words, America’s faith-based movement wasn’t mighty enough to dominate culture on its own. So, political alliances had to be made with non-Christians who cared very little about faith or morality. 

Zoom forward to 2020, and the majority of evangelical Christians seem to see absolutely nothing wrong with such compromises. We are so partisan now, we are only worried about THEIR immorality. OUR immorality is a necessary sacrifice for the greater cultural good.

We call those who refuse to make such exchanges “holier-than-thou” and believe we are simply playing street smart in a world in which Presidents don’t have to be Sunday School teachers. 

And yet, what is the telos of this sort of compromise? 

Let’s go back to Crouch’s example. In just a few short years after attempting to rescue America’s fading moral base, the former president of the Christian Coalition “found himself collaborating with Abramoff [another Republican lobbyist] advocating for, of all things, the interests of Native American gambling.” In 1998, Reed wrote to Abramoff saying, “Hey, now that I’m done with the electoral politics, I need to start humping in corporate accounts. I’m counting on you to help me with some contacts” (Crouch 225).

Folks, this is the same man who had grieved America’s moral decline.

When I first read Crouch’s statements on Ralph Reed back in 2010 or so, I was shocked. How could this have been going on behind the scenes? In 2020, I’m shocked that I was ever surprised.

Today, so few American evangelicals would flinch about slimy, underhanded, or immoral compromises. We seem to care only about aligning ourselves with enough earthly power to protect us. We think the Kingdom of God must come through legislation. Without it, we’re all sunk.

Data backs our willingness to bail on our morality. In 2011, 60% of white evangelicals affirmed this statement: “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life cannot behave ethically in their public life.” 

By 2018, only 20% of that same demographic agreed to the same. 

Interestingly, when considering a famous Republican politician, only 6% of white evangelicals agreed that private immorality makes a politician incapable of ethical leadership. When a past Democratic president was mentioned? That number goes up to 27%

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/25/how-trump-has-changed-white-evangelicals-views-about-morality/

So, we’ve not only lost our ability to care about morality—we’ve lost our ability to realize that we’ve lost this ability. 

How does all of this align with evangelical eschatology and our vulnerability to misinformation in all forms of media?

On May 11, D.L. Mayfield wrote a heartbreaking essay in Sojourners titled “In Push to Reopen, American Evangelicals Fall Prey to Political Strategy.”

Mayfield addresses several vulnerabilities exposed by the politicization of the evangelical right—including the heartbreak a younger American feels in the wake of evangelicalism’s moral compromise. She also addresses the potential impact of our eschatological views, which she affiliates with fierce individualism. She writes,

”I was raised to believe that Jesus would be returning soon, and that the world would continue to get worse until he did. Evangelical Christians like myself were convinced that only a small contingent of faithful Christians would be spared the wrath of God at the end of the world. This theology, coupled with a narrative insisting Christians in the US are a persecuted minority, led to a distrust of institutions and power, including the government. The world will continue to get worse, you should do what you can to protect yourself and your people, and you shouldn’t trust the government. In fact, the more of an outsider a politician is, and the more they promise to protect you in the short term, the more likely that person would be to get your vote.”

I don’t know that Mayfield and I would agree on every theological point, but I think there’s a lot here to consider.

How does our belief in the immediacy of Christ’s return impact our goals for our time on earth?

How does our suspicion of government and our fear of difficulty impact our fascination with political outliers?

How does our sense of being among the few who actually understand spiritual reality feed our need for being experts who are “in” on what’s happening behind the scenes in the present?

Or maybe consider these statements many of us would find true at some level.

1. Jesus is coming back soon. We know exactly how this is going to work. Knowing future truth gives us insider tips that help us analyze present events better than everybody else. Therefore, we’re constantly alert and suspicious.

2. The antichrist is coming, so we don’t trust governments or institutions (unless they are our people) because anybody in power (besides our people) could be part of issuing in the one world order.

3.  Christians are being persecuted, and it’s likely to get a lot worse, so we are willing to dance with the devil for the sake of our own safety.

Producing:

1. A sense of superiority  

2. Blind tribalism

3. Fear leading to compromise

Staring at those reductions, do you find yourself asking the same questions I ask? What does it look like to be a good steward of the special information we’ve been given? How do we walk with shrewdness and wisdom, without getting trapped by humanistic, faux-religious, anti-gospel strategies waiting to trick us? What does it look like to manage writings about the future responsibly?

Perhaps a realignment of our earthly allegiances would help some?

C.S. Lewis knew that corruption was the inevitable result of partisan affiliation with the Christian faith. If you’re not familiar with his essay, “Meditation on the Third Commandment,” is worth your time.  https://web.mit.edu/bcf/www/BSJ97/cslewis.html

Reading Lewis’s predictions will probably feel a little spooky as you reflect on what has happened since the mid 1990’s in American evangelicalism. A more pointed warning could hardly have come more true.

Yet, most of us who grew up inside the Culture Wars mindset are unable to see the vulnerabilities of our approach.  In large part, we are too proud to be learners. We were first trained to be cultural saviors with ultimate information, and now we are trained to believe that we have insights and suspicions nobody else has.

Ironically, there’s nothing of the gospel in this posture. There’s nothing about the sufficiency of Christ, His wisdom, His resources. Like Uzzah catching the Ark, we are stepping in to do Christian America on our own, by our own strength, our own leaders, and our own rules.

By default, we believe that God needs American politics and the flex of legislative power to make America Christian. By default, we believe the Kingdom of God must be implemented top-down, which not only means its flourishing depends upon laws—but also that the church can be destroyed by the absence of a strong Christian government. By default, we excuse every compromise we take to get there, believing our sins are committed for the greater good.

Meanwhile, our egos have swollen up like carcasses in the sun. 

“I know the end of things. I’m one of the ones who gets it. Really gets it. I found this video. You should watch it. Don’t tell me it’s been negated by sources. THEY always have a way of undermining truth. It’s how THEY work. I have nothing to learn. YOU have something to learn.“

(To be continued…)

Our End-Times Beliefs Affect How We Interpret Today’s News (Part 1)

Different Christians have different perspectives on how God will go about bringing His kingdom to earth. 

In America’s southern states, many believe the Bible prophesies a Rapture which will be followed by the appearance of a literal anti-christ. According to this view, seven years of tribulation will be followed by a huge battle between the forces of good and evil.  

Other Christians think the text shows us Second Coming/Rapture occurring halfway in the middle of the Tribulation. Others believe Jesus will appear to take his followers after the Tribulation. Beyond these beliefs, some Christians don’t believe in a Rapture at all. They think the whole idea was invented by John Darby around 1830.

After looking at why each group has drawn its conclusions from the Bible, I can see strong possibilities for each. Though I do lean one direction more than the others, I can respect each of these views. What’s most interesting to me, though, is considering how our assumptions about the present/coming Kingdom can impact our reactions to daily news stories.

When the Left Behind books came out, a huge percentage of evangelical America was given a contemporary narrative framework for pretrib eschatology (i.e. Rapture before Tribulation). By reading this story, we were able to visualize a literal, final, anti-Christ (not just the preliminary anti-Christs of I John) through Nicholae Carpathia, and we were able to think about how a one-world order might actually work in the modern world. 

The popularity of these books hit at an interesting time technologically. These stories were written between 1995 and 2007, so they were fresh in our minds as the internet made international communication and retail abundant. Amazon.com and eBay were formed in 1995. AOL went monthly in 1996. Google searches went live in 1997. 2003 Skype. 2004 Facebook. So, just as we were reading end-times fiction describing the dangers of globalism, instantaneous discussions with people all over the world became common.

Simultaneously, fluidity in international trade increased. Global trade grew five times greater between 1990 and 2001. (http://archive.ipu.org/splz-e/trade12/2-R2.pdf ) And, over the past few decades, it has become increasingly common to create products in various stages, in a process involving multiple countries. We’re not just talking iPhones or Toyotas here—as we’ve learned through the Covid 19 crisis, even basic pharmaceutical production relies upon a supply chain that transcends national borders.

As all of these events were occurring, globalist suspicions rose in a context of political discord. Politicians like Obama and Hillary Clinton were ominously described as “globalists,” hinting that the policies of these leaders might be helping issue in a “One World Order.” 

As Obama and Clinton interacted with foreign governments, their comments about international unification triggered suspicion that globalist prophecies were beginning to take root. Scenes from the Left Behind books—and even more the creepy gut feeling of moving toward a single earthly power— sent up red flags in abundance. 

This suspicion seems a bit odd in 2020, as it has virtually disappeared in the exact same demographic while Trump has praised Kim Jong Un and Putin. But video clips showing FOX News reactions to such attempts under Democratic leadership show us just how much has shifted under a leader many evangelicals trust.  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rMJakLzPags

Under Democratic leaders, a great deal of evangelical concern surrounded American connections with the UN and NAFTA, let alone the formation of the European Union and the euro—which many evangelicals considered a direct step on the path to a single global currency and one world order.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been watching a great many southern evangelicals chatter nervously about potential conspiracies churning behind Covid 19. Some do this subtly, but many others flagrantly reference end-times prophecies as they suspect rich, powerful Bill Gates (along with a godless, liberal international posse) of intentionally orchestrating a virus that will allow him to control the earth, eventually mandating the microchipping of humans (which they think may be the sign of the beast).

In stating this forthrightly, I am neither denying the possibility nor am I mocking it. I’m simply trying to give a cultural context to the high-cortisol, hyper-alertness that a lot of us are feeling as Boomer friends forward “You must watch this video before they yank it down” links on Facebook.

Frankly, Bill Gates seems like a pretty nice guy to me. A humanist, yeah. And I disagree with him significantly on several political points. 

Also, if the pretribbers are right and the anti-Christ is not metaphorical, I definitely expected the big, bad guy to be a little more  debonaire—somebody besides a computer nerd born in Seattle who looks like he would be a super bad dancer at parties.

Still, my eschatological views allow for a Rapture and an antichrist of some sort. 
I’m not letting anybody put a microchip in me. I’m not a big fan of retina scans or face recognition. And I not only think of the book of Revelation quite a bit these days, I also chew on Orwell and Huxley almost hourly. These are weird, dystopian times. These may be some sort of end times. I just don’t know. 

But zooming out big scale, I see a pattern beginning in Genesis I with Eve’s desire to be “like God” without community with God. I’m reminded of two and three year olds saying, “I do it myself!” That’s humanity post Fall.

This thirst for a self-propelled, righteous autonomy continues all throughout the Old Testament and even the New Testament. Romans 8 clarifies that there are two ways—the way of the Spirit and the way of the Flesh. And I think the latter will probably eventually culminate into a literal end-times rebellion and chasing after a leader who promises to make us as great as we can be all on our own.

Because of this, I think that instead of treating the Scriptures like a code on the back of a cereal box, I think we need to be studying the deep heart of what it means to be indwelt with Jesus, walking in the Spirit, reliant upon his righteousness in his power. 

Why? Because evil is tricky and can come in all forms and all political parties. There are so many ways to become enchanted with promises that we will pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, protect our own, rise in our own strength, and make the world beautiful again. That essence is what we need to suspect—even more than cracking clues that make our bellies turn like little girls listening to ghost stories at a sleep over.

I also think we need to be aware of HOW our eschatologies leave us vulnerable to suspicion. This awareness doesn’t mean we are wrong about our theories about the Bible. It doesn’t mean we need to shift to a different belief in how the Scriptures work. It only means that we address our biases head-on instead of letting them impact us at a subconscious level. 

What do you mean by that?

‪Yesterday I spent twelve hours transposing a 400+-year old document.  ‬

‪The deeper I get into this project, the more I appreciate the efforts of my favorite Russian, Old English, French, and German translators. When reflecting upon their work, these men and women have regularly expressed their inability to milk pure, raw meaning from a culture’s language.  

To some extent, a language is bound to its meaning. For example, in Elizabethan English, the manner in which a single word is used may unfold like a fractal, revealing assumptions about the essence of humans, truth, goodness, God, or the mechanics of the universe. 

And even beyond connotation and denotation, the ideological presuppositions of a people are reflected in the gears of grammar, usage, and mechanics. While doing this work, I’m increasingly aware that language is both reflective of the values of a culture and formative for the same. It’s breathtaking, really.

If this principle is so integral to Spenserian English written only 400+ years ago in a culture generally affiliated with my own, what have I been missing in reading translations of documents thousands of years old, composed in vastly different milieu? 

And what have I been missing when listening to contemporary humans as they struggle to express ideas and beliefs with words they have learned in native environments utterly different from my own?

Sayers once wrote that all language is metaphorical, and hacking through my own transposition has been been such a great reminder of the inevitable space between meaning and words. 

In many ways, we still live inside that heartbreaking moment in Babel, in which humans looked at one another and realized their words no longer produced resonance in others.

What do we do with this? I’m still thinking that through.

To start with, perhaps as listeners, we should make a conscious effort to perceive these gaps soberly and realistically, accepting that we will continually need to go back to the labor of defining and clarifying.  We cannot just presume that our words will stir up our intended meaning in others. Nor can we presume that what we hear is what was intended.

Certainly, there are ways to make the transference of meaning easier by appealing to common elements of style. But in teaching simplicity of composition, we should not negate critical cultural differences that must impact how language inevitably works inside human beings.

I think linguistic anthropologists are correct to acknowledge connections between cultural dominance and languages. And as many problems as I have with Derrida in general, there’s at least some truth in certain binaries reflecting power within a culture.

What do we learn about the values of a culture when inanimate nouns are gendered? What do we learn about the values of a culture when variance in verb forms indicates past action completed vs. past action continuing? How do we look at what exists (and doesn’t exist) in a language as revelatory?

The more hours I spend in trying to retrieve meaning from a forgotten epic, the more I realize how complex hearing actually is. Are we humble and patient enough to learn philosophical and anthropological frameworks that exist inside and around what others say to us? How much do we demand others to accommodate our defaults?

I’ve definitely been challenged thinking this through day after day. The concept is a foreign as Akkadian to most of us. Like Goethe’s hot takes on translations of Chinese or Arabic literature, we too easily presume that catching the gist (the plot, the logos, the sum) of a translated text is equal to mastery of it. This is a standard colonial presumption, I know. But it’s one I think should be examined carefully—both in reading past and in listening present.

We Shall Not Be Moved

I have a bizarre fascination with an old folk band from the 60’s called The Seekers. 

I was born in 1972, so my era was dead center Wham!-BonJovi-MichaelJackson-Metallica. My friends with older siblings (and that kid who moved in from the big city) listened to Duran Duran. I got a little bit of Depeche Mode before graduation. Smashing Pumpkins still feels like “that new band” to me. When Garth Brooks got big, I didn’t understand why masses of teenage boys were suddenly turning into old men. So, that’s my era, meaning it makes very little sense that I love The Seekers so very much.

Nor does their aesthetic fit my personality. I like Seamus Heaney, and Russian novels, and Flannery O’Connor, and Graham Greene, and The Series of Unfortunate Events. Give it to me gritty and rugged. I think, and think, and overthink until I give myself headaches. I rage against the machine. In contrast, The Seekers made music that was unflinchingly simple, both melodically and thematically. Judith Durham’s wide open grin and bouncy optimism feel unabashedly childlike. 

And yet, there’s such a balance to my navel-gazing and windmill charging self provided by songs like Georgy Girl (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eSVfLNCW4Fs).  Get out of the hole. Try some stuff, Nerd. Stretch. Live a little.

Earlier today, I posted the Seekers cover of “We Shall Not Be Moved” ( https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1Awug6zeMY ) as a sarcastic retort to a friend. Yet, after we had our laughs, I listened back through several times and thought about how much I love this old song.

“Just like a tree planted by the water, I shall not be moved.”

The idea comes from Jeremiah 17. A contrast between two types of people: those who trust in man and those who trust in God.

“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,

    who draws strength from mere flesh

    and whose heart turns away from the Lord.

That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;

    they will not see prosperity when it comes.

They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,

    in a salt land where no one lives.

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,

    whose confidence is in him.

They will be like a tree planted by the water

    that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes;

    its leaves are always green.

It has no worries in a year of drought

    and never fails to bear fruit.”

It’s an old choice. It’s our present choice.

Why has this song has meant so much to activists throughout the years? Because there’s something fiercely beautiful about sinking down into a cause and simply refusing to budge.

There’s something even more beautiful about sinking down into a God whose strength can sustain any cause, who has a plan, whose sustenance will never dry up—digging your roots way down into his stream and resting in those deep waters all through a drought.

God, make me that kind of simple. God, make me that kind of stubborn.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1Awug6zeMY

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The tiny hells we’ve made for ourselves

I used to give my students an assignment while studying The Inferno, asking them to mimic Dante’s style and make up punishments to fit various sins. 

I’ll never forget the kid who decided the punishment for lust should be getting all the beautiful women you wanted for all of eternity. Of course, the class laughed.  I nearly brushed it off as teenage sarcasm, but thankfully, I asked him to explain first.

His answer is now burned permanently into my heart. He said, “So, the first, what, 2,000 years would be amazing.” (Class full of adolescents giggle.) “But then, you’re eventually going to wake up one morning in hell and feel a little restless. Then you’ll feel empty. Then irritated. Then—and maybe it will take 1,000 more years—but eventually you’re going to start to despise this paradise you’ve chosen for yourself. You’re going to think, ‘This is it. This is all there is and ever will be’—and the limitation of having everything you have always wanted, but never anything more—that limitation will drive you to madness.’”

The whole class went silent after he stopped talking. And it was one of those magical silences that falls when you realize an everyday soul who has shared a bag of Doritos with you on a soccer field has somehow kicked his toe against the gong of a fundamental truth.

I was thinking about that today as I was mulling over our phone-addicted, commentary-addicted, rage-addicted, pride-addicted world. 

Here and there I’m sensing exasperation not just with others—but with ourselves. 

We have the leaders we needed to propel our hate.

We have the news we wanted to confirm our favorite fears and furies.

We have hours, and hours, and hours to sink into our phones being cynics, or referees, or reformers, or patriots, or deconstructionists.

Social media has become life.

We have calcified in our favorite opinions, 

hardened in our suspicions, 

beaten our chests,

sunk deeply into the groups we love,

vilified and severed all voices that irritate us.

We’ve hammered the most accurate, objective, evidence-based corrections into the skulls of people who seem to have no concern for error.

We’re quite sure of ourselves. And we’re also quite sick of ourselves, sitting in these bunkers going bonkers, breathing through filters underground, beginning eternity in the tiny little indulgent hells we’ve made for ourselves. 

Celebration of Fools

Several weeks ago, I ordered something that will probably seem silly and superstitious. It’s a holding cross made out of olive wood, maybe 4”-5” long.

My husband teases me, saying it looks like a souvenir from a mushy evangelical retreat. Yeah okay, he’s right. Still, almost every night over the past few weeks, I’ve fallen asleep holding it. And almost every morning, I’ve opened my eyes to find my hand still grasping it tightly. 

I don’t know how this sort of grasp is possible. I’m not a tidy sleeper. I dream hard, wrestle, and thrash. Something deep in my subconscious must be telling my muscles to cling to this object, even as it is sifting through a thousand words and images, trying to make sense of a chaotic world.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think this bit of wood has any power in itself. I don’t think it is a mystical portal or wand. But just like a wedding ring is a reminder of a vow that I’ve made, this little cross reminds me of a vow I’ve made to hope and trust. More importantly, it’s a reminder of the vow Love has made to me.

So many of the big things I’ve prayed for over time haven’t come to pass yet.  I’ve seen atheists mock studies attempting to prove the efficacy of prayer, and though I don’t agree with their posture, I have to agree with some of their conclusions. I’m not always able to see empirical evidence that my requests before God result in change on earth.  Sometimes I’m maddened by the way this all works. I know God’s not a vending machine, but some of the things I pray for aren’t about me. They are about other people who need help.

If I could design a God, I wouldn’t design one who made people filthy rich at a prayer. But I would have him shake the lost awake so they might know him. I would have him stop the silences and sufferings that are so intense, people lose heart. I have no idea how the God Who Is will repair all of this.

I grew up inside of a Christianity that had answers for pretty much everything.  We were going to win the culture war of our faith by proofs, arguments, or science. Not until I studied (and taught) Western philosophy did I realize how humanistic this approach to evangelism and cultural renovation truly was.

You can laugh all you want at philosophy students. Admittedly, they’re a weird bunch. But you know, what they study matters, as it’s the foundation for everything you take for granted as true. It takes some guts to yank back the curtain and see what sort of little old man is back there pushing buttons and pulling levers. I’m always surprised that this discipline doesn’t have a higher rate of mental breakdown.

The church piddles with such things. However, they mostly skim the surface of how we know what we know—meaning the most “advanced” apologetics offered by many churches attempt to commandeer humanistic methods without even acknowledging the framework. Those books and seminars may seem Christian to you—but what happens when we look straight at the form used and question if it should be our starting place at all?

I know few people who are concerned about this, so it’s been a lonely decade or two, watching a huge segment of modern Christendom persist in co-opting humanistic strategies, cringing because I knew why these could fall like a house of cards if faced with the right questions. There’s so much about faith we will never be able to prove because without humanistic assumptions, proof itself is a myth.  And inside of a true framework built upon humanistic assumptions, a lot of the Bible is ethically difficult—no matter what the latest hot take defending the Old Testament tells us.

So, what a relief it’s been to find Lesslie Newbigin, former missionary to India. In the first chapter of his The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society, Newbigin puts his finger straight on the issue.

He writes:

“It is often said, or implied, that the dominance of the Christian worldview in Western European society was overturned by the rise of modern science, but this seems to be an oversimplification. Graft Reventlow, in his massive work The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World, shows how the attack has its origins far earlier than the rise of modern science, in the strong humanist tradition which we inherit from the Classical Greek and Roman elements in our culture, and which surfaced powerfully in the Renaissance and played a part in the Reformation. This humanist tradition is itself composed of many elements which can be grouped into two main strands. There is the rationalist tradition, drawing especially on Greek and Stoic sources, which affirms human reason as the organ through which alone truth may be known; and there is the spiritualist tradition, drawing on sill more ancient sources which Europe shares with India, the tradition which affirms the capacity of the human spirit to make direct contact through mystical experience with the ultimate source of being and truth. “

“Graf Revenlow’s study shows how, during the latter part of the seventeenth and through the eighteenth centuries, while ordinary churchgoers continued to live in the world of the Bible, intellectuals were more and more controlled by the humanist tradition, so that even those who sought to defend the Christian faith did so on the basis that it was ‘reasonable,’ that is to say, that it did not contradict the fundamental humanist assumption.”

“What is striking about the books which were written, especially during the eighteenth century, to defend Christianity against these attacks, is the degree to which they accept the assumptions of their assailants. Christianity is defended as being reasonable.”

- - -

There you go. Do you recognize this pressure from the evangelical world? Christianity must be reasonable.

Whether we are taught to color code key terms, or form outlines, or utilize “ologies” to fortify our belief against a hostile, non-believing world—we are first convinced that we must have a belief system that is reasonable.

Progressive and conservative believers are equally guilty here. We each have our favorite, “Well, God couldn’t possibly mean...” because we don’t want to look like dunces or savages.

Newbigin confesses a similar tendency. He writes,

”It was only slowly, through many experiences, that I began to see that something of this domestication had taken place in my own Christianity, that I too had been more ready to seek a ‘reasonable Christianity,’ a Christianity that could be defended on the terms of my whole intellectual formation as a twentieth-century Englishman, rather than something which placed my whole intellectual formation under a new and critical light. I, too, had been guilty of domesticating the gospel.”

”Christianity began with the proclamation of something authoritatively given. Paul presents himself not as the teacher of a new theology but as the messenger commissioned by the authority of the Lord himself to announce a new fact—namely that the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus God has acted decisively to reveal and effect his purpose of redemption for the whole world.”

”This proclamation invites belief. It is not something whose truth can be demonstrated by reference to human experience in general. Rather, it is that by the acceptance of which all human experience can be rightly understood. It is the light by which things are seen as they really are, and without which they are not truly seen. It rests on no authority beyond itself.”

I would have hated this book at 25 when I knew all the arguments. I wouldn’t have been ready for it at 35 when I was still so enamored with the powers of my own intellect. But at 48, I’m weary of the apologetic babble. 

It’s not that I have no historical, rational, empirical evidence for my faith. It’s that I believe less and less in the objectively historical, rational, or empirical. Those systems are internally stable with legitimate checks and balances of their own. But each system is self-confirming and insular. None can obtain or withstand the scrutiny of any sort of external objectivity.

Ultimately, I believe because know Christ is real, and faith in Him is the only system of “knowing” I’ve found that provides the ability to know the rest of the world consistently. I was disappointed when I read C.S. Lewis’s statement confessing the same decades ago. The older I get, though, the more it rings true. Call it the Pragmatic Theory of Truth, if you need a label. But it’s more tender and alive than this. It’s also far simpler.

Like the fool in King Lear, I am increasingly content with my own lack of respectability. The great ones will establish their gauntlets, bestowing praise and land, accepting flattery within the microcosms of their own honor.  Pomp is indefatigable. 

As Amor Towles writes in _A Gentleman in Moscow,

“For pomp is a tenacious force. And a wily one too. How humbly it bows its head as the emperor is dragged down the steps and tossed in the street. But then, having quietly bided its time, while helping the newly appointed leader on with his jacket, it compliments his appearance and suggests the wearing of a medal or two. Or, having served him at the formal dinner, it wonders aloud if a taller chair might not have been more fitting for a man with such responsibilities.”

Whether communists are overtaking aristocrats, or capitalists are overtaking monarchists, or progressives are reforming, or conservatives are taking up arms, or some new wave of humanism is superseding its own last trend, pomp will rise. It is the one of the only sure things.

If you still believe wholly in logic or empirical truth (Christian or non), I won’t blame you.  Any man trying to survive a drop in the middle of an ocean will cling to a floating log.

Meanwhile, I sleep holding my own bit of wood. It’s just a knickknack, but it keeps me above water. Let it make me fool to the best of Kings. He is risen. He is risen, indeed. And because of this, I see.

these two lungs

Last night, my daughter passed out. As she fell, she hit a wooden hutch and knocked hard against our slate floor. I heard the cold thud of her body hitting from the next room over, and by the time I reached her, she was mostly unconscious, sprawled out and ashen.

This has happened once before. Her blood pressure is naturally low, and she had just been sitting with her knees up and her head down, legs thrown over the arm of a chair with her femoral artery compressed. 

In the half-second of hearing her hit, I knew what had probably happened. Still, there’s no easy way to discover your child fallen in a weird shape on the floor. Did her head hit the slate? Concussion? Broken bones? Underlying condition? You know the ropes. 

I checked her head, arms, legs, pupils. She has some significant bruises but no breaks. She laughed that I hung a neon green sign at the top of the stairs, reminding her to walk around a while before trying to walk down.

I’m not laughing yet. Humans are just so fragile. There are so many little systems inside of us that have to work a certain way for us to function. We are not just created, we are orchestrated—and a single renegade violin can wreck the entire composition.

—-

When I couldn’t sleep last night, I stumbled into this video of a woman waking up from a lung transplant: 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1627534/Video-Woman-takes-breath-successful-lung-transplant.html

She had struggled with cystic fibrosis for years, and she hadn’t known a clear breath for as long as she could remember. I cried watching her first few inhales on donated lungs—her eyes wide, arms extended in rapture as she could at last suck in air without encumbrance.  Pure delight.

Those lungs were someone’s everything. Yet by this gift, the fragility of another life was made new.  I don’t want to Jesus Juke you. But it’s Holy Week, and I couldn’t stop the connections or the longings it awakened.

God, help me breathe.

—

It’s a weird thing being home with yourself for so many days.

Because I’m an introvert, I naturally process the world internally. There’s a significant part of my soul nobody ever gets to see. I love people, and I trust a few—but still, I guard my inner self fiercely.

Going into isolation, I wouldn’t have thought the change between regular routine and the standstill life would have been spiritually riveting for someone like me. In fact, at the onset of Covid-19, I thought this solitude would be my briar patch.

Over the years, I have watched extroverted friends use friendships to process what’s going on inside them, letting a flow of open dialogue help them discover what they think and feel.  This sort of release is very rare for me. More often, I go down in a hole, sort, organize, write, confess to myself and to God. When I come back out of this space, I feel more able to engage with people in a balanced and honest way. 

Yet, C19 has forced the longest, strangest full stop I’ve ever experienced.  A flattening shock to my system.

It’s hard to know how to talk about what I’m learning during this awful time. I entered the crisis determined to maximize it, blooming where I was planted and all that. But now that I see so many deaths mounting—now that I feel the shock waves of communal grief—no skill or insight gained compares to the larger context of raw human suffering.

“What did you do during the 1918 flu?“ Before you have lived through a pandemic, it feels nostalgic to hear stories of refuge and joy. Inside of one—especially one in which you can see and hear every horrible story—you spend a lot of time simply mourning.

Those of us who have the mental and physical space to learn are privileged. Hundreds of thousands of global citizens are dragging themselves through another day of tortured survival—sleepless, scared, coughing, weeping, holding a hot coal of live grief in their chests.

So, I don’t want to be insensitive in writing about the microcosm of one little life. And yet, today is Good Friday, an important day for confessions.  

So I will say this much.

I tried to stand up too quickly in the first days of C19. Then there was crash. Blackout. Disorientation. I’m learning my own susceptibility and the weakness in systems that hang on a thread.

And I’ve started facing some things about myself I didn’t understand in my comfortable selective, strategic hiding rhythms of daily life.  I’m starting to identify foreign growths that have taken root in my soul, encumbering my spiritual inhalations. Confessing them is hard. Sometimes I want affirmation and assurance instead of a medical prognosis of, “Yes, these things are killing you.” But slowly admitting them is giving me a deep desire for something new.

Strange time. Hard time. Bruised. Wobbly. Unsteady. Admission after admission. Taking slow time to see and name all the things locked in these two lungs. Whispering prayers that going down into the surgery will eventually lead to an awakening of free and jubilant breaths.

Maybe this is why mystics and prophets found benefit in long spans of time in desert settings—alone with God, and self, and the slow settling of reality into consciousness. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1627534/Video-Woman-takes-breath-successful-lung-transplant.html

Photo credit thesuccess on Morguefile (crop)

Your invisible masterpiece

‪As a mom, I spent decades at home, lost in repetitive and unseen service to little people while younger, freer women filled their social media feeds with travel photos that made my investments feel mundane and pointless. ‬‪

I became less. I was absorbed. I felt it. ‪

Now the whole world sits home—the glorious and the frumpy alike—and I see those who have had more freedom beginning to question their worth.

Pretty adventure girl personas are struggling to stay afloat while I’m still taking photos of common soup I made in a common kitchen.

‪I’m one of a million old moms. I won’t change your life. I’m nearly 50. Age spots on my legs. No sexy, messy buns. No revolutionary escapades. I may frustrate or embarrass you online—but you will never fall in love with my persona from afar.

Yet, here is one secret I have learned. ‪What’s done in small, common places can be your ultimate art. Kindness, generosity, integrity happen within your four walls—acts of invisible love given to those whose breaths you hear after all the lights are out. ‬

And if you are physically alone in that small space, those friends and neighbors you reach by messages and phone calls during this time are no small flock. The humanity you express during this sweatpants-and-no-makeup-monotony has the potential to be your life’s masterpiece.

First Lines

First lines from times like these 

should pack a punch...

“We lived through days of dying...”

or some such metered remove,

written by a stonedead miserprophet

miffed that Nineveh 

might well survive

this holy blast.

“Opportunity of a lifetime, it was.”

Nearly. Frankly, he prefers a corpse.

The hands of dead weight 

can be posed so beautifully.

“Darling Galatea,

sweet nubile disorder,

and I shall roll my trousers,

and I shall roll my trousers,

and your arms, and your arms.”

Diegesis gods itself,

verbing nouns.

“I’m exceptional, you know.

Exceptional.

I love a good disaster.

In fact, I scribbled a thousand up 

myself until well...

“Lord, here it is, stark and stiff.

Not nearly as fine 

as I could have done it up.

“Why bending the thing 

will snap it quite in two.

How crude.”