I support the second amendment and the walk out.

I am a conservative. I am a Marine. I am a proponent of the second amendment. But I supported students walking out of their schools yesterday. Not only do I support it but I was inspired by it. I believe it is exactly what our nation needs to prevent ourselves from crossing the event horizon which is the black hole of our nation’s own self destruction. The second amendment was established to prevent our nation from becoming, what for all intents and purposes, it has already become. The irony of men and women vehemently defending the second amendment when they have refused to use it for decades is almost unbearable!

We should have demanded gun control in 1990 by refusing to accept the National Defense Authorization Act which facilitated the transfer of surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies. This transfer was initiated to help support the “war on drugs.” That’s right, segregation didn’t work, the war on drugs didn’t work, so we had to make it a literal war on drugs by militarizing our police forces. But guess what, no one was using their second amendment rights and standing up for gun control by demanding that local law enforcement agencies not be given armored personnel carriers.

We should have demanded gun control after WWI and WWII when our nation transitioned from a non-interventionist state to an interventionist state and started demanding continual increases in the size and strength of the military. This transition produced perpetual conflicts (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq, et al.) and it opened the door for one party to be the pro-military, pro-America, pro-freedom through intervention party. Ironically the Republican party still claimed to be the conservative party even though their support of increasing the size and strength of the military (and deregulating wall street) are traditionally liberal positions.

The reason why common sense gun control is so difficult and such a controversial topic is because our nation has benefited from gun violence for decades. Please take a second to read Revelation 18 and tell me what nation you think the author is describing. Military and Law Enforcement gun violence has brought about a Pax Americana which has allowed our nation to enjoy tremendous amounts of luxury and comfort. As a good friend of mine said recently, "if the threat of deadly force is necessary to keep the peace, peace does not truly exist."

I mentor young men and women, and something I often tell them is that I truly believe it takes more courage to stand up for what you believe is right in high school than it does to do your duty in combat. In combat you’re often performing actions that you have rehearsed dozens of times in training and you’re surrounded by people you trust that have committed to giving their lives for the same cause. But in high school you’re on your own, with no training, and ridiculed by your peers for do anything out of the ordinary. I celebrate the students who walked out yesterday. You inspire me, you encourage me, and I hope you find the courage to keep fighting for what you believe is right.

Has Democratic Liberalism Failed?

As a minister in a conservative protestant church I am well aware of the animosity many people have towards political liberalism, but I was not aware that there was such a strong antipathy towards classical liberalism. While reading Brad East’s review of Why Liberalism Failed in the LA Review of Books and the many articles that he linked throughout his writing, I discovered this deep-seated aversion, but I kept getting the feeling that a large part of this debate centers around two fundamental problems, mistaken categories and fallacies of composition. The first mistake seems to revolve around the grey area between, classical liberalism (the value of liberty and equality) and political liberalism or leftism (the value of strong central authority as opposed to conservatism and "the right"). In this grey area it is difficult to speak clearly because the terminology is so similar, the ideology so different, and the stakes so high. To prevent confusion I will use classical or democratic liberalism and political liberalism or leftism throughout.

The second problem I am referring to, the fallacy of composition, is seen in this quote from T.S. Eliot which Brad includes from Jake Meador’s article Debating the Actual Crisis of Liberalism, “(Classical) Liberalism can prepare the way for it’s own negation: the artificial, mechanized or brutalized control which is a desperate remedy for its chaos...by destroying traditional social habits of the people, by dissolving their natural collective consciousness into individual constituents, (and) by licensing the opinions of the most foolish.” Before pointing out why it is a mistake to attribute these societal woes to classical liberalism, I have to highlight the tremendous irony in Eliot’s quote because it is only by equating the problems he lists with classical liberalism itself, thereby undermining the true value of classical liberalism, that it can ever be negated.

In any society you have a political and a social order, like the opposing sides of the triptych on the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. Those two orders are ruled primarily by the state and the church. It is disingenuous for those within the church to blame the ills of society primarily on the vision and execution of the dominant political order (democratic liberalism). The reason this is a fallacy of composition is because moral and practical failures by a part of society does not prove that the political or social order has failed as a whole. Classical liberalism does not itself destroy social habits, dissolve collective consciousness, or license the opinions of fools, it simply forms a society which makes those things possible. If those things do occur it is most likely a failure of the social order (church) rather than the political order (state).   

What we have to realize first is that there is a tremendous pressure within the church to blame the political order, because if it isn’t the political orders fault then the church will have to take responsibility for the corruption of society. And the church is notoriously bad a taking responsibility for its actions, as Ephraim Radner points out in his book Brutal Unity which focuses on this phenomenon, “The dead bodies, as it were, are already gathered by the time churches admit to complicity in their murder.” Liberalism may give people the freedom to reject their traditions but if they ultimately decide to do so the fault lies in the tradition not in the freedom of rejection.

Many of the proponents quoted in Brad’s review suffer from a common trinity of Western flaws which include an under-realized and fatalistic eschatology, a demonization of freedom, and an overly deterministic interpretation of the OId Testament. I will attempt to deal with each of these flaws individually but concisely. First, an under-realized and fatalistic eschatology. As Athanasius said in his classic work On the Incarnation, when the gospel came to Alexandria, the King arrived in the clouds with glory. We are not waiting for some future point outside of time in which the King will arrive and set things right. Jesus’ was not mistaken when he said that some of you will not taste death until you see the son of man coming in his kingdom. Daniel’s interpretation has been fulfilled and even more. The pre-christian empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome have been overthrown AND the descendants of Rome the post-christian empires of Great Britain, France, Spain, and Russia have been toppled as well. This, in and of itself, is proof that the moral arc of the universe does bend towards justice and it has not "cracked under the weight of empire," even with constant attempts to undermine it’s greatest political rival, the freedom found in democratic liberalism. Second, a demonization of freedom. Western christianity’s demonization of freedom is so well documented that I don’t need to waste time detailing it and drawing correlations to our tendency to demonize classical liberalism as a parallel.

Finally, our tendency towards an overly deterministic interpretation of the Old Testament may be our strongest reason for attacking classical liberalism. We often view the events in the Old Testament as God’s elaborate plan to redeem Israel and the world, but more often than not Israel is not following God’s ultimate desire but their own stubborn path. This can be seen most clearly in their demand for a human king. God’s desire is for human autonomy where he alone is their king but humanity's desire is to constantly build their own kingdoms and crown their own kings to rule over the state and the church. One of the most consistent themes throughout all of scripture is God’s resistance to human empires. Thankfully, Socrates argument holds true to reason and to God’s will, that even if we define justice as the will of the stronger, when the weak work together they will always be more powerful. It will ultimately be their will and by association God’s will that wins out, and no amount of blame shifting can change that.

Hopefully my use of the term classical liberalism throughout this essay has not been to burdensome and I hope that it has served as a reminder to how confusing this debate can become. I am a conservative and I already know that despite my distinction between classical liberalism and political liberalism or leftism many people who read this will be tempted to see it as a defense of leftism. Also, I am not a staunch enemy of leftism as many conservatives are. I believe that the right and left are both working towards liberty and equality for the masses but in radically different ways. Both are working towards keeping power out of the hands of a few wealthy elites at the top. Unfortunately an oligarchy has already been established in the United States primarily because the rich have convinced the left and the right to view each other as their enemies and now it seems they’ve even convinced us that the freedom we have found through democratic liberalism is part of the problem as well.

Progress or Synthesis?

Do people have a better understanding of what God is like today than they did two thousand years ago? Did people who lived two thousand years ago have a better understanding of what God is like than people who lived two thousand years before them? I think most of us would answer yes to both of these questions. The revelation of God in Christ gave humanity a much deeper insight into the true nature of God. When we read the Old and New Testament how should we understand their differing portraits of God, or are they different? These are questions that every christian has to wrestle with at some point in their lives. Should we attempt to read them both and combine them (synthesis) or should we read them both and view the New Testament as a clearer picture building on but ultimately surpassing the Old Testament (progressive)?

Needless to say we can’t approach these questions objectively. We can never escape our past experiences when reading the bible, but understanding our bias can help us to be more objective. And guess what, the two most controversial topics in history (politics and religion) have an extreme influence on each other. If you think of yourself as a conservative, someone who often values the way things have been done in the past,  you will most likely interpret the bible synthetically. If you think of yourself as a liberal, someone who often values new ways of doing things, you will most likely interpret the bible progressively. At this point you might be asking yourself, which way is the right way? And that is a great question!

Absolutely, there is value in both perspectives, but conservative and liberal christians throughout history have believed that God has revealed himself progressively. That doesn’t mean that God has intentionally withheld the understanding of his nature, but he has understood that people could not understand his nature and therefore he waited to reveal himself fully in Christ at the “culmination of the ages” (Hebrews 9:26). At this point you might be asking yourself, what difference does this make? And that is a great question as well.

Our cultures desperately need people who can value the good things that have happened in the past, speak boldly about the bad things, and see a vision of what is possible for the future. Our world needs men and women who are able to have civil discussions about things that we might passionately disagree with. I would love to hear your thoughts on several controversial topics that are causing division in the church and in our society right now. Topics such as racism, same sex relationships, and civil religion. I am a minister in a Restoration Movement christian church. We believe that the division in the church is destroying our ability to preach the gospel. I hope that you will join with me in praying for the reconciliation of the church and in thinking deeply about how we interpret the bible.

The painting is an untitled work by Vinita Pappas described as "painting in progress." 

2017 Book List

One of the greatest joys of my life is reading and over the past several years I’ve worked on improving my reading patterns. I currently work my way through two or three books on theology in print continuously (usually late at night), I rotate between fiction and history audiobooks (usually in the car), and poetry/music (when I’m feeling stressed or burnt out). Below is my 2017 reading list and full disclosure, this is the entire list not just my favorites. Also, I bought a couple of the theology books as reference works, I didn’t finish a few, and I am still working my way through others. I tell you all this because I have always secretly felt like sharing a year end reading list was a little pretentious, but now that I have benefited greatly from reading several books that were shared on these types of lists, I have overcome and repented of my aversion to year end book lists!

Theology: Brutal Unity: The Spiritual Politics of the Christian Church by Ephraim Radner, From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopacy in the Early Church by Francis Sullivan, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought by John Meyendorf, On the Incarnation by Athanasius, On God and Christ by Gregory of Nazianzus, On the Unity of Christ by Cyril of Alexandria, Pursuing God by Joshua Ryan Butler, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew by John Chrysostom, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God by Brian Zahnd, Scripture as Real Presence: Sacramental Exegesis in the Early Church by Hans Boersma, Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture after Genetic Science by Scot McKnight and Dennis Venema, Stricken by God? Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ by Brad Jersak and Michael Hardin, The Day the Revolution Began by N.T. Wright

Fiction: The Illiad by Homer (Fitzgerald translation), Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, Devils by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick, Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

History: Leonardo DaVinci by Walter Isaacson, The Templars by Michael Haag, American Lion: A Biography of President Andrew Jackson by Jon Meachem, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meachem

Poetry/Music: Selected Poems from Walt Whitman by Harold Bloom, Cherry Blossoms by Andy Squyres. (I read poetry and listen to music so randomly that it was impossible to make a list but these two were definitely the cream of the crop from the past year.)

I have always been taught and have personally believed that leaders are learners, and that the foundation of learning is a strong commitment to reading. But I also believe that it’s just as important you learn to read well. I don’t claim to have accomplished this but I am working towards it and to me reading well means reading deep and wide. A wide range of works from different time periods, different genres, and different traditions (e.g. religious, cultural, political, etc.), but also reading books that challenge you to go deeper. Books that make you sit next to your computer and google words and references constantly. This goes hand in hand with one of my favorite life lessons, “If you think you’re stupid, surround yourself with people who are smart, and if you think you’re smart, surround yourself with people who disagree with you.”

This past year I feel like I read just a little bit better (deeper and wider) than the year before and I accomplished a goal that I had set for myself almost three years ago, to work my way through four of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s major works, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, Devils, and Crime and Punishment. I also made progress on two other long term goals, gaining a better understanding of patristic thought and scriptural interpretation, and attempting to grasp the development and evolution of the early American political system. I hope my list has encouraged you, and if you have read any of these same books or if you have a book list of your own I would love to hear your thoughts.

Things Falls Apart

Someone recently said that they thought the debate over the atonement would have to stop before any type of serious reconciliation could happen within the church. I disagree! And whether it’s the eternal optimist in me or my love of debate I cannot tell. But what I do know is that this topic is worth continued contemplation and discussion and instead of it being a roadblock to reconciliation it might be a path leading to it. In this spirit I recently spoke with Joshua Ryan Butler about his portrait of the atonement in his book The Pursuing God. You can find this conversation on twitter here (the thread was a little hard to follow so the link sends you to the last tweet and you will have to scroll up. Unless you want to read the conversation in reverse!). I think the conversation is a stunning example of an author (Joshua) displaying humility and patience by interacting with a critic (me) on a complex issue through a medium (twitter) that is often criticized for its inability to facilitate complex dialogues. In the following paragraphs I will try to give a summary of this discussion and how it and several other factors have influenced my thoughts on this topic.

But first I want to reiterate the importance of a proper understanding of the atonement. The cross is the foundation of what Christians believe God is like and in my experience many pastors, youth pastors, and volunteers teach this topic to children in a way that is deeply troubling. I recently heard a prominent minister describe the atonement this way. He compared it to a youth minister who was upset with his youth group over something that had been broken at a sponsor's home. The anger that he felt, over the broken object, was similar to God’s wrath and the cost of replacing the object was similar to the price Jesus paid on the cross to appease the wrath of God. This analogy and dozens more like it that equate God's wrath to something that must be paid off or suggestions that there was an actual (ontological) separation between the Father and the Son are inappropriate. The complex discussions that occur at the upper levels of higher education and between people who are passionate about this topic are critical because by the time they make it to the pews they can become gross misrepresentations of the original thoughts. Therefore the original thoughts need to be as accurate as humanly possible because misconceptions about God's nature have serious and dramatic consequences for people in their everyday lives.

This leads us back to the conversation with Josh. By the end of our discussion I think we had come to an agreement that Jesus’ suffering was an experiential separation from the Father. This is important because an actual (ontological) separation would necessitate a division within the trinity which we both agreed was impossible. (I keep inserting the word "ontological" into the discussion because I want people to know that an experiential separation is an "actual separation" I don't want to diminish the pain and suffering that occurs from this type of disconnection. But the "ontological" or "actual being" of God was not separated.) This still leaves us at an impasse because I do not believe this experiential separation occurred because of the Father withdrawing his "protection" or "particular presence." I also view Jesus’ experiential separation from the Father as being in solidarity with humanity whereas I think Joshua still views it as substitutionary, meaning Jesus experienced it in a way that we won't have to. We agree that Jesus did experience the feeling of separation from the Father and that it was his desire to unite humanity with divinity in a way that we as individuals and communities will some day not experience any separation. But until that day we will continue to experience the separation that Jesus felt and many times that will occur through suffering for the gospels sake. As Luther put it in his 94th thesis, ““Christians should...be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, death and hell.”   

Now those who question the Penal Substitutionary view of the atonement are often criticized for creating caricatures of the doctrine and I agree that happens often. But recently a dear friend of mine recommended a book that contains an illustration of substitution that is similar in may ways to the concept of Penal Substitution. Before you read any further I want to warn you that the rest of this article will include spoilers from the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. In the book Okonkwo, a powerful tribal leader, raises a young boy from another tribe named Ikemefuna. Someone from Okonkwo’s village was murdered by someone from Ikemefuna’s village and to prevent a war between the tribes Ikemefuna is given as an innocent sacrifice. The sacrifice does not occur for several years and Okonkwo is chosen to keep the boy in the meantime. During this period he grows to care for Ikemefuna even more than his own children.

Before the sacrifice occurs Okonkwo is warned by an oracle not to take part in the boy’s death. He ignores this advice and when the sacrifice goes wrong he ends up killing Ikemefuna and that is when everything starts to “fall apart.” As I was reading the book the similarities to christian theology were jumping off the pages. A father sacrifices his son whom he has grown to love in order to prevent a war that he knows will create a tremendous amount of suffering for his own tribe and many others. Now this is not a perfect example of Penal Substitutionary Atonement but it’s pretty close and when reading the book you instinctively know something is wrong. You know that the author has constructed this scenario for you to understand that this is a pagan practice corrupt at its core. If Okonkwo's tribe wants to prevent war all they have to do is forgive the murderer. The innocent sacrifice does not have to die. 

Now I want you to imagine something dramatically different occurs. Imagine the murder still happens but instead of the innocent boy being offered as a sacrifice Okonkwo offers himself as the sacrifice. A member of the victims tribe offers himself as the sacrifice to prevent the suffering that he knows will occur. I believe this is the more accurate description of the atonement or as Brad Jersak described it in a recent podcast the At-One-Ment. God himself experiences the pain and suffering of sin in the flesh, in solidarity with humanity, in order to prove his love and prevent future suffering. In other words, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them." So while substitution gives the appearance of effectiveness, of “paying off,” solidarity reveals the corruption of the sacrificial system that we all must continue to experience with Christ until it finally and fully comes to an end. 

Knowing the Person and Knowing the Disease

One of the keenest observations I saw this week regarding the 500th anniversary of the Reformation is that, “The Protestant Church is in greater need of reformation today than the Roman Catholic Church was in the 16th century.” Burk Parsons tweeted this statement and I partially agree with him primarily because of the un-repented of division that continues to exist within the Protestant Church. As Ephraim Radner has stated in his inevitably seminal work Brutal Unity, “To be divided, in the sense of resting in such division however unhappily, is already to have contradicted repentance..." Whether the need for reformation is “greater” now than it was then depends on how you view the corruption of the 16th century. If you view Roman Catholic changes to orthodox teachings as a creeping heresy within the universal church then the need for reformation now might be greater but if you view Roman corruption as inevitable consequences of Rome’s own schismatic nature then the need for reform might be closer to equal. The reason for the distinction comes primarily from the churches historic teaching that schism is a greater sin than heresy. Aquinas pointed out this belief by showing that schism carried a greater penalty in the Old Testament and that logic shows greater harm stemming from communal (schism) rather than individual (heresy) sins.

The greater irony however is that not only has the Reformation caused as much or more corruption in the church, it has also done a tremendous amount of damage to the primary means of healing the corruption it was trying to reform in the first place. Below I will list in chronological order excerpts from correspondence between the Lutheran theologians at Tubingen and the Patriarch of Constantinople and his counselors regarding a difference of opinion relating to fasting.

First Exchange: Tubingen to Constantinople

“The Apostles also sometimes kept the custom of fasting, yet not as something indispensable, but that they might not provide a scandal to the Jews, and because they were thus accustomed, and also for the purpose of burying Moses and his ceremonies by gracefully abrogating them.”

Second Exchange: Constantinople to Tubingen

“Since the fasts and prayers are necessary, hearken unto the Lord who says in the 2nd chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke: ‘And there was a prophetess Anna…She did not depart from the temple, worshipping with fasting and prayer night and day’ (Luke 2:36-37). [The patriarch goes on to list several more examples from scripture including 1 Cor 7:5 and 2 Cor 6:5] And if someone would like to elicit similar testimonies from the Scripture, he will easily find many others. For one will deny that the snow is white, but this is admitted without proof of witnesses.”

Second Exchange: Tubingen to Constantinople

“The fasting and supplications of the Prophetess Anna were not in the least part of the monastic life. But that devout widow daily offered up prayer for all churches of God continually, and sometimes she fasted to help the prayers flow more ardently.”

Third Exchange: Constantinople to Tubingen

“About these matters we say that the Holy Scriptures concerning them have not been interpreted by such theologians as you are, for neither Saint Chrysostom nor any other of the blessed and true theologians interpreted as if they were dragged along by a torrent. But, indeed, he (Chrysostom) and the holy men after him, being full of the Holy Spirit who performed supernatural miracles while they were living and after they died, interpreted the Holy Scriptures as they did; and they received such traditions, and they handed them down successively and gave them to us as indispensible and pious (sacraments). Some of these even Old Rome also keeps and acquiesces with us. From whence have you reckoned better than Old and New Rome? Indeed, have you forsaken the interpretations of the true theologians and considered your own as more preferable?”

Third Exchange: Tubingen to Constantinople

“We cannot bear to be called heretics, even though he who is thus calling us might be one of our closest friends. For we have not up to this day ever been convicted for any error, not even by the Divine Words. We have always been ready to yield if axioms and usages, which have been correctly concluded from the Holy Scriptures, might have been placed over against us. But up to the present we have not seen anyone who has done that, even with the assistance of divine grace nor will we see it in the future.”

Hippocrates is attributed with saying that “It’s far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has.” In all of the debates swirling around the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians alike must remember that despite which particular sins (diseases) we struggle with, personally or communally, we have been united with Christ and his desire is to make us one as He and the Father are one. We must remember that the most essential practices (medicines) that He has given us to heal our heresies and schisms is worship through prayer and fasting. I know from personal experience that many young Protestant men and women are being raised in churches where they are not taught how to pray, fasting is never mentioned, and reconciliation with churches they have split from over the years is considered absurd. For me these are lasting legacies of the Reformation and things that must be repented of if we are to continue the process of reforming our churches. This is one reason why Brian Zahnd's Prayer School had such an impact on my life and why I believe it continues to impact the lives of so many evangelical men and women around the country. There is a desperation whether known or unknown throughout our churches to be taught how to pray. 

Creeks: Navigating Troubled Waters

In a family, it can be easier to pretend that a problem doesn’t exist rather than going through the excruciatingly hard work of solving it. If a marriage does survive the first five years, it often develops a sort of numbness or comfort with the status quo. Many of the frustrations we associate with teenage rebelliousness revolve around a young person’s realization that the way their family functions is “messed up!” The parents have become numb to it but the “naive” children haven’t learned yet to accept the realities of imperfection. The church and our nation face the same challenge and we struggle with topics involving morality. Idealism is thought of as a dirty word even though, for Christians, it should be the foundation of our worldview. We rarely acknowledge problems whose solutions are thought to be impossible and this practice can be traced backed to the very roots of the American culture. If you asked someone from 2017, 1917, or 1817 what the “right thing” to do with the land stolen from the Native Americans is we might all agree, in theory, that the only option would be to give it back. That option has almost unanimously been agreed upon as impossible and in 2017 ridiculous to even mention, but not for a young person. Our entire nation, every system and stone set in place to enforce it has been built in the past three hundred years and there is no reason why the entire thing can’t be re-built in the next three hundred. We aren’t talking about Egypt or Babylon with thousands of years of tradition. In the broad scheme of things, it’s actually ridiculous to think it can’t all be changed. Copied below is a letter written closer to 1817 by Alexander McGillivray when the right of the “States of America” to possess the land wasn’t nearly as unanimous.

“We the chiefs and warriors of the Creek, Chickasaw and Cherokee Nations do hereby, in the most solemn manner, protest any title, claim or demand the American Congress may set up for or against our lands, settlements and hunting grounds in consequence of the Treaty of Peace between the king of Great Britain and the States of America, declaring that as we were not party, so we are determined to pay no attention to the manner in which the British negotiator has drawn out the lines of the lands in question, ceded to the States of America, it being a notorious fact known to the Americans, known to every person who is in any way conversant in or acquainted with American affairs that his Britannic majesty, so the king of England, was never possessed, either by session, purchase or by right of conquest of territories, and which the said treaty gives away. On the contrary, it is well-known that from the first settlement of the English colonies of Carolina and Georgia, up to the date of the Treaty of Paris, no title has ever been made or even pretended to be made by his Britannic majesty to our lands except that what was obtained by free gift, so like that little strip that the Choctaws gave, by free gift or by purchase for good and valuable considerations. Nor did we nations of Creeks, Chickasaws and Cherokees do any act to forfeit our independence and natural rights to the said king of Great Britain that could invest him with the power of giving our property away unless fighting by the side of his soldiers in the day of battle and spilling our best blood in the service of his nation can be deemed so.”

Excerpts of this letter are quoted in Kathleen Duval’s eye opening work Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution. Why is this issue so important? I think it is closely connected to a deep spiritual truth revealed to me recently by the young men and women at one of our local high schools in the musical Godspell and before that the gospels themselves, “The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be darkness. If then, the only light you have is darkness, the darkness will be doubly dark.” If we refuse to accept true north on the moral compass of our nation, then there is very little chance that we will ever find our way home.

P.S. Hopefully you won’t dismiss my arguments as unredeemably naive and as you think about them I want you to keep in mind that “all things are possible through Christ who gives us strength.”

The Righteous Many?

This week has been the ultimate litmus test for Christians throughout the United States. If you continue to support president Trump after his UN and Alabama speech you are sending a message to the world that you value the advancement of the American Empire more than the Kingdom of God. To put it another way I'll paraphrase a quote from evangelist Jonathan Martin, “Try to imagine Paul writing an epistle insisting that Christians always participate in ceremonial acts that honor the empire.” It is unthinkable, yet men and women in ministry are supporting a man making those demands and more. The most pastoral thing I can do in this moment is encourage you to read Revelation 18, fast, and pray that people of faith "come out" from the trance this man has put them under. If you’re wondering why I feel so strongly about this issue now and haven't spoken out after many of the other inflammatory remarks he has made please let me explain.

I recently watched the documentary film Expo with my children. The movie included a ton of fascinating details about the planning and execution of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. What struck me the most was knowing that World War I would begin just a few short years after an event that breathtakingly displayed the possibility of so many different cultures peacefully coexisting in one global city. Unfortunately, after the fair there was a “reawakening of nations, for the revival of their spirits, their pride, their people, and their patriotism.” This deadly cocktail of spirit, pride, and patriotism was manipulated by sadistic world leaders seeking their own power, fame, and fortune. That’s why it was so unnerving to hear President Trump call for this reawakening again in our own time. That's right, the quote I just mentioned about reawakening spirits, pride, and patriotism was from his speech to the United Nations earlier this week. He also stated that, “If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph.” I cannot possibly explain in words how dangerous this type of rhetoric is. A quote from pastor Brian Zahnd might help us understand,  “The majority is almost always wrong. The crowd is untruth. Scapegoating is demonic.”

If calling on the “righteous many” is not demonic enough, then calling for the “total destruction” of a nation certainly is. President Trump's threat to destroy North Korea embodies the Napoleonic and Narcissistic super human complex that Dostoevsky criticizes in Crime and Punishment. This mentality forms in every tyrant making him believe that he is above the law. That he could murder someone in broad daylight and get away with it. This is the same ego driven personality that prompted him to declare in Alabama that he would love to see team owners say, "get that son of a b#$%& of the field right now" to dozens of black professional athletes kneeling during the national anthem. As a combat veteran I can tell you that I didn’t risk my life for an image that men and women would be forced to honor. I did it for an idea that I thought our nation represented. I thought our nation was founded on a spirit of freedom and anti-imperialism. What I have come to believe however is that you cannot claim to be fighting for freedom while at the same time enslaving and oppressing others. If that is the case, then you’re not fighting for freedom you’re fighting for the right to be the master and the oppressor. 

This highlights a key reality in changing the way Christians in our country view our country. Our country has become an empire. We have been and are being formed in the image of Egypt, Babylon, and Rome. All of these nations brought a tremendous amount of peace and prosperity to their citizens and to the rest of the world. So much so that it convinced the people of those empires that the violence and greed necessary to maintain that peace and prosperity was justified. Their gods played a key role in this justification. Now this is a moment of truth. I want you to ask yourself, “Does your god look more like the pagan gods of Rome justifying greed and violence for the peace and prosperity of the empire, or does your God look more like Jesus Christ willing to give everything even his life for those deemed enemies of the state?”   

A Poem for the American Church

Reconciliation

After Gettysburg and Chickamagua

Our nation reconciled

After one million dead and wounded

Our nation reconciled

After burnt homes, abused women, and starved children

Our nation reconciled

But not the church.

Northern and Southern Baptists

Are still divided

Churches and Disciples of Christ

Are still divided

"United” Methodists, Wesleyans, and Nazarenes

Are still divided

Where do we go?

Presbyterians 

Show us the way

Charles Hodge and Joyce Bauer

Show us the way.

Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy on us and

Show us the way

Painting: The Crucifixion by Roy de Maistre

I Feel What You Feel

“I am your voice – It was tied in you – In me it begins to (speak).

I celebrate myself to celebrate every man and woman alive;

I loosen the tongue that was tied in them,

It begins to (speak) out of my mouth.”

- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

This poem brought me to tears last week. The more I think about it the more I believe this poem truly captures the essence of what poetry does. It allows us to truly feel what someone else has felt. That is exactly what the band Kings Kaleidoscope has done in my own life. The song “Prayer” , from their album Beyond Control, brings me to tears every time I hear it. Not every time I listen but every time I hear. And recently a question my son asked me added another dimension and a new depth to the beauty of this song; particularly the line “I feel what you feel.” My son asked me if God had to come to earth in order to know what it was like to be human. I had never really thought about it. I think that I’ve just assumed that it wasn’t until the incarnation that God truly understood the perspective of human beings. I have come to believe that was a terrible mistake and M. Night Shyamalan’s most recent film, Split, led me to think more deeply about this topic.

Kevin, the films antagonist played by James McAvoy, kidnaps three young girls from a shopping mall parking lot and holds them captive in the basement where he works. As the plot unfolds we discover that Kevin is seeing a psychiatrist for multiple personality disorder stemming from a tremendous amount of suffering he experienced as a child. Kevin believes the pain he went through led to an evolution in his psyche, and that this evolution is the next step in the development of the human race. He wants to initiate or speed up this change by hurting people he thinks have lived comfortable lives, and hence the motivation for the kidnapping. Okay, I won’t give away any more spoilers but this movie is truly a great thriller and beyond that it wrestles with the deepest concepts of how we process our suffering, individually and communally.

As we process the suffering in our own lives we often struggle with God’s relationship to our pain. The Old Testament talks about God hearing the cries of His people, and growing up I think those passages subconsciously gave me the impression that God was far away and if our cries were loud enough they might reach him. As a minister I work with young people and I see this all the time. If I ask ten kids where God is, all ten of them will usually say heaven. And if I ask them where heaven is, almost every time they will point to the sky. I teach them that God is not far away and I have come to personally believe that God knows our pain. In Genesis Chapter 3 Adam and Eve have been told not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. When I was in Sunday School I thought that eating from this tree would give Adam and Eve the ability to know the difference between right and wrong, but if you stop and think about it they knew the difference between right and wrong when God told them not to eat from the tree. At this point some of you might be asking, “so what did happen when they ate from the tree?” and “why did God put it there in the first place?”

When Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they went from a conceptual knowledge of right and wrong, to an experiential knowledge of right and wrong. It would be like the difference between looking forward to an exciting event that you “know” will be fun and then experiencing the event and “knowing” that it really was fun. You had a conceptual knowledge of the joy you would experience during the activity, and then you had an experiential knowledge of that same joy. It is similar to a teenager who is told that they should not do certain things. If they could experience the pain and suffering they would cause their parents and themselves because of their disobedience, they probably would not make the same mistakes. This is why Saint Gregory of Nazianzus suggests that God did not put this tree in the garden simply out of caprice but the Knowledge “would have been good if partaken of at the proper time.” This is also how and why God can state later in the chapter that “they have become like us knowing good and evil.” God possesses all knowledge, conceptual and experiential, not because he has gained it at some point in time but because he has possessed it from the beginning.     

Every time a child is hurt God knows/experiences the pain of the child. Ivan rebels against God in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov because he does not know that God has felt the pain of all the children in the stories he remembers. But that doesn’t come close to scratching the surface of the depth of God’s knowledge. Not only does he know the pain of the child but he knows the pain of the parents, and the siblings, and the friends, even if the parents, siblings, and friends were unaware of the child’s suffering in this life. This is why Melito of Sardis could say, in the second century, that it was God who, “was murdered in Abel, and bound as a sacrifice in Isaac, and exiled in Jacob, and sold in Joseph, and exposed in Moses, and sacrificed in the lamb, and hunted down in David, and dishonored in the prophets.”

I’m sure many theologians out there are already shaking their heads thinking that this contradicts the doctrine of impassibility (that God cannot experience pain or pleasure), but let me offer a defense. The incarnation didn’t allow God to know or feel something He had never known or felt before. We know this in part because scripture teaches us that he was “slain from before the foundations of the world” (Revelation 13:8, Hebrew 9:26, 1 Peter 1:20).  The incarnation visibly united the divine nature/experience with the human nature/experience. If God had not taken on a human body, there would have always been those who would believe that God is so far away that he could not possibly know what it is like to suffer like one of his creations. But the truth is that God is not far away, his spirit fills all things! And we can be assured that Love truly, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things!” When we unite ourselves with God we find healing for the suffering in our own lives, we commit to understanding the pain that others have experienced, we do everything in our power to prevent ongoing suffering in the world, and we gratefully accept the sufferings we must endure to love others in the way that God has called us to love them. And through it all we know that God understands our suffering.