Category Archives: Life as the church

Jesus will face your shame with you

A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, Spiritual direction, , , , , ,

My most-recent favorite book is Face to Face: Knowing God Beyond Our Shame (2023) by Fr. Stephen Freeman. Freeman is an archpriest in the Orthodox Church in America so, for me, he adds an interesting lens to look at life in Christ. I admit I am more familiar with the “Orthodox” church of the first 500 years of Christianity than I am with the one growing up in the United States, so I am enjoying his helpful reframing of how we understand shame through informed by some very old theology with some psychology thrown into the mix.

Jesus enters our shame

The Bible beautifully describes how Jesus is healing our toxic shame and teaching us to endure the reformative and sometimes transformative value of our natural shame responses. Freeman says:

The drama of salvation is described in this divine reversal: God has come among us in Christ, emptying Himself of His glory. Instead of glory, He enters into shame—even the shameful death of the Cross. And entering into that shameful death, He destroys death and ascends in glory. He conquers death by death. He overcomes shame by shame.

That summary may sound a bit foreign to your ears, not because it is foreign to the Bible, but because most American Christians have been taught Jesus came to solve our sin problem. We’ve been taught that sin leads to death rather than death leads to shame and then sin. But look at two iconic pieces of scripture on the subject and see where the Bible starts the discussion:

I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I hid not my face from shame and spitting. — Isaiah 50:6 (RSV)

Jesus is the suffering one Isaiah was talking about. He did not hide from the shame we experience, like we do. Many newer English translations trade the word “shame” here for “insults,” keeping the experience about abuse from oppressors. But the older versions are more correct, I think. Because there is an inner experience of injury to the soul the Messiah is entering as well as an outer. The Orthodox Jewish Bible expands it well for us:

I [Moshiach] offered My gev (back) to them that deliver blows, and My lekhi (cheeks) to them that pulled out [the beard]: I hid not My face from kelimot (humiliations, shame) and rok (spitting, saliva).

Paul makes it clear that the Savior‘s main target for our redemption is our shame. Jesus frees us from our slavery to death and sets humanity on a corrected course toward the fullness of our glory. Jesus left his joy and freedom behind in order to become small enough to fit into our shrunken humanity, bound by the shame of our bondage. He did not dominate us with his splendor

but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
     he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross. — Phil 2:7-8

So please dial down the punitive theology

Since the lawyers and governmental types took over theology in the 1600’s, the preponderant image of the Lord’s work on the cross has been penal, meaning it is a courtroom drama. It says we are sinners who deserve to be punished and only God can stand in for us. He takes our blame because someone needs to be blamed. The most important thing is: who is right and who has rights.

The substitution analogy is not useless. But it breaks down if you push it too far, since it would mean the work of Jesus was about God not being able to let injustice pass unpunished, so he punished himself (or, as some object, abused his Son). What’s more, the actual perpetrators of sin do not receive the “justice” warranted since someone else took it. The Bible does paint the substitutionary atonement picture in serval places, but I think it was meant to be more metaphor than logistics. Paul, in particular, thinks law, in general, and the Mosaic Law, in particular, is a tutorial for something greater, not an everlasting rubric, since Jesus is the definition of the law and the law is love.

Rather than just solving the problem of sin and the resulting guilt, Jesus is entering our shame. In our era people have solved the problem of sin by acting shamelessly. Donald Trump is the flowering of that method. I have often said that Larry David was the prophet of that new “freedom.” But even though people have tried to change the subject, shame keeps bubbling up. My clients keep revealing to me how our trouble with shame will never be “rediscovered” after this generation is done with its version of fig leaves; it is an ongoing, core experience everyone has been weathering since childhood. It is setting the course of our relationships and coloring how we see ourselves. Freeman says,

We are unaccustomed in our culture to thinking of sin and shame as sharing a connection. We have been formed and shaped in the world of guilt and punishment. If we experience shame, we suppose, it is because other people are seeking to shame us. Thus we are likely to imagine that the shame in our lives is external, the result of social ills. If we fix society, our shame will disappear. This is not a surprising approach, given that our habits have long been directed toward sin as an external problem. But other people, regardless of our situation, are not our problem. The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Hell is other people.” He must not have spent much time alone.

We are carrying the problem — and it is not just about doing the right thing or not. Our problem is about not being in right relationship with God, ourselves and others. Our lack of communion with God leaves us ashamed of our fraudulence and incapacity.

It is death that shames us

Back when I was a boy Baptist, sin was that main topic. There was a list of things in the back of the hymnal we were to do and not to do if we intended to be a heaven-bound Baptist. The covenant included being “exemplary in our deportment” (which in our church included not dancing, smoking or card playing), and  abstaining “from the sale and use of intoxicating drinks as a beverage” (which is self-explanatory). Our leaders had been influenced by the “holiness doctrine” that purported to perfect us and we determined to be pure. I was ashamed of not being pure and I was not that bad before I was given the assignment!

The theology was so much about me choosing, the whole thing became more about my holiness than God’s! It took a long time to learn the Adam and Eve story is not about “You idiots, you disobeyed God and now you will be punished forever when you could have had the  Garden of Eden!” It is more about “You poor people! You got out of communion with God. You turned your backs and now you are dying. You were meant to live forever.” My shame was not about my inability to do everything right. It was about being out of communion with God. With my non-Christian clients I can help identify the shame, which is often hidden under self-destruction or avoidance. But it is hard to cure it if one goes at it on their own steam, even when your therapist loves you! Freeman says:

Sin is much better understood as disease, fatal in its consequences. Sin, in a form of shorthand, can be described as “death at work within us.” At its most fundamental level, sin is the rupture of communion. We were created for a life of communion with God. In our sin, we have severed that communion and become strangers to God. Indeed, we have become strangers not only to God but to creation, to other people, even to ourselves. In an interesting side note, the secular shame researcher Gershen Kaufman describes shame as “broken communion.” Shame itself is not sin (or even sinful). Rather, it is an emotional signal that accompanies severed communion. It is, therefore, one of the things that sin feels like.

In John 6, Jesus teaches us about the mystery of communion with Him.

 “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world. . . . Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.” — John 6:51, 53–56

I think my childhood teachers taught on these verses. But I think they were mainly talking , as usual, about how Jesus would raise us up on the last day if we trusted in his work on the cross. For me, and many others I suspect, most of what was happening in the mind of my teachers happened in the past. The communion ceremony was like the pledge of allegiance to the Christian constitution more than an emblem of the present communion we were experiencing and deepening. As I remember, if one didn’t “take communion” it usually meant they were too ashamed of themselves to dare. Ugh.

The shame of not being qualified to take communion due to sin and shame turns the Lord’s teaching on its head, doesn’t it? Jesus invites us to live, not die — the fact that we may be as good as dead right now is his main interest. No matter how much we think our good behavior or genius will keep us alive, we are all going to die — that is, we will be given over to the death we prefer if we do not commune with Jesus and live forever with him. Freeman says:

We were created to live in communion with God. His life is our life. When we read about the creation of Adam, we see that he becomes a “living soul” when God breathes into him. Without the life of God, we are dead clay. The warning regarding the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is not a threat of punishment; rather, it is a warning that eating of it will result in death. To break communion with God by ignoring His commandment is to live as though we had no need of God. It is to spit His breath back at Him and demand that we live alone. The result is death, and with the alienation of death, we enter into its companion: shame.

Communion with God is a breath by breath, moment by moment, day by day, year after year experience of discerning and moving with the Spirit. Not doing that is the essence of sin and the seed of the frailty and worthlessness we experience as shame. I do think people perfect their capacity to be OK with their shame. But I say human life without God is, in the end, no life at all, even if some people purport to be happy with their self-selected nothingness.

If you sit down with your frailty, worthlessness or nothingness, you might feel an intolerable shame well up in the silence. Memories, faults, criticisms, or scorn might start collecting. Jesus will enter that place in you just as he willingly and lovingly entered humanity. His presence is divine therapy that heals our shame. As Jesus says, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

***********

Today is Aidan of Lindisfarne Day! Connect with him at The Transhistorical Body.

 

A new church is emerging post-pandemic: Even in TEC

Building community, Doing Theology, Life as the church, , , , , , ,

Our church is reading an interesting sociology book by Christian Smith: Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America. We had a good discussion on Sunday, and I admire my pastor for bringing up what amounts to a delicate subject: your church is obsolete.  We agreed that our church, The Episcopal Church, has, generally, been obsolete for years. If it were not so well endowed we’d be in big trouble.

Nevertheless, we have strengths. Our church, in particular, is a small group of intelligent, hard-working and openly loving people. We’re mostly over 55 — but our pastor is 45 and my wife was having a conversation during coffee hour with a lovely member who is 5.

Two comments are sticking with me

I came away from our dialogue encouraged and stimulated. People said some interesting things.

  • “I belonged to the church for quite a while before I believed.”

In this day, especially, if anyone is going to become part of the church, belonging probably precedes believing.

  • “Why aren’t we writing our own songs instead of rehearsing the past?”

Our pastor noted the present hymn book of TEC was published the year he was born and has not been updated. My wife pointed out that the composers whose songs are in the hymnbook wrote from the zeitgeist and inspiration of their day.  I noted that the 1660 hymn we had just sung that morning probably sounded fresh in its century, but is it sure weird and boring now.

So Smith is helping us get into some good discussion. If anything is overdo in most churches, it is discussing what are we going to do, now, since our model for being the church is obsolete. It may have been misguided to begin with and that is WHY it is obsolete. Regardless, if we want to be the body of Christ with any integrity and purpose, we’d better come up with what were are called to do now.

Further dialogue will meet up with difficulty

I think most dialogue is good, even when it is bad. The fact it can uncover problems on the way to solving them, makes conflict-avoidant folks steer away from it. For instance, I have issues with the book we’re exploring and I feel reticent to share them. I’m not sure I respect Smith’s methods and conclusions. My issues  can be encapsulated in two words: traditional religion. Smith is a 65-year-old Roman Catholic professor at Notre Dame. So when he talks about “traditional religion” (throughout this book) he is smack dab in the middle of one. I think it shows.

1) When he talks about “religion” (like in his book title), he’s actually talking about American faith, which means Christianity. Religion is a modern concept which reinforces the notion people have that “all religions are basically alike.” They think that because European intellectuals “identified” them and put them in the same category: “religions” in the 1800’s – genus and species, etc.

2) When he talks about “traditional” he seems to mean “mainstream” or “what the TV might say about it.” I think that term should have been obsolete a long time ago when it came to describing the church — at least in Christian circles. Now that I have met hundreds and seen thousands of Christians around the world, it is hard to nail down “traditional.” I think stereotypic Christianity, or enculturated Christianity, or hollow Christianity, or modern Christianity might all be obsolete. Jesus, however, is historically and  presently hanging in there.

But the main thing Smith’s book is missing, in my opinion, comes from being so autobiographical. This book appeared in 2025. But he is really talking about what happened during his lifetime – forty years of studying the data. Much of what he is saying follows up on his books in 2000 and 2005 (George Bush). While I admire him for writing about most of the controversial topics of his day, I get the impression his latest book is kind of out of date. It is light on our recent past.

Any inspiration in a spiritual storm is welcome

I’m not prone to “going to church,”  but discussing Smith’s book juiced my normal devotion to building the church. Two things I found missing in his book may be just what we dare not miss as we live out our lives as the body of Christ in the post-Trump era.

  • Transcendence may be the missing element

What people need to to find when they explore faith in Jesus is transcendence and belonging, not sociological data dumps and critical conclusions. Smith’s sociology, itself,  actually sounds a bit obsolete. In an age of mistrust, he asks us to trust his very rational argument.

Experts will not save the church from becoming “obsolete,” which it will never be and is not now. The church in the U.S. Smith is painstakingly criticizing (objectively of course) undoubtedly needed to go as soon as Ronald Reagan pretended to be a part of it and Evangelicals bent the knee anyway. It needed to die when it became about power, not love and service – and martyrdom.

  • All our dialogue needs to consider how people’s lives are pre- and post-pandemic, now.

The pandemic changed everything. It was like the tornado-like storm in our part of town  last weekend — it toppled dead trees that could not stand the wind. The pandemic damaged our societal infrastructure. And it undermined the fragile new growth of the next church.

As soon as Reagan became president, thousands of young people saw the handwriting on the wall and started building a new church; I was among them. They did well. I think I did well and hundreds with me. But we did well before the pandemic. It was amazing what that storm did to all those new expressions. The impact resembles what happened in the Black Plague in 1347 — that year marks the big outbreak of bubonic plague, which hung around for centuries, and you can still get it. People thought strangers caused caused the plague. Europeans said Jews were poisoning the wells. The church abandoned the public roles that made it a mainstay in the culture and people felt alone. Social disparities were exposed: the wealthy could escape to their country places but the poor (essential workers”) had to stay in their roles — just one example of many. The church had been a big part of what glued the society together and it came unglued.

Covid is not the bubonic plague, but the experience sounds quite similar, doesn’t it? The enculturated church fractured with society. I was personally shocked and dismayed at how the new, unenculturated churches started fighting and splitting, not just my own. They threw out great leaders and installed leaders who resembled the powermonger Trump. Good grief, the country elected Trump! (maybe). I  think Smith’s whole book basically leads up to the tragedy of Covid.

He observes how the church is diminishing, mainly tracking membership and attendance over his lifetime. He’s kind of shouting from the deck of the Titanic — for every 100 new Catholics, 800 leave the church. If he evacuated his viewpoint, he could just as easily tracked the groundswell of attention to what is transcendent during his lifetime. The emerging churches were all focused on transcendence and community, just what his studies show the obsolete church is missing. They got knocked out by the pandemic and the subsequent tsunami of social fragmentation caused by the unmasked sociopaths in charge. But that desire is still there.

Even our little group in TEC was saying “emerging things.” Belonging and finding one’s path into transcendence, into an actual, personal experience of the Spirit and eventually into a life in love with God is just what the church, nontraditional, of course, disempowered and marginalized, was doing all along. And that is what it is still doing wherever it gets a chance. It is getting a chance right now, since the previous church that Smith eulogizes is quickly dying out, even if it has an endowment and Pete Hegseth thinks he’s protecting it.

Juneteenth is the better freedom day: Just look at Philly on July 4th

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Fan favorite at the Juneteenth Parade 52nd and Girard

This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.

Frederick Douglass ca. 1852

Frederick Douglass could not, in good conscience, celebrate July 4th. He celebrated July 5 as his declaration day instead. July 5 became Emancipation Day in New York State when slavery was officially over. It was the day after everyone completed the gradual process of becoming free in 1827. Douglass was 8 years old when it happened, still 11 years away from escaping slavery in Maryland and landing in New York.

Once liberated, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in New York and Massachusetts. In his iconic July 5 speech, given in 1852 to the  Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, he said:

I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”

Douglass is still an inspiration. The U.S. no longer has chattel slavery. But there is a lot left to mourn. So I am leaning into Juneteenth and letting whatever the oligarchs decide to give us for July 4th up to them.

We’ve been whitelashed back into having yearly white supremacy parties on the 4th and I don’t want to be part of it. Even though Philadelphia is right at the center of this year’s celebration, as usual, I’m not feeling it. From what I hear from a lot of people, the whole 250th is sort of “meh.” What country are we talking about and what freedom is likely to be left by #251?

Memorial Hall on opening day

Philadelphia 1876

Philadelphia has always been at the center of major patriotic observances — since 1776, of course. The remnants of the spectacle organized for the Centennial of the Declaration of Independence in 1876 can still be seen in Fairmount Park.

The remnants of Reconstruction after the Civil War, when freedom was won for everyone,  were already being torn down in favor of “progress” by that year. Though the decade after the Civil War elevated former slaves and empowered black people in general, by 1875 the winds had shifted, and the former enemies from the North and South were ready for reconciliation.

Frederick Douglass was there on the first day of the big event in Philly. He was invited to sit among the dignitaries on the main platform as President Grant spoke about the “Progress of the Age.” He was not invited to speak; the greatest orator of the day was reduced to window dressing. He almost didn’t make it into the event. First, he had to pass through the crowd gathered outside the gates before the exhibition opened. Then, once he got to the entrance, the Philadelphia police refused to admit him. They did not believe that “a n****r” would be allowed among the dignitaries. Senator Conkling of New York spotted him and got him over the line.

A year before, in the summer of 1875 on July 5 in Anacostia, Douglass predicted that day to a crowd of black listeners. He said:

“Men cannot, ought not and will not quarrel and fight forever,”…So sure as the stars shine in the heavens, and the rivers run to the sea, so sure will the white people North and South abandon their quarrel and become friends. The whole American horizon is already fringed with the portents of this coming union. Boston, Lexington and Bunker Hill have already sent forth their silvery notes of peace and unity to the whole nation, and next year Philadelphia, the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence, will lift to the sky its million voices in one grand Centennial hosannah of peace and good will to all the white race of this country.

Eddie S. Glaude Jr. of Princeton says: “He understood what was happening: the centennial celebrations would tell a story of the nation that rejoiced in reunion, and that reunion required the erasure of Black people. The event would be a national affair in which the “silvery notes of peace and unity” from sacred places in our national history would render the true cause of the Civil War invisible in a national ritual of disremembering. The country would revel in its technological advancements, as capitalists celebrated America’s economic resolve despite the Panic of 1873, and as white people reasserted the superiority of white Anglo-Saxon blood. An idea of America, alabaster white, would rise from the ashes of war and Reconstruction.”

Does that sound familiar to you, too?

Philadelphia in 1926

The 1926 extravaganza to celebrate the sesquicentennial was also scheduled for Philadelphia. This time the country was still recovering from WW1 and the Spanish Influenza epidemic. What’s more, although holding the event was procured in order to make Philadelphia look less squalid and corrupt, the whole project was squalid and corrupted.

You can still see remnants of the fairgrounds in FDR Park. The rest is covered by today’s stadiums. If you travel on Vare Ave. to beat the traffic on 76 sometime, remember it is named after Rep. William S. Vare and his brothers who were called the “Dukes of South Philadelphia.” They organized most of the kickbacks and political patronage.

President Calvin Coolidge was there on July 5th, since July 4th was on a Sunday and some people still thought opening the celebration on Sunday was unseemly. He had a prophecy to deliver:

No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp.

Coming later in the year, Mayor Kendrick initially approved a “Klan Weekend” on September 9-11. Thousands of the 250,000 Klan members in PA planned a massive parade down Broad St. and a cross-burning at the fairgrounds. The public outcry was so great they were denied their permit, but they held private meetings and hovered over the city. Inspired, in part,  by the successful film The Birth of a Nation, the Ku Klux Klan had reemerged in 1915 “to unite white male persons, native-born Gentile citizens of the United States…to maintain forever white supremacy…and {the} ideals of pure Americanism.”

Almost 200,000 black people lived in Philadelphia, in 1926. They had lived through the European War over the spoils of colonialism which spent millions of lives to decide which  white nation would rule the world. Imagine your Mayor thinking it was fine if the Klan claimed Broad St and dominated the Nation’s celebration of freedom! W.E.B. Du Bois had named the monster they were up against in 1910 in “The Souls of White Folk:”

It is curious to see America, the United States, looking on herself, first, as a sort of natural peacemaker, then as a moral protagonist in this terrible time. No nation is less fitted for this role. For two or more centuries America has marched proudly in the van of human hatred,—making bonfires of human flesh and laughing at them hideously, and making the insulting of millions more than a matter of dislike,—rather a great religion, a world war-cry: Up white, down black; to your tents, O white folk, and world war with black and particolored mongrel beasts!

Sounds familiar, right?

Parade on the Parkway
July 4th Coalition counter parade through North Philly

Philadelphia 1976

Plans for Bicentennial celebration in Philadelphia did not go completely as planned — but there was a 50,000-pound Sara Lee birthday cake served at Memorial Hall the week before! Plus, there was plenty of ceremony to reassert the nation’s myths.  For instance, on July 3,  six wagon trains totaling 200 wagons, which had traveled for months from all over the nation, converged at the newly-formed Valley Forge National Park in front of a crowd of nearly a half a million people.

On July 4th, a ceremony on the new Independence Mall featured President Gerald Ford — the wounds of Watergate and the evacuation of Saigon still fresh. Governor Milton Shapp and Mayor Frank Rizzo were on the platform. Charlton Heston was master of ceremonies. Following the ceremony there was a five-hour parade featuring floats from every state and 40,000 marchers. An estimated two million visitors came to Philadelphia to attend these events.

Meanwhile, the July 4th Coalition led a counter-parade through North Philly on the same day. Puerto Rican socialists, Vietnam veterans, women’s rights advocates, Black liberation groups like the Black Panthers, and unemployed workers joined into one march that proceeded west along Lehigh Avenue and into Fairmount Park at Oxford Street, ending with a sprawling concert and cookout on the fairgrounds built for the 1876 Centennial. They took issue with the Bicentennial Corporation’s progress narrative and illuminated all the forms of oppression that remained alive and well in the late seventies.

Gil Scott-Heron, “the Godfather of rap,” was formed in the Philadelphia area. Here’s what he had to say about the Bicentennial:

America has got the blues and it’s a bicentennial edition
America has got the blues
It’s got the blues because of partial deification
Of partial accomplishments
Over partial periods of time
Halfway justice
Halfway liberty
Halfway equality
It’s a half-ass year

Here’s the full piece:

It all sounds very familiar, partly because the protest has been the background music of my adulthood and fundamental to my Anabaptist Christianity.

Philadelphia 2026

Now, for the Semiquincentennial, we have Trump putting his name on everything and renaming places — which had just been renamed, after Civil War traitors — again. It has been a hard slog to get some semblance of Declaration-of-Independence-equality for everyone in the U.S. over the country’s history. But even given the progress, it is hard to stomach what the present Administration and Supreme Court have done to reaffirm and protect white supremacy on the eve of the 250th.

Rigging the vote

  • Gutting the Voting Rights Act: The Supreme Court made it significantly harder to challenge discriminatory election maps that dilute the power of minority voters.
  • Race-Conscious Redistricting Limits: The Court struck down maps specifically drawn to address racial imbalances in states like Louisiana, setting off a wave of gerrymandering.

Dumping DEI

  • Banning Systemic Discrimination Tools: The Trump administration aggressively dismantled the use of the “disparate impact” standard—a key tool used for decades to challenge seemingly neutral policies that end up disproportionately harming minority groups in housing, employment, and healthcare.
  • DEI Restrictions: Executive orders have been implemented that severely limit or outright ban diversity and equity training across federal agencies, government contractors, and grant recipients like UPenn. The chilling effect remains.

Sacking safeguards

  • Workplace Equality Enforcement: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was directed to stop investigating certain complaints regarding company policies that inadvertently harm specific demographic groups.
  • Education and Discipline: Civil rights guidance meant to address race- and disability-based discrimination in school discipline policies was rescinded.
  • Limiting Affirmative Action: The Court struck down race-conscious admissions programs at colleges and universities, dismantling decades of precedent aimed at rectifying historical educational inequities.
  • Dismantling Civil Rights Offices: Funding and personnel have been severely reduced across federal civil rights offices, including those in the Departments of Education, Homeland Security, and Justice.
  • Eliminating Inequality Data: The administration has rolled back data-collection efforts previously used to track disparities in environmental hazards, special education, and racial inequality. [For a detailed breakdown of these policy changes, you can explore the ACLU’s Report on Anti-Discrimination Law.]

Whitening citizenship

  • Threats to Birthright Citizenship: Legal challenges and administrative efforts have targeted the 14th Amendment, threatening the automatic citizenship of children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants.
  • Language and Ethnic Profiling: The administration rolled back requirements for language-assistance services for people with limited English proficiency and adopted practices that effectively treat ethnicity and accents as legitimate reasons for immigration stops.

All these actions have been played out with a soundtrack of Trump, Hegseth, and Miller, et al, spouting off reasons the government has had enough of all this whining about equality: “Y’all have freedom because we say so, and we will tell you when you exercise it too much.”

There is a lot more of their wreckage that could be listed, and they are just getting started combing through the nooks and crannies of government and society looking for threats to whiteness. On July 4th (and every day) we are supposed to pretend America is just and good, a beacon of light to the world, and forget about what happens right before our eyes. Such pretending is essential to the national myth that forms our patriotic religion.

So I am focusing on Juneteenth. And I will again say there is no room for slaveholder religion in the Church of Jesus Christ. We’re all poor in the eyes of God and that, if nothing else, is a great equalizer. Whether you believe that or not, Juneteenth, when we all were technically as free as any other citizen, is the real Independence Day for the U.S., at least until it gets to a better one.

U.S. Christians need a new story: Use Columba as an example

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Columba Day was June 9, but I think the famous “apostle to Scotland” needs a few more minutes in the spotlight. He may be even more Christian than we already thought.

His traditional story was passed down to us written within the general framework used for about 9000 years, now; it says the powerful deserve their power and have a right to acquire the excess we produce to use as they see fit, mainly to go to war and protect their own power. But if Columba’s story is retold within a Christian framework where individuals have freedom and communities are places for love and sharing, as we were created to experience, the story can be told more truthfully.

This 12th century drawing may be the oldest depiction.

Several of the famous stories about Columba (like how he stopped the Loch Ness monster) should inspire us to stand up to the monsters impeding the mission required in the present day. It is not just the warriors who “make” history. The community builders and family keepers, like most of us, are much more relevant. Like so many old stories these days, Columba’s story (and yours, probably) begs to be retold truer.

As you will see, how Columba stood up to the power-hoarding, private-property elevating people of his day should inspire us to stand up against the billionaires who are the newest perpetrators of an age-old fraud. In truth, cooperation built the world, not conquest. Columba was living according to his own version of the Jesus-inspired economic bill of rights.

I encourage you to make up your own mind about my retelling, since that is what historians do. They always have a point of view – and you do too, even if you think you have no view at all. The view from which the story of Columba is usually told is about how rulers duke it out to own the most and to keep their positions of dominance — and that’s the way it is. The tired, old story tells us we will be punished if we don’t conform, or at least cause too much trouble. But does it tell the whole truth?

Here is the traditional telling of a famous story about Columba (with bullet points!). It is usually titled:

The first copyright law

In 561, Columba secretly copied a rare, religious book belonging to his former teacher, Finnian. When a king ruled “to every cow its calf, to every book its copy,” war broke out over the stolen copy.

  • The Gift: Columba visited his old teacher, Finnian, in Ireland. Finnian had a beautiful new Psalter (a book of Psalms) which he let Columba use.
  • The Theft: Columba loved the book so much he secretly stayed up late at night in the church, copying it by hand.
  • The Discovery: Finnian caught Columba in the act when he was well on the way toward completion. He demanded that Columba give him the copied book.
  • The Refusal: Columba refused to give him the copy, claiming it belonged to him because his own hard work made it.
  • The Ruling: Both men went to High King Diarmait mac Cerbhiall to settle their dispute. The King made a famous ruling: “To every cow belongs its calf, and to every book belongs its copy.”
  • The War: Columba was very angry about losing his copy. He went back to his home clan and started a war against the King. Thousands of men died in the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne in 561.
  • The Exile: As a punishment for causing so much death, Columba was sent away from Ireland. He sailed to Scotland and started a new church on the Island of Iona, vowing never to return to his home and determined to fulfill the charge by his overseer to convert as many people as died in the battle.

Here is how the story might just as well have happened if the hierarchy had not put itself in charge of writing history. It could be titled:

The word of God belongs to everyone.

In 561, Columba set out to copy a psalter Finnian had locked away from the community-at-large — Finnian being like Gollum protecting his “Precious.” Columba discerned that such a book should belong to everyone, especially since books were scarce and literacy was the key to opening up new worlds. Finnian brought him before the authorities for stealing his book. When Columba lost the legal battle before the corrupt court, his clan rushed to his rescue. He escaped. Ashamed of the bloodshed he had caused, he exiled himself and gave his life to saving as many people in Jesus’ name as had been killed in his.

  • The Precious: As a trusted graduate of Finnian’s school, Columba was given access to a beautiful Psalter Finnian prized and kept away from the general public.
  • The Plan: Columba did not think the book should remain locked away and owned by Finnian. He wanted a copy to learn from and to share. So he secretly stayed up late at night copying it by hand.
  • The Discovery: Finnian caught Columba in the act. He demanded that Columba give him the copied book.
  • The Refusal: Columba refused, claiming the copy belonged to him because his own hard work made it, just like the Psalms belonged to everyone to whom God gave them, as well as to all the scribes, scrolls makers and teachers who passed them down through generations. Finnian’s position did not give him the right to own the Psalms.
  • The Ruling: Instead of resorting to violence, the men went to High King Diarmait mac Cerbhiall to settle their dispute. The King made a famous ruling: “To every cow belongs its calf, and to every book belongs its copy.” In this case that meant: “If you own the means of production, you control everything it produces. If you copy the book, you essentially work for the owner.” Note that Finnian did not author the book, he just owned it, a bit like A.I. collecting all the works of history (including this little piece of writing) and then charging you to access and use it.
  • Yet another battle: Columba was upset about losing his copy. He was also angry that he and others who needed the book were restricted to whatever pieces Finnian wanted to give them. He went back to his home clan in a rage and they jumped to his defense without being asked, since that has always been how nonbelievers settle problems, and since it was an excuse to take power from the king. Thousands of men died in the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne.
  • Leaving home: As usual, whoever stands up against the status quo is shamed and scapegoated. Columba was made an outcast for being disobedient and causing conflict. So he determined to leave his homeland. A substantial group of men discerned what was really going on and set sail with him for parts unknown. They shook the dust of Ireland off their feet and went to build something new. Columba was ashamed his clan’s warfare, sad to be labeled as an unrepentant rebel, and lonely for his devoted family, but he went off to discover the fullness of what God had been doing when he first dared to quench his thirst for the psalter.

Columba’s new way

Click the picture to learn about a voyage that replicated Columba’s

When the band got to Iona they built a new kind of settlement on the rocky little island. It set the character of what would influence the whole area from then on (and until now!) – a community in mission, open and expansive, full of beauty, not closed and controlling. Iona became the “cradle of Christianity” in Scotland. It also served as a great lighthouse of learning.

It is telling that one of the most famous accounts of their mission includes Columba stopping the Loch Ness monster from devouring one of his comrades. He’s another hero travelling in a band like Frodo, who overcame the temptation of the ring of power, who did not become a new version of Gollum. The symbolic monsters of the past, like dragons, resemble the monsters of today, which guard their territory with fire from above or terrors from the deep and hoard gold.

The new community on Iona built a strong center for education. They copied rare religious and historical books by hand. Their beautiful writing and art changed early European history. By 800, the community began creating their masterpiece: the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript containing the four Gospels. It is still regarded as one of Ireland’s national treasures, celebrated for its intricate Celtic knotwork, vibrant colors, and inspired drawings. The book was moved from Iona to the Abbey of Kells in County Meath, Ireland, to protect it from Viking raids around 806. In 1661 it was presented to Trinity College in Dublin for safekeeping where it still remains and where I saw it.

It is telling that the mission which was sparked by a book became famous for a book. It is also telling that Trinity College has monetized their possession of the book by providing an “experience” which gives tourists a way to pay for as little time as possible with books and focus on their feelings about them. The College resemble Finnian. As usual, normal people get the sizzle while the owners get the steak.

The main characteristic that made Columba’s community distinct was their Celtic way of clan life enriched by the radical sharing demonstrated in the New Testament [An Anglican bishop considers how to make it work now]. Iona was egalitarian and planted new communities like itself. These days, “successful” churches, in general have no practical connection to its locale. It is a destination, a program, a product, not a collection of people who live and work together. The community on Iona was different. The missionaries did not conquer the Picts; they moved in with them, became friends, and shared their lives.

Columba is a leader like people in a long line stretching back to Jesus who refuse to live according to the rules of the domination system and the myth of redemptive violence.  Constantine may have co-opted the church, the early medieval church may have adopted the Roman model of governance and hierarchy and conquered the Celtic church in its name, but there are always people who see through the lies.

Trump may have co-opted the Evangelicals with the promise they will rule with him, but that unfulfilled promise is already part of the collapse of the latest regime, perpetrating the old fraud. I pray we replace it with a government which functions within a true economy, as a means to distribute the excess we create in an equitable and mutually beneficial way, a government inspired by the truth and love in Jesus and wherever else it can be found, not infected with the repetitive and damned self-destruction perpetrated by would-be kings. We all need a truer story to live by.

Are there really good billionaires?

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Yes, I know you can make an argument for how someone can be “good” in some way even though they are a billionaire. Yes, I know it is a fallen world and strict accountability for anything is going to run into ethical thorns.

But, come on, if you had 5 million dollars (and how would you ever get that?), you would consider yourself free from worry for life (unless you invested it all in Trump crypto). A person with only ONE billion dollars has 200 times your $5 million. Elon Musk has 700 times one billion! It is staggering, right?

There should not be a democracy in which billionaires accompany the president to China instead of elected representatives of the people.

There should not be a system in which people become billionaires, at all. We live in such a system and it is not from the Lord.  I added “it is not from the Lord” because people seem to think capitalism descended from heaven — it just is what it is, so you can be good or bad in it. No, an economic system might be used well, but ours is a human conception run by sociopaths, for the most part. The poster child is the president.

I will do a little bit to convince you of that in a second, but first, the complaining.

I got to writing this piece because the women of Indivisible, of all things, posted a picture of “Good Billionaires Who Give Back.” Think about that.

  1. Did you give the billionaires your money so they could give it back? I doubt it — at least not on purpose.
  2. Do you really think the billionaires “earned” their billions like you do or they “made ” it out of the thin air of their genius? I doubt it.
  3. Don’t you think they took it? Their “giving back” is reparations, at the very least. They schemed and competed and defeated and cornered markets up in their higher echelons of “finance” where we do not have the money to pay to play.

Elon Musk once provided some bullet points for how to get rich like he did:

  • Focus on usefulness: “It’s better to approach this from the standpoint of saying… what are some useful things that you do that you wish existed in the world?”

I suppose the world really needed Warren Buffet’s multibillion dollar holding company focused on making money by acquiring undervalued entities to get a snowball of wealth-building moving.

  • Solve hard problems: “You get paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of problems you solve.”

I suppose Tom Steyer’s Fallon Capital Hedge Fund “casino” for the ultra-wealthy operating on the edges of ethicality in fossil fuels and private prisons really solved a societal problem. I think it only solved how to make more money regardless of the consequences.

  • Embrace persistence: “Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.”

Several of the “good billionaires” listed got their billions without lifting a finger — no persistence necessary. With the Federal government acting as a subsidiary of the billionaires, no one is going to force a billionaire to do anything. Bush and Obama just bailed them out, since they were too big to fail, too big to hold accountable.

Is Jesus making a list of good billionaires?

From the perspective of Jesus’ teachings, calling someone a “good billionaire” is problematic, at best. The Gospels make it clear that the accumulation of extreme, hoarded wealth is deeply opposed to the kingdom of God. Whether a billionaire is “saved” is up to God’s justice and grace, so if that’s the definition of “good” than so be it. But if good is living according to what Jesus says and demonstrates as good, then “good” and “billionaire” are contradictory.

What Jesus said about wealth is well known. I grew up with people who always had a “but” right after they said what Jesus said about wealth. But we all know.

  • Wealth is a tempting idol. You cannot serve both God and wealth (Matthew 6:24). Billionaires need to serve wealth-making to become billionaires.
  • Living in the kingdom of God as a wealthy person is almost impossible. The famous story of the rich young ruler has driven many Christian parents to be very anxious when their 17-year-olds read it, since they were preparing them to make it in the world as it is. Jesus explained, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24).
  • It is better give than to receive (or take, or make, or hoard). In the exchange with the young man, Jesus told him to sell everything and give the proceeds to the poor, prioritizing radical charity over material security. In other places he says “Don’t build bigger barns. Don’t lay up treasures on earth. Give what you have been given.” He is not mysterious about this.

Many theologians and ethicists argue that it is structurally impossible to be a “good billionaire” according to Christian ethics.

  • Nothing is good about systemic inequality. Critics argue that possessing billions of dollars while billions live in poverty amounts to hoarding resources, which fundamentally violates Jesus’ command to love your neighbor as yourself.

Patricia Chan is in the list above. She co-founded the Chan/Zuckerberg Initiative with her husband, the famous Mark, pledging to put 99% of their Facebook shares in this LLC. Their mission is science, education, and opportunity — housing affordability, criminal justice reform, and immigration reform. They want to “build a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone” and to “advance human potential and promote equality in areas such as health, education, scientific research and energy.” Sounds like the work for an elected government not super rich 40somethings. It also sounds like you put 99% of certain funds in an LLC, but you still control it all as a profit-making possibility.

  • They are robber barons. Critics also say no one can legitimately acquire a billion dollars without some degree of labor exploitation, market manipulation, or systemic extraction.

George Soros made his fortune primarily through aggressive global macro investing and currency speculation as a hedge fund manager. His Quantum Fund made his wildest trade in 1992, when he correctly bet the British government would be forced to devalue the pound. You may not know how this works, but by heavily shorting the pound with borrowed money, his fund single-handedly forced the UK out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and made an estimated $1 billion in profit. He’s “the man who broke the Bank of England.”

Can their be a democracy when a billionaire has such power? Making the most money is the law of the system and they pull the triggers.

The same logic that says “guns do not shoot themselves” and “the unborn have a right to life” says that individuals have a responsibility to be good. All people need to steward their money and do good with it. If some end up billionaires, that’s due to their goodness.

To be fair, it can be (and is) argued that wealth itself is not inherently sinful.

  • What is in your heart matters. They point out that the Bible does not focus on how much money one has, but whether or not you love it (1 Timothy 6:10). If you don’t read the Old Testament through a New Testament lens then wealthy figures like Abraham and King Solomon are “blessed” rich people (but not the non-Jew, Belshazzar!).

Elon Musk is respected among Evangelicals for just such a reason, he has purportedly good motives and good ends in mind. They respect him despite him being well-known for stiffing vendors, skipping office rent payments, and pushing testing and manufacturing timelines past regulatory limits.

  • The more one has the more is required. If a billionaire sees themselves as “managing” the wealth they have been given rather than owning it, and uses their resources to create jobs, fund charities, and uplift the marginalized, their wealth can be used for good.

Iranian-American Pierre Omidyar has a reputation built on this premise. He and his wife, Pam have given $1.2 billion dollar to impact investments and nonprofits since 2004.

The answer is “no.” Billionaires are not good. 

Jesus did not say that wealthy people are automatically condemned (regardless of the tenor of this post). He did not say it is theoretically impossible for them to be saved.

But with every teaching, parable and example he showed how difficult it is for rich individuals to remain humble, detached from their possessions, and reliant on God. When God was revealed in Jesus, his self-giving, impoverishing servanthood lead him to the cross, not a transhuman search for A.I. eternal life.

It is self-giving love that is good. But it won’t make you a billionaire. According to Jesus, wealth is a massive spiritual burden, and a “good billionaire” would have to actively sacrifice their fortune to the service of others to fulfill His teachings. As is regularly noted, men without a conscience make the best billionaires and those who retain one often have to smother it to keep their power or satisfy greedy stockholders.

 

a friend chimed in elsewhere:

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

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It is hard to know “what to do” with anyone, of course. But we are going to do something, regardless. So we should get it as right as we can.

When it comes to what we’re going to do with corrupt leaders, and I can name a few, there are many wrong ways to go. But every way makes a difference. You matter. And if this is how you think about that: unfortunately, you matter.

I think the last sixteen months have been a whirlwind of wrongness. So I am writing to add to the opprobrium which is daily launched in the direction of wrongdoers. We all might be a little wrong; but don’t worry, the Bible will help you.

Prophesying to the drivers in Ardmore

The first answer to “What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?” should probably come from Jeremiah: TELL THE TRUTH, as in PROPHESY!

This is a part of the Bible that especially inspired me last week:

The wise shall be put to shame;
    they shall be dismayed and taken;
since they have rejected the word of the Lord,
    what wisdom is in them?
Therefore I will give their wives to others
    and their fields to conquerors,
because from the least to the greatest
    everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
from prophet to priest,
    everyone deals falsely.
They have treated the wound of the daughter of my people carelessly,
    saying, “Peace, peace,”
    when there is no peace.
They acted shamefully; they committed abomination,
    yet they were not at all ashamed;
    they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;
    at the time when I punish them, they shall be overthrown,
            says the Lord. — Jeremiah 8:9-12

The first answer to the question presumes people who follow Jesus would not take corruption lightly any more than Jesus did. He was especially direct with the Pharisees, who thought they were “conservative.”

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and of the plate, so that the outside also may become clean.”

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of uncleanness. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” — Matthew 23:25-8

But we can’t presume most of the Christians in the U.S. will take corruption seriously, can we? They seem to think they are serious about the Bible but they are taking Trump’s corruption very lightly, even encouraging it as a means to return the country to “greatness.”

So when we ask “What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?” we have to start with:

They regularly follow them

They sing “It is well with my soul” – the corrupt leader is restoring order in the name of Jesus. And if that order makes me richer and corrals people I secretly hate, all the better.

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

They pretend they do not exist

I think this is more prevalent. American Christians, by and large, retreated into having a private faith a long time ago. They are not Jeremiahs!

They sing: “It is well with my soul” —  My faith is a soul matter, not a public matter. I don’t get involved with politics.

To be clear, as American Christians are pretending, by and large, they are swallowing a boatload or corruption. Pretending is not inaction, it takes quite an effort to quash reality!

  • The most damning Epstein files are still hidden.
  • J.D. Vance is fronting a push to combat fraud in public services by illegally withholding $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments from California.
  • Trump has fired or demoted twenty inspectors general during his terms—the people who are key to oversight. In 2024 alone the people he has since fired or sidelined identified more than $50 billion in waste and abuse.
  • Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 70 donors or allies who were convicted of fraud. One, Philip Esformes, was convicted of stealing $1.3 billion from Medicare.
  • The Trump family has pocketed over $600 million through cryptocurrency enterprises this year.
  • Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr. have invested in a drone manufacturer that is trying to sell weapons to Persian Gulf countries currently at risk from the war their father started in Iran.
  • The Pentagon recently awarded a $24 million contract to a robotics startup for which Eric is the “chief strategy advisor.”
  • Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has acted as a chief negotiator for the U.S. in the Middle East. at the same time he has been trying to raise $5 billion from investors there for his investment firm.
  • Corporations and billionaires have dropped millions of dollars in donations for Trump’s ballroom where the East Wing used to be and his proposed presidential library in Miami.
  • Trump had raked in more than $2 billion for his projects or causes, more than half a billion of it from 346 people who each gave at least $250,000. Some of those people have received presidential pardons, others have been given jobs, and all have received access to the president.
  • Trump is using the planned Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event to be held on his birthday on the White House lawn as a new way for donors to funnel money to him. Ringside seats have been selling for $1 million or more. Neither the White House nor the UFC will comment on where the money is going.
  • Trump took seventeen CEOs with him to China, along with his son Eric, who runs the family business. Paul Krugman said, “He might as well have been walking around Beijing with a sign that says—in block capitals, of course, this is Trump—BRIBE ME.”
  • Miami residents are suing Trump and others to stop the construction of Trump’s presidential library, charging that state officials violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause when they transferred almost three acres of prime waterfront land, worth between $67 million and $300 million, to Trump’s library foundation for $10. Trump has already said he wants to build a hotel on the site rather than a traditional library.
  • The Department of Justice was working with Trump to settle his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) after a contractor during Trump’s first term leaked tax returns from thousands of wealthy individuals to the media. They want to settle before it goes to court, where he will probably lose
  • Trump offered to drop the lawsuit in exchange for the government’s establishing a $1.7 billion fund to compensate his allies who claim they were harmed by the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the DOJ —  this includes nearly 1,600 people convicted of committing crimes related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, people Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of shortly after he took office in January 2025.

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

They manage them

They take a lot of responsibility for the world. So Christians work very hard to make sure Jesus is not shown up to be powerless and make sure they don’t get in trouble for doing a bad job. People with a narcissistic wound control or manipulate others to protect their fragile egos and avoid their shame — they manage them, all the time. There is an epidemic of such woundedness in the church.

They sing: “It is well with my soul” – I can make others well like I should be.  I need to keep things under control. Everyone needs to stay safe.

This grandiosity regularly falls apart. Since there are too many plates to keep spinning and they are the only ones they trust to spin. Besides, the corrupt people often have no conscience, so managing them is more like feeding them your power.

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

They undermine them

They sing “It is well with my soul” – I am on the frontline of justice

I don’t think justice is the solution to all the earth’s problems. But without that first step, it is hard to get anywhere else. Our efforts need to be as endless as God’s.

But we need to be honest, people wrestling for power, even in the name of justice, never have rest for their souls. Feeling unwell about something can be addctive. Just witness the work of Climate Defiance, one of my favorites activist groups. This is from last week’s newsletter:

We absolutely NAILED Xavier Becerra. We ruined his whole event. It was so beautiful and so brutal all at once. It was so necessary. You must watch. You can see it here.

Our protest was not just an act of public humiliation. It was an act of JUSTICE.

If you’re just tuning in, Big Oil Becerra is the front-runner for Governor of California. He wants the prestige. He wants the power. We must stop him. Here’s why:

He took $39,000 from Chevron – the maximum contribution. It’s their first time getting involved in the governor’s race there in a decade. Then he defended the legalized bribe, proclaiming, verbatim “they’re not the bad guy.”

Are you serious?

Is it giving kids asthma that he’s ok with? Or spreading climate misinformation? Or searching for new oil reserves when current ones contain enough carbon to make earth unlivable? Which of these things specifically is he ok with? I would like to know.

He then doubled down. He said: “Does everybody here drive an electric vehicle? You need Chevron, I need Chevron, my people of the state of California need Chevron.”

Jesus. Electric vehicles were invented in the 1800s. Companies like Chevron are the main REASON we are not driving them. They have poisoned our political system and blocked the transition.

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

They overthrow them

It started with the Roman Empire and kept going in response to every empire-builder since. Yes, so-called Christians have often been on the wrong side. We get sucked into power struggles, too. But wherever there is prayer and community, Jesus-followers are a burr under the saddle of corrupt rulers.

They sing: “It is well with my soul” – I am well and I feel it. You can’t keep me from the love of Jesus no matter what you do. Being well with Jesus allows me to turn my cheek and so turn the world upside down.

Tennessee Democrats locked arms on the House floor in protest of a the redistricting vote that split the state’s only majority-Black Democrat Congressional district on May 7, 2026, in Nashville, Tennessee.

I suspect most of the Tennessee reps protesting the racial gerrymander of Tennessee voting districts are church people. Their two outspoken young leaders, Justin Pearson and Justin Jones were immediately juxtaposed with pictures of Martin Luther King on social media when they got carted off the statehouse floor . They were just saying, “Since the Confederates rule in Washington right now and they say there is no racial discrimination under the law, regardless of the Voting Rights laws that have ruled since the 1960’s, we cannot be silent.” In the picture, Jones’ sign says it all.

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

They are a resistant alternative to them

They sing: “It is well with my soul” – Life is worth living and Jesus says I am worthy of living it. We are made to make something which is fit for Jesus and which can withstand the tribulations of the present. I’m referencing Ephesians 4 and 5:

Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be associated with them, for once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness; rather, expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly,  but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,

“Sleeper, awake!
Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

Be careful, then, how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil — Ephesians 5:6-16

I am astounded that Canticle: A Novel by Janet Rich Edwards has actually been a NY Times editors choice. I enjoyed reading it for another look at one of my favorite centuries: the 13th and one of my favorites places: Bruges. What’s more it centers on some of my favorite Christians; the Beguines.

I was encouraged by the book, but even more encouraged that people were talking about  it and what it means to know God and live life as a member of his people. The grassroots devotion of the Beguines and their male counterparts, the Beghards upended their society and the corrupt church ruling it. Over and over again, the Holy Spirit has stubbornly inspired Jesus followers to risk losing their place in the corrupt system which corrupt men  made for them and risk following Jesus with all they’ve got. We create an alternative society to the passing away world.

This coming Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, the most radical Sunday of the year. It should launch us into planting seeds of hope whether the soil is rocky or not because one of those seeds is very likely to take root anyway. Pentecost should cause us to look at our lives and our church and reimagine them in the light God sees us, full of love and potential, poised for creation. Pentecost, at the very least, should wake us up from the stupor-inducing rule of the present oligarchs.

We need furious peacemakers: And they appear to be out there.

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Ben Rhodes, who was Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting (whew!) from 2009 to 2017, was a close confidant to President Obama and a key foreign policy advisor. In his NY Times opinion piece last week, he regretted a lot of what he did.

He looked at Trump’s latest expenditure of bombs and laid part of the blame for it on the tepid and toothless response of Democrats. He imagines some Congressional logic for why they were generally feckless:

[W]hat if Mr. Trump bombs Iran, and the regime collapses and is replaced by something better? You could feel this calculation within the Democratic Party as the war began — a hedging that only dissipated when the war’s brutality and insanity became clear. Behind it is a perverse logic: Both Iranian strength and Iranian weakness can justify war.

To be fair, the blame for this dynamic extends far beyond elected officials, to commentators who are at turns jingoistic, credulous of fearmongering and inclined to cover any harm done to Americans or our interests around the world as a political crisis; to think tanks that cast events particularly in the Middle East as problems that can be solved by U.S. intervention; to an entertainment industry that often valorizes American military and intelligence operations; and to people like me who have filled the ranks of Democratic administrations.

We’ve all been in a world of “what if” since Covid, so we can probably relate to the skittish Dems. Anxiety rules.

But “what if” is not the only rule that leads the opponents of Trump to be less than furious — like I wish they would be. You can see those rules in Rhodes’ writing: “calculation…hedging…perverse logic…our interests…problems that can be solved…entertainment industry…intelligence operation.” When we host the 250th anniversary of the Declaration this year, those words could be the key words to describe the new American experiment – put them on a banner over a background of a Minuteman, perhaps, to achieve the appropriate irony. I suppose we could include “brutality” and “insanity,” too. That’s what the country has perfected and who knows what it might do next?

Where are the peacemakers?

I know there are a lot of Christians who are out on the front lines boldly harassing ICE and telling the truth about the world and Jesus.  The aging clergy in Philly (and I can still be included in that group) have been out and getting arrested for their actions. At the end of March, twelve of them got in good trouble for blocking the ICE driveway at 8th and Cherry [Inquirer].

They are so loving, the officers smile at them when they help them get up off the street. Love will win if anything good wins.

But we could use some more furious love. Over 225 million people in the U.S. identify as Christians. That percentage used to be declining but apparently isn’t anymore. You’d think at least 100 million or so would actually be like Jesus. What if they were? That would be potent.

Paul says Jesus in our peace. That peacemaking got him killed. But a lot of people just make his peace an inner sense of peace with God and only as outer as getting along with others in whatever church they can manage to stay in.

Jesus is quite a bit more furious than that. Just read Matthew 23, where he tags people who preserve their own power with a perverted reading of the scripture as a “brood of vipers.” A bit later, he contrasts himself as a mother hen longing to brood over Jerusalem, to protect her children. There is nothing more furious than a mother separated from her children.

Or go back a few pages in Matthew to chapter 18, where Jesus says, 

If any of you cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of things that cause sin! Such things are bound to come, but woe to the one through whom they come!

That is furious stuff. He must be especially inflamed right now. How in the world could any Christian support the brutality and insanity of the Iran War and defend the sociopath president undermining the whole world with it?  Jesus knows that sins are going to come, but his followers should do their best not to cause or cooperate with  them! They certainly won’t be praying for them to occur with Pete Hegseth and his nationalist pastor/mentor!

Furious peacemakers are out there

I hope the Christians are catching up. Maybe they will be out in force for May Day Strong. In the meantime, other prophets are doing their duty. Here are two of my favorites, in case you don’t know them, yet.

Briefly, start with Matthew Cooke. Cooke is not a Christian; he’s more of a Star Trek, Jesus-adjacent humanist. But he still gives some of the best sermons I have heard about what needs to happen in the world today. He is a furious, filmmaking, philosophizing peacemaker. I don’t sign up for a lot, but I don’t want to miss what he comes up with [Survivor’s guide]. Take a minute to listen as he preaches about taking back the future.

An even better example of what a furious Christian peacemaker should probably sound like is the politician Ben Rhodes was writing about in the Times: Graham Platner of Maine. He’s lightly Jewish if anything more than atheist. But his morality is spot on.

As a 20 year old, Platner had his first epiphany when he was constructing a patrol base near Falluja. A mortar round fired by Iraqi opponents killed the families of the troop’s local co-workers. He said, “There’s this thing I often think about. Those kids were killed because we were spending money to build this base that probably doesn’t exist anymore. [I thought] ‘How horrifically wasteful this is.’”

I agree. Since Sep. 11, 2001 the U.S. has spent more than $6 trillion fighting wars that killed over 7,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of civilians, inflicting trauma on innumerable people. The country is responsible for destruction which has displaced tens of millions of people. The refugees who sought safety in the Eurocentric countries fueled a right-wing backlash to democracy. And what was built in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and now Iran? What could have  been built at home with those trillions of dollars? Just writing that burns me up.

Platner is with me. Visceral outrage infuses his opposition to the war in Iran: “Nobody is going to be able to convince me that what I did in Iraq and Afghanistan did anything for the people of Sullivan, Maine.”…“I don’t want other young Americans to go through what I’ve been through. And I don’t want to send other young Americans to inflict the horror that I had to inflict on people.”…“I don’t know a single guy I served with who thinks this thing in Iran is a good idea.”…[The reason] they were big Trump supporters — he was the antiwar or ‘America first’ candidate.”

Credit…Mark Peterson for The New York Times

“Here in the real world, most people get it,” Platner says of his campaign events. “Do you think this country should spend more on schools and hospitals and less on bombs? A lot of people are like, yeah, that’s pretty obvious.”

And yet the wars keep happening. The money keeps flowing to defense contractors. Traders, even in Congress, keep profiting from bets on the rise and fall of oil prices while the working class can’t afford to pay for a tank of gas [more here]. Insiders make ghoulish bets about the war on prediction markets while children are killed by American weapons in Iran and Lebanon.

Platner says, “We are so broken emotionally when it comes to our politics that we’ve literally created this story that it’s inherent in being a competent political leader to kill civilians. If you’re not willing to do some hard things and drop some bombs, then you’re not up to the task of power. I think it’s the opposite. You’re not up to the task of being in power if you do not think about the cost of violence. If that’s not at the front of your mind, then I don’t think you are morally in the right place to be in positions of power.”

Most of us know the forever war started by Bush has been destroying America from within, like an organism that must keep growing to survive. It fills the citizens with fear of outsiders and contempt for one another. War does the worst to societies. Once you normalize obliterating people abroad, people don’t value others at home, or even themselves.

They sound like Jesus

Cooke and Platner sound an awful lot like Jesus to me. They are rightly furious. Go back to Matthew 23. Isn’t the  blindness and delusion of American leaders just what Jesus is talking about?

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and of the plate, so that the outside also may become clean.”

Just remember, Trump took the slavery placards off of Washington’s House on Philadelphia’s Independence Mall.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of uncleanness. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

I would not say Jesus sounded like Graham Platner when he was facing off with the radical Pharisees who dominated the Sanhedrin. But I’m pretty sure Jesus would have called him out of the crowd to be a disciple. He’s kind of there already.

Being outside of God: Thoughts on being in

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I attended a psychology conference recently with a large contingent of Evangelicals among the presenters and participants. All day long, as people explored the meaning of faith, there was an intrusive theme I kept hearing, “I am on the outside getting in.” God may be welcoming us in. Or we may be struggling to get in. But the existential reality with which most seemed to agree is that we are all on the outs with God.

I felt outside of their “outsideness.” My “other” existential reality never dawned on me so acutely. I have not stopped thinking about it ever since. I really do feel I am in with God, in Christ, right now. Undeservedly but absolutely inside.

All weekend long I kept taking issue, in my own thoughts, at least, with the extreme sense of autonomy some people were stuck with. It is a dilemma. For psychologists, autonomy is a fundamental truth to be protected. For Christians, it is a good thing but not THE thing.

Autonomy

You can get a definition of “autonomy” by watching The Pitt. The doctors on that TV show are protecting it all the time; it is a main element of their ethics. They painstakingly hold back their opinions and even advice so the patient can exercise their freedom to choose. On one episode the ER gave a dying woman a long time in a scarce bed to make up her mind about how she was going to die.

As a result of all this painstaking, the doctors end up very much like God, I suppose, letting us unfold without bossing us around. Of course, the opposite is true, too. The doctors are often portrayed as having no choice at all, constrained by science, protocol, profits and time. They are constantly complaining about being trapped by the needs of the emergency room, enslaved to their paperwork, and subject to their foibles and their relationships. They seem to feel they have no autonomy at all.

The definition of autonomy is, simply, the capacity to think your own thoughts and take action on them, not be dominated by someone else and enslaved to their will. We’re all committed to it, all feel we don’t have enough, and all feel subject to something or someone that thwarts it all day.

As a psychotherapist, much of my work is to help people exercise their autonomy to think and feel as they desire and make new choices accordingly.  Mostly, my clients want to be free of what ties them up so they can love and be loved, and so they can contribute to society and receive from others.

The Evangelical clients tend to have a further dilemma, because they believe if they think anything but God’s thoughts it is a sin, and if they feel their feelings (most of which are immoral or prone to be), it is likely a sin. They seem to be determined to take orders from Jesus the King, which releases them from the need to listen to themselves and change. It is a theological nightmare. They are strangely condemned to be in charge of their future, very autonomous and alone, but they are totally subject to someone else’s will, which is quite beyond their ability to accomplish but which is a life and death matter to accomplish, nonetheless.

For instance, the last verse of the version of O Sacred Head Sore Wounded we sang on Good Friday had this final verse:

My days are few, O fail not, with thine eternal power,
to hold me that I quail not in death’s most fearful hour;
that I may fight befriended, and see in my last strife
to me thine arms extended upon the cross of life.

Did I hear the theology right? This seems to be the gist of it: “I need God’s power to hold me (I pictured a tractor beam) because I am on the other side of death; I’m outside of the place Jesus lives. I have to fight to stay on my quest to be inside, where Jesus, one day, will greet me with open arms.

My friend protested on Facebook on Good Friday: God doesn’t love us because Jesus died. Jesus died because God loves us. Even though this is common New Testament, many of the Christians at my conference were still working out a transaction. Jesus died for me, so I have to die for him to seal the deal and get into eternity. Jesus died for me so I could gain the power to do my assignment and so be good enough to get into heaven.

To sum it up: Evangelical Christians often feel “outside” God’s presence due to a performance-based spirituality that equates grace with legalistic obedience rather than a free gift. This mentality stems from a “sin-fixation,” whereby believers constantly scrutinize their actions to measure their spiritual standing. This approach often leads to a cycle of shame, where failing to meet high behavioral standards feels like losing God’s favor, creating a perpetual need to get back in.

Let’s unpack the elements of that a bit.

Performance

A twenty-something friend told me she could not attend Jr. High summer camp as child because she had not yet spoken in tongues. She faked it. I still marvel at this. How could someone make the ecstatic experience of tongues, totally uncontrollable by definition, into a criteria for getting into camp? I understand the delight of having the Holy Spirit “come upon me.” And I think tongues were, in the Bible and continue to be, a sign of God’s presence. But make the experience a general rubric for goodness or acceptance? Teach the junior highers the need to perform the trappings of faith well? 1 Corinthians is an argument against people who would do such a thing. But if we are all outside, we will likely invent a criteria for getting in —  and, unfortunately, for keeping people out.

Measurement

Many evangelicals define their standing with God by how well they obey set rules—such as church attendance, tithing, and avoiding specific sins. When they “stumble,” they feel as though they have fallen out of grace, confusing sanctification (the process of becoming like Christ) with justification (being declared righteous). People measure their sanctification to prove their justification as if they were in charge of their salvation!

I went to a conference session by a Christian Psychologist (who I love) and he was using research models to measure love, since why should God be outside the religion science has made for itself? It was a nice attempt to put measurement back where it belongs.

Self-control

An intense focus on personal sins can lead to “creeping legalism,” where believers spend more time obsessing over controlling sin than experiencing the freedom of grace. This “sin-fixation” results in a constant need to apologize for being human, leading to a feeling of being “outside.” It often results in the need to control oneself, others and the world which never goes well.

Self-control is one of the fruit of the spirit. There is a long history of people using the word to keep themselves undefiled, especially by sexual impurity – because they want to get in. But a more accurate meaning of the fruit is: the healthy empowerment one feels when they experience autonomy, the gift of being one’s true self. In Greek philosophy, self-mastery was basically the best one could do, it was the best to which one could aspire in a cosmos full of impersonal, often irrational gods. But Christians live in a world given by a Creator who loves them and leads them, day by day. Self-control is the calm capacity to give as grace has been given to each of us.

Permission

Some evangelical teachings can create a mindset where grace is viewed as permission to sin, but simultaneously, “unmerited favor” feels fragile and easily lost. People are in a balancing act between feeling good about where they are and waiting for the other sin shoe to drop. This dichotomy leads to anxiety about one’s standing with God. The idea is, “Once I’ve given in to sin I am tainted.” This leads some people to fake being in, even when they feel tainted. It leads others into self-exile, since they know they will never be fully in.

One serious teen I knew became a Christian and showed up exhausted to talk to me one day. When I asked him why he looked so tired, he finally revealed. “I have to stay awake because I have a lot of sins to confess. I especially don’t want the sun to go down on my anger.” He really loved the idea of not getting away with anything, but he could not permit God be in charge of the forgiving. He was perpetually in charge of making the right choice to get permission to come in.

Promises

The gap between the promise of a transformed life and the reality of human brokenness creates a sense of disillusionment. The idea is, “If all the promises are not being fulfilled in me, I must be out.” Validating their own authenticity according to God’s performance can make it difficult for believers to accept they are already “inside” God’s grace. Especially when we are sick in body or mind, we assess our well-being according to what we think ought to be true. For many believers, any sin or suffering mars their perfection in Christ.

Assessing ourselves according to how well the promises of God are realized in our life is a recipe for being perpetually out of the exquisite feeling of swimming in the ocean of grace into which we were launched at birth. If the test tube truths the religion of science teaches dominate us (which are often disappointing in their own limited universe), God is regularly disappointing and we are usually disappointed or disappointing, depending on how we respond. We can end up loaded with a false guilt about how bad I must be for God not to fulfill in me what he fulfills in others!

Obedience

Dallas Willard explains how many Christians mistakenly see Christ’s teachings as laws to obey to gain grace, rather than as reflections of the life that comes to them through the new birth. This fundamental misunderstanding keeps believers striving to “get in” to a kingdom they are already part of.

This misunderstanding is so universally assumed that the TV show The Good Place could have it as a central premise. Kristen Bell does not believe she should be in the (what comes to be revealed as an ersatz) “good place” because she is selfish. It seems almost everyone is convinced that salvation requires being good enough to deserve it and obedience to arbitrary rules is key to achieving it.

In Christ

I guess I should not blame the Evangelicals for falling into heresy, since it seems like from the Middle Ages onward, Europe was a long road to re-centering humans. Christianity was reduced to a penance system long before they got there.

DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man put’s the idea of the dangerous kind of autonomy into a picture. The circle represents divine or spiritual perfection (cosmos), while the square represents the material, earthly world. By bridging both, the figure highlights the human body as a microcosm of the universe. Humans are central, especially men.

According to DaVinci’s chart, I am autonomous. I am innately free to choose. In relation to God, I am exiled or welcomed in. I relation to others I can make relationships or end them.

But how did I get out of relationship if I were never in? From the beginning to the end of the Bible (the Evangelicals purportedly love), our sense of being out is a matter of being removed from where we were. Being in with God is our natural human state.

Paul is always referring to being “in Christ.” The phrase is a spatial metaphor which signifies the believer’s renewed sense of being safe at home as opposed to their previous uncertainty before faith and baptism. Being our true selves in Christ or our false self in our autonomy is Paul’s version of being  in our out. The way Paul sees it, Jesus was at the creation of the world and we all bear his image. And according to Jesus, we are all are touched and called into abundance by God’s love. We are all in the love of God whether we think we can choose that or not. God sees us according to who we are in Christ. We have the freedom to turn away. But that is not natural or inevitable.

Being outside where nothing but the power to do “righteousness” proves our worth and where our successes give God the glory he craves results in the psychopathic Pete Hegseth and the infamous prayer he prayed at a meeting last week:

“Almighty God, who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle, you who stirred the nations from the north against Babylon of old, making her land a desolation where none dwell, behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous.”

I think it takes little convincing to admit “the peace of the righteous,” as Hegseth describes, has nothing to do with Jesus and nothing to do with peace. The U.S. has NOT been at war, undeclared or declared, for about 15-20  years since 1776. If you can’t get into heaven, you make yourself a god on the earth, right? At least that is what a lot of people who would like to follow Jesus are struggling with in the United States.

Ozzy Osborne brings it to the War Pigs: The prophecy lives on

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During the Grammy memorial for notable members of the music industry lost in 2025, a group of all-stars paid tribute to Ozzy Osborne, maybe the most notable of them all. The song they chose to play is notable, too: War Pigs.

A long-gone YouTube creator connected a video to War Pigs that is the most-viewed version of the song, now at 108 million since 2014! — that’s the year Russia seized Crimea and “insurgents” blew up buildings in Donbass, the Taliban insurgency continued, and the Syrian civil war raged — the fingers of the U.S. and Russia in all of them. I think her video is quite moving [link].

The film the YouTuber repurposed is a 2009 work from a German film school named Motherland — it shows what music can do to bring your film to life. The original soundtrack is kind of limp [link]. She did not bother crediting the filmmaker when she substituted War Pigs, but likely received the income from the 30 million more views it got lately. But I’m not sure how YouTube works.

The other day, my grandson, the rock and roll drummer student, was part of the Black Sabbath tribute at his concert. They played War Pigs. I admit, Christian that I am, “black sabbath” has never been my favorite name for a band. But I can forgive them for trying to distinguish themselves with the name in 1969. If you want to see the originals play their hit, here they are in 1970.

At the concert, I was predisposed to grinning and bearing the song. But the lead student singer was actually rather good and I caught wind of the words into which I had never tuned.

Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerers of death’s construction

In the fields the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh Lord! Yeah!

Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor

Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait ’til their judgment day comes
Yeah!

Now in darkness world stops turning
Ashes where the bodies burning
No more war pigs at the power
Hand of God has struck the hour

Wow! Just like Amos!

Day of judgment, God is calling
On their knees the war pigs crawling
Begging mercy for their sins
Satan laughing spreads his wings
Oh Lord! Yeah!

Oh Lord! Yeah! The rock students reminded me of the Old Testament prophet, Amos, laying out the war pigs that surrounded the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel. And he did not spare the homeland either! Amos’ list is a recitation of what the war pigs have always done. And it is what they are doing right now, only now with the most destructive weapons ever, directed by A.I.!

  • they have threshed Gilead
        with threshing sledges of iron. (1:2 – Israel in Lebanon)
  • they carried into exile entire communities (1:6 – ICE)
  • he (Edom) pursued his brother with the sword
        and cast off all pity;
    he maintained his anger perpetually
        and kept his wrath forever. (1:11 – sounds like all sides in Iran)
  • they have ripped open pregnant women in Gilead
        in order to enlarge their territory. (1:13 – Russia in Ukraine)
  • he (Moab) burned to lime
        the bones of the king of Edom. (2:1 – U.S. and Israel kill Iran’s leaders)
  • they (Judah) have rejected the instruction of the Lord
        and have not kept his statutes,
    they have been led astray by the same lies
        after which their ancestors walked. (2:4 – all, especially the U.S.)
  • they (Israel) sell the righteous for silver
        and the needy for a pair of sandals—
    they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth
        and push the afflicted out of the way (2:6-7 – the 1% and minions)
  • you (Israel) made the nazirites drink wine
        and commanded the prophets,
        saying, “You shall not prophesy.” (2:12 – look in the mirror)

I am not blaming the wars of humankind on you with that last parenthesis, but I know I have colluded with people who want to still the voices of prophets. I didn’t even listen to Black Sabbath until 2026!

We should all be out on the streets shouting with Amos and Ozzy Osbourn every chance we get. But let’s be honest; when the news channels treat a No Kings Day like it is just a brief traffic tie up or a long line at the airport and we put up with that, we’ve already colluded with the war pigs by fitting our prophecy into the oligarchs’ business plan. When we politely argue about the Iran debacle on Facebook like there are two sides to a war pig, we are just acclimating to the same old slavery.

Jesus before Pilate — Jean Fouquet, 1470

Jesus is prophecy in action

What does Jesus say to a war pig? We have scant evidence because he spent most of his time with marginalized people (take note, Empire-trained American Christians!). But my favorite example is when he has a moment with Pilate — the Roman representing the biggest herd at the trough in the Lord’s time, who is apparently slightly nervous about his imminent murder of the Son of God.

Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”  Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” — John 18:33-36

He’s saying, “It is the people I came to save who keep fighting for the kingdoms of this world.” Oh Lord. Yeah! Thank you Jesus! Your kingdom is not from here!

In a few days after talking to Pilate, Jesus rises from the dead (April 5 this year, if you’re just getting to know him). By the end of the New Testament John has his amazing vision and there is Jesus, the wounded lamb, sitting on the throne! There is a prophecy for you!

Let’s keep talking, doing our art and marching. Even if we feel like lonely Amos (even when we’re in step with millions, around the world), let’s force ourselves to keep telling the truth about the war pigs. They are eating people alive! Don’t just do what you can do because justice should be done. Do it because we want God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, an endless will to bring life from death and love to hate.

***********

Today is Joachim of Fiore Day! Speaking of prophets! This one is more influential than you know. Visit him at The Transhistorical Body.

Inner health prevents the death of resistance: Four goals for the persistent

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Last week, I suggested to several clients that their anxiety and short-tempered reactions were partly about living under the “Trump Cloud.” We are all there.

I, for one, am convinced the president presides over a sociopathic corruption scheme — so you can see what my cloud looks like! Others may be less interested or engaged than I am, or even in favor of a Trump autocracy — but even the 41% who approve of him live under the endless disruption barging into every day. The last few weeks have been dominated by a huge, instant war and further revelations from the Epstein files about Trump’s sexual relations with young girls. It is overwhelming for us all.

As a result, we seem more unhinged. For instance, the most interesting thing that happened to me yesterday was coming to a complete, inexplicable halt on the onramp to 76 from 676 in downtown Philly. This is where the two-lanes of freeway condense into one. It is always a jam up and frustrated people often do less-than-sane things there. But this was unusual. We must have been stuck for ten minutes (or so it seemed), so some people got out of their cars to see what was the matter, so I did too. It appeared to me that the sportscar had tried to squeeze in and the SUV bumped it to protect its right to the lane. The two drivers were out of their cars and arguing, letting the rest of us sit. Word was, the SUV would not give up his info. They were waiting for the police. The sportscar was convinced to pull over and let us pass, so I got by and did not see what finally happened.  But I still wonder, “What are we coming to? Were these guys so angry and distrustful, now so sociopathically tutored, that they, too, were claiming territory and didn’t care what happened to the rest of us?”

Stranger things are likely to happen under the cloud

What do we do to survive this era and help make a change? Here is how this post answers that question: We need to heed the many reminders about how spiritual and psychological health leads to good social change.

Yes, there are loads of strategies for how to resist effectively and how to build the future. But all of them are founded on our inner truth and love. Daniel Hunter says: “Authoritarian power is derived from fear of repression, isolation from each other and exhaustion at the utter chaos. We’re already feeling it. Thus, for us to be of any use in a Trump world, we have to pay grave attention to our inner states, so we don’t perpetuate the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion or constant disorientation.”

Trump’s second term arrived at a time of great social distrust — much of it amplified by him to gain power and wealth. But he did not generate our distrust. Across the board, society already had a reduced trust in traditional institutions. We distrust the media, medical professionals, experts and politicians – for good reasons, since they are cooperate stooges. But our distrust is deeper than that. We also distrust most local and neighborhood associations and membership groups, like churches, the PTA and all those new protest orgs. Whether from COVID or political polarization, a lot of us have even experienced reduced trust in friends and family. We can’t even trust predictable weather anymore.

You can track the development of our mistrust by noting the popularity of Stranger Things (Netflix 2016) which is about the power of human connection and courage in the face of the unknown and unexplained, and Game of Thrones (2011-19) which is about the struggle for the iron throne and how people who want power will do anything to get it, even in the face of the Great Other. Both juxtapose the normal and the paranormal as key parts of the show’s narrative and thematic structure. And both distill how nothing is what it seems to be — and so can’t be trusted.

The distrust spawned by the billionaire/hedge fund extraction project to break American democracy fueled the engine of autocracy because it makes us much easier to divide.  Trump’s tweets/rhetoric encourages it — telling people to distrust  immigrants,  Democrats, socialists, people from Chicago, women marchers, Mexicans, the press, Iranians, transpeople and so on. It becomes a social disease when people decide if a person is trustworthy on the basis of who they tell us not to trust! I spent a lot of my career as a pastor trying to create systems that provided an alternative to this distrust, but a lot of people did not trust me or the system I led, either. However, I persist.

Here are four basic suggestions for how to develop more inner resistance under the Trump cloud, which is not disappearing any time soon, beginning with regaining some trust for yourself.

Trust yourself

We have been gaslighted so thoroughly, it is very difficult to trust our own decisions, even our own thoughts. A lot of us are perfecting dissociation in a vain attempt to weather the trauma we live in.

Trust-building starts within each of us. We need to trust our own truth and love. If you are following Jesus you can trust His truth and love making you whole. Regardless, this development includes trusting your own eyes and conscience, as well as guarding your heart from the crazy-making. Like Elon Musk determined to break the government with DOGE, breaking your inner resistance to unreality is also part of the domination scheme. (Bernie Sanders recently had a chat with Claude about this). Always remember: YOU MATTER.

Trust building is trusting yourself and also being trustworthy.  We should be reliable friends, but all the parts of our inner selves should also be friends. We need to trust that the “I AM” of each of us is going to show up to help us flourish no matter what. We need an inner trust that acknowledges fear and lets that feeling pass through. We need trust that can endure the uncertainty that nags us. We need to let the “cloud” be real so we know a lot of the troubling things we feel are about the cloud, not us.

This trust building will take some time and effort, of course. We’ll need to take care of ourselves if we want the world to change. If you’re tired, take some rest. If you’re scared, make some peace. (Here is a nice list of suggestions for how to stay grounded [link]). A good starting point, for now, is to listen to the voice in you that seems the most trustworthy. Don’t keep checking your phone for validation, check yourself. Don’t keep reading this if you need to take a walk or go find a tree to feel.

Find others who you trust

We have been atomized and isolated so effectively a lot of us don’t even think about trusting people. We are on our own — and that emotional landscape we inhabit, inside and out, makes a big difference.

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt explored how destructive ideologies like fascism and autocracy need loneliness to grow. She used the word verlassenheit — often translated as loneliness — as a central ingredient. As she meant it, loneliness isn’t a feeling but a kind of social isolation of the mind. One’s thinking becomes closed off to the world and becomes dominated by a sense of being abandoned.

Arendt was talking about Hitler and Stalin, but she is describing the societal breakdown we’re all experiencing, too. Trump is working on the breakdown every day. The constant attacks on social systems: teachers, health care, civil servants, courts, etc. — make us turn away from leaning on each other and towards ideologically simple answers that increase isolation (e.g. “distrust government,” “MAGA is nuts,” “anyone who votes that way doesn’t care about me”).

We have to consciously bridge that distance. People are finding ways to do that. For instance, in my church, a couple of women started an action group. People who made pods during Covid are still travelling together. Indivisible and Singing Resistance are creating new groups all the time. Most of these little groups, like the one in our church, are lamenting how little we are doing. But our very existence is resistance.

Finding just a few people who you trust to regularly act with and touch base with is central to defeating autocracy. We need to use our mutual trust to explore our own thinking and support each other to stay sharp and grounded.

Grieve

No matter what we try to do, there is going to be loss. So we will need to grieve well to live well. We will need to save our capacity to compartmentalize, rationalize, intellectualize and ignore for things like working in a large corporate structure or sorting out the basement. If we use those capacities to defend against our feelings, grief can damage us body and soul like a Kona storm sitting over Hilo.

If you aren’t a “feelings person,” let me say it this way: The inability to grieve is a strategic error. After Donald Trump won in 2016, we all saw people who never grieved; they just worked harder or avoided harder. They didn’t look into their feelings and the future — and as a result they remained in shock. They are still saying, “I can’t believe he’s doing that.” Believe it. Grieve it.

The alternative to perpetual shock is grieving — quite deliberatively, if necessary. Start by naming and allowing the feelings which arise when you confront the “stranger things:”

  • Trump left the Paris Climate Agreement and California has a March heatwave.
  • I daydream about Trump. We all wake up to bat-shit crazy headlines each morning.
  • Trump builds giant detention center for Markwayne Mullin to oversee. The Pitt has ICE coming into the ER.
  • Now it is Iran, tomorrow it is Epstein, then maybe the elections will be invalidated.

Making such a list, especially with someone you trust is health-generating. We begin to identify the sadness, anger, numbness, shock, confusion and fear. We grieve. We come out of our daze and experience acceptance. [A Spell for Grief or Letting Go]

Release what you cannot change

We are so trained to believe our individual power is the most important thing in the world all we think we can do is control something or someone. And if you are as realistic as I think you are, you already admitted control is not working well.

During the rise of the Nazis, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote the Serenity Prayer, which AA loves so much:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Trump’s presidency is deliberately making activists, especially, and all of us, feel overwhelmed. There is so much we feel we need to do and it is hard to accept we cannot do it all – at least I feel that way.  For instance, this week my interest in plastics was revived in my overall despair about climate change in the middle of an oil war. So I took the hour it took to commit to a way to do my little part. But I also saw how few hours I had. Chaos is a friend of the autocrat. One way we can unwittingly increase that chaos is by jumping into the abyss of needing to do it all.

I cannot say I am completely successful at this, but I use my journal to help me sort out what is the best I can do instead of what is the most I can do — what am I given to do as opposed to what needs to be done. I suggest we all take ourselves seriously enough to get some clarity on what is important these days. If we are just coasting through, we might get run over. If we think we are a semi when we are a Civic, we may burn up the engine. If you are in a small group trying to do something meaningful, like in church, be sure to press for a focus, not just be a committee-full of people-pleasers attempting to be inclusive and just ending up an ineffective potpourri.

It is spiritual and psychological health that will lead to good social change. That means trusting ourselves, sticking with others we trust, grieving well and releasing what we cannot change. It requires at least that much of us. We all know people who think they can sit out this challenging time. I feel with them. But I am still patiently impatient for the goodness of God to be seen and respected and put into action in our warming, war-torn world. Nurture that inner life you’ve been given, the best you — it’s the key to making a difference when we really need something new.