Tag: Following Jesus

Fact: Most Political Violence Comes from the Right. It Must Be Confronted

In April 2009 the Department of Homeland Security issued a 9 page report entitled Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.

The report summarized a number of government intelligence assessments and warned that a growing movement of “right wing extremist movements” posed the greatest threat of political violence and domestic terrorism in the United States.

As soon as the report was made public (which was not its original purpose), Republican Congressional leaders, together with a litany of conservative commentators, raised a hue and cry condemning the report, lambasting the DHS, and screaming for the heads of anyone — especially “liberals” or Democrats — who tried to engage in a serious discussion of the report’s findings.

Congressman John Boehner said the report was “offensive and unaccceptable.”  Fox News insisted that the DHS owed the entire country an apology.

Sadly,  none of  this was the least bit surprising coming from the conservative-Republican establishment which remains anti-science, anti-evidence, anti-logic, and anti-anything-that-calls-for critical self-assessment.

Of course, the DHS report was  immediately suppressed.  You probably have never heard of it.  As a result, the nation never had an open public conversation about the rising terrorist threat in this country, and why it was emanating from the right-wing.

It is impossible to have a productive conversation when one side can’t stop denying the facts, as Sarah Huckabee-Sanders continues to do almost every day.

Then in 2017 the Anti-Defamation League published another study, bulging with copious evidence and citations, stating similar conclusions.  A Dark & Constant Rage: 25 Years of Right-Wing Terrorism in the United States  opens by stating:

“Right-wing extremists have been one of the largest and most consistent sources of domestic terror incidents in the United States for many years, a fact that has not gotten the attention it deserves.”

Facts cannot be ignored.  They will eventually have their own way, whether we like it or not.

The rank cowardice displayed by the mainstream and the right-wing media guarantees that the public remains steeped in ignorance on this issue.  Daily we hear the mindless, false equivalencies and bogus comparisons.  Pundits insist that both sides are to blame; everyone needs to compromise; the right and the  left must meet somewhere in the middle.

The Republican party moves in a more and more extremist direction, yet anyone who points this out is accused of polarizing the debate.

What absolute rubbish!  It simply is not true.

The right-wing is to blame.  It is a fact, plain and simple.  No one benefits from a lie.

There is something about conservatism and its social, political rhetoric that, especially when taken to an extreme, becomes fertile soil for unstable people prone to violence.

We all — but especially God’s people — must be more concerned with the truth than we are with partisan defensiveness.  This means being open to correction.  Being willing to learn.  To admit when we have been wrong.

And most of all, we must be willing to change.

Tragically, evangelical Christianity persists in unapologetically identifying itself with a right-wing political movement that has blood on its hands.

Yes, that’s right.

Congressman Boehner, Fox News, and every other conservative spokesperson who helped to muzzled the DHS warning in 2009, who plugged their ears to the ADL report in 2017, who still refuses to admit the self-evident connection between Trump’s violent rhetoric — which has repeatedly embraced and advocated more violence — and the racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant terrorism dragging itself mercilessly across our country, all have blood on their hands.

God’s people cannot be a party to any of this.

What is Christian Worship? Part 4

Thus far we have made several important, and unexpected, discoveries as we studied New Testament worship vocabulary.

First, we discovered that the New Testament never describes Christian gatherings as “worship services.”  New Testament believers didn’t “worship” when they gathered together.  Rather, they created group opportunities for edification and upbuilding of the Body of Christ.  Disciples use their spiritual gifts, confess their sins, sing new songs, praise and glorify God, encourage each other and meet one another’s physical and spiritual needs.

And, believe it or not, the New Testament does not call that “worship.”

Second, we found that the New Testament insists that Christian worship is the stuff believers do in their day-to-day lives as they obediently follow Jesus.  We worship God when we do the things Jesus has called us to do as members of his upside-down, counter-intuitive kingdom.
Worship is a lifestyle not because we sing praise songs and lift our hands while driving, but because we make the radically hard choices of actually being like Jesus and obeying his not-of-this-world teaching in our daily lives with others.

This is the point where I frequently hear an objection: If worship is an everyday affair, aren’t I minimizing the idea of worship as a “sacred/special” activity? 

To put the question more negatively, people sometimes object, “If everything is worship, then nothing is worship.”  (One of my former colleagues used to say this regularly).

“There must be something unique or ‘special’ about worshiping God,” they insist.  “Otherwise giving God our focused attention simply melts away into the repetitious fabric of mundane existence, and it will never really happen at all!”

This worry arises from a legitimate concern, but I believe that its impulses are misguided.  My response to this objection has two parts.   Here I will offer part one.  Part two must wait for the next post.

 First, the New Testament has dramatically eliminated the Old Testament distinction between the sacred & the profane within the Christian life.

In the Old Testament, the “sacred” was conceived of in terms of proximity to God.  God’s presence appeared at certain shrines, in the Tabernacle or in the Temple.  These places involved sacred locations (like altars), sacred personnel (priests), sacred objects (vestments, incense burners) and sacred acts (sacrifices, offerings).

The profane, on the other hand, was excluded from the sacred.  Profane things involved the mundane, day-to-day, worldly affairs of normal life, normal places and normal people.

Old Testament saints lived within two different sets of distinctions:

One was the sacred/profane distinction described above.

The second was the covenantal distinction between Israel’s membership in the Abrahamic & Sinai covenants, compared with everyone else in the world who lived outside of God’s covenants.  Israel and Israel alone were the Lord’s covenant people.

These two dimensions of (a) sacred/profane and (b) inside the covenant/outside the covenant intersected Israel’s existence in significant ways.

All those living inside the covenant were God’s chosen people.  As God’s covenant people, Israel was commanded to maintain the distinction between the sacred – i.e. they went to the Temple, offered sacrifices and understood God’s presence to be centered in the Holy of Holies – and the profane – i.e. they believed that God always saw them and heard their prayers, but they never entered into God’s presence at home as they did when they entered into the Temple.

All of Israel’s life was lived within the covenant, but covenant life was not identical with the sacred way of life.  Even Israel’s priests – who were always members of the covenant – moved  back and forth between the sacred and profane, depending on their times of temple service.

With the coming of Christ, however, God instituted a radical change of affairs.  The Lord Jesus inaugurated the NEW Covenant, or the New Testament.

With the coming of God’s New Covenant, what had previously been two different distinctions (sacred/profane and in covenant/out of covenant) are now fused into one.  In other words, every member of the New Covenant is always living a sacred existence in sacred space. Those outside the New Covenant, because they do not know Jesus, live a profane life in profane space.

Anyone participating in the resurrection life of Jesus Christ can know that the previously profane has been transformed into the perpetually sacred.  The covenantal distinction is now identical with the sacred/profane distinction.  All disciples of Jesus are holy people.  Every Christian is a priest.  Every act of obedience is a sacred act, an offering of praise, a sacrifice acceptable to God.

I am convinced that this New Testament “universalizing” of the sacred, scattering sacredness throughout all of the Christian life, is a sign of Christ’s intention to restore the universe to God’s original design.

When Adam and Eve walked through the Garden of Eden, all of life was sacred.  The entire cosmos was sacred.  Sacred space was everywhere.  There was no place that was not a sacred place.  The Creator walked and talked with the first man and woman as they strolled through the aspen groves and smelled wild roses in the overgrown thickets along the bubbling stream.

Sacred space was all there was.

So now, since the coming of Jesus, the apostle Paul can describe his lifestyle of obedient discipleship as “his priestly service” (note the language of a sacred person offering a sacred activity – i.e. worship) given up to Jesus Christ from the dirty streets and dark alleyways of every Greco-Roman city where the apostle sets the light of the Good News ablaze.

Worship becomes a lifestyle of faithful kingdom citizenship, first and foremost, because of who we are.

Jesus makes us saints and priests whose every breath drawn in thanksgiving, every thought of God’s glory, every word spoken in the light of Christ’s presence, every decision made in accordance with God’s intention, becomes a moment of worship offered up by a sacred individual inhabiting God’s new world.

Now, is that amazing, or what?

Praise be to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ for His indescribable gifts to us all!

Kierkegaard on Christian Faith — Risking the Improbable and Accepting Failure

Few people understand Christian faith more clearly than Sǿren Kierkegaard.  Here is another section from his book, Judge For Yourself (pages 99-100 in the Hong, Princeton edition).  A few words of explanation may help if you’ve never read Kierkegaard before.

Faith is risking the improbable because (a) it is impossible to prove empirically that you have truly encountered God, and (b) there is no measure of empirical probability that Jesus of Nazareth is God incarnate.

Thus, faith risks the improbable.  A significant challenge for modern folks who insist on evidence.

Some people (Kierkegaard calls them lightweights) claim to venture the risk of faith, but only because they think that anything done “in faith” is guaranteed success; that is, success in earthly terms.  Success as they define success.

Hear the faithful Dane speak to us today (emphasis is mine):

“Here is the infinite difference from the essentially Christian, since Christianly, indeed, even just religiously, the person who never relinquished probability never became involved with God.  All religious, so say nothing of Christian, venturing is on the other side of probability, is by way of relinquishing probability.

 “But then is the essentially Christian utter folly and are the sensible people right – it is intoxication?  No!  Admittedly many a one has thought that he was venturing Christianly when he ventured to relinquish probability, and it was pure and simple folly even according to the view of Christianity.  Christianity has its own characteristic way of restraining…the point to check carefully here is to see whether the venturing actually is in reliance upon God.

 “To connect God’s name with one’s wishes, cravings, and plans is easy, far too easy for the lightweights; but it does not follow that their venturing is in reliance upon God. No, in relinquishing probability in order to venture in reliance upon God, one must admit to oneself the implications of relinquishing probability – that when one then ventures it is just as possible, precisely just as possible, to fail as to succeed…That one ventures in reliance upon God provides no immediate certainty of success; the dubiousness in the lightweights’ venturing in reliance upon God lies precisely in their understanding this to mean that they must be victorious..  But this is not venturing in reliance upon God; this is taking God in vain.”

Entrusting our lives to Jesus Christ ensures a right relationship with our heavenly Father here and now.  It also guarantees an eternity with Him in the world to come.  But neither faith nor Jesus promise to give us whatever we hope and pray for, no matter how “faithful” our intentions or “glorious” we think it might be for God.

So, do we trust in Jesus and follow Him for his own sake?  Or do we have ulterior motives?

When Disobedience is a Virtue, 5 — Principled Individualism Builds Better Community

This final installment of “When Disobedience is a Virtue” is another excerpt from my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans, 2018), page 112.

If you know me personally or are a regular reader of this blog, then you know that I am a non-conformist.  Part of this is my personality.  I have always questioned authority and wondered (often out loud) about the real evidence behind public statements of “fact.”

But the greatest influence pushing me further and further into the arms of non-conformity has been my faith in Jesus Christ.  Every true disciple is a non-conformist to the ways of this world.

That includes pushing back against the various ways that this world sets up shop inside the church, selling God’s people worldly rubbish like a rogue sidewalk vender hawking enticing chili dogs without a license.

 “There will never be a sufficient consensus on anything in this life—including biblical interpretation and social activism—to eliminate all of life’s uncertainties. If we act only in the absence of uncertainty, then we will never do anything but wait and invent new excuses for our inactivity. Living a biblically directed life is the only way to deconstruct the false moral universes erected by this world and replace them with the moral universe created by the kingdom of God. Of course, as long as we remain in this world, we are partially blinded and crippled by the misshapen universe we are working to leave behind, so our interpretations and conclusions must be held lightly. But they must be held. Uncertainty never justifies apathy.

 “Second, there comes a time when the individual must act and act alone if necessary, while being prepared to accept the consequences of those actions, whatever they may be. It is no accident that Peter Haas introduces his discussion of Germany’s Christian rescuers by saying: “A common feature of any principled dissent . . . [is] that the rescuers are deviants, people who are misfits in their society. . . . [Their actions] grew out of the rescuer’s experience as social and political outcasts.”  Principled individualism, what the status quo will always condemn as the deviant behavior of misfits and outcasts, is the distinguishing characteristic of Christian faithfulness in this fallen world.

 “Unfortunately, there are many pious voices that want to sedate this brand of individualism by wrapping it up tightly in the maudlin, anesthetic gauze of “community life.” Christian gatherings easily become the most repressive, stultifying crowds that squash the last vestige of creative individualism from its members: Never act alone. Never step out of line. Never speak when others are quiet. Never question authority. Never doubt what everyone else believes. Never question the way it has always been done. Never try to think outside the box. These are the conformist platitudes repeated by the crowd in its self-serving attempts to constrain passionate individuals, preventing them from acting for the sake of conscience.  At times the Christian church has become the most oppressive, do-nothing herd of them all.

 “So we must learn to discern the difference between a fellowship that participates in God’s kingdom and a collective that exists only to replicate carbon copies of the citizens of this world.”

Sandhya Rani Jha on Politics in Church

Sandhya Rani Jha is a minister in the Disciples of Christ denomination and director of the Oakland Peace Center.

If you don’t know the story she refers to about the French village, Le Chambon, I encourage you to read the book by Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed (Harper Row, 1979). It’s an amazing story of true kingdom citizenship lived out in a time of great danger.

The following excerpt is taken from the Christian Century article, “Do politics belong in church?”.  You can read the entire article here.

“My mind has been on the French village of Le Chambon recently. During World

The village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon

War II, the village of maybe 5,000 people saved possibly as many as 5,000 people from the Nazis and the Vichy regime. As President Barack Obama noted on Yom HaShoah/Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2009, ‘Not a single Jew who came [to the area of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon] was turned away, or turned in. But it was not until decades later that the villagers spoke of what they had done—and even then, only reluctantly. “How could you call us ‘good’?” they said. “We were doing what had to be done.”

“In my current itinerating ministry, I have visited a lot of churches that are proud of their commitment to being nonpolitical because it makes them more inclusive. But a nonpolitical church’s politics supports the way things are. That

Jewish children hidden in Le Chambon

doesn’t make it an inclusive church. It makes it a church that is unwelcoming to people who want a different world. To riff off of a popular meme from the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, people of color are saying to the mainline church, ‘The American empire is literally killing us,’ and the mainline church is saying, ‘Yes, but . . . ‘

“The reason Le Chambon keeps showing up in my imagination is this: every Sunday for over a decade before France fell to the Nazis, the pastors of the village preached a message that reinforced their community’s identity and what that identity meant in practice. The message was:

  • We are Huguenots who survived persecution by the Catholic majority. That means we show up for people being persecuted.
  • We are Christians. This means engaging in nonviolent resistance to empires doing harm and protecting the people who are being harmed.

“In a sermon delivered the day after France surrendered to the Nazis, village

Le Chambon pastor, Andre Trocme

pastor André Trocmé said to his congregation, ‘The responsibility of Christians is to resist the violence that will be brought to bear on their consciences through the weapons of the spirit.’

“In Le Chambon, the church’s message shaped people’s identity and behavior.  That is not an inherently political message, but it is a message that demands people act out of a certain ethic.”  (emphasis mine)
Whenever I hear a pastor boast about his/her “nonpolitical” messages, I always want to ask a few questions, the same questions raised by Sandhya Rani Jha.
First, do the ethics of Jesus have any bearing on the way Christians ought to approach their politics?
How can any thinking pastor say no to that question?
Trocme’s congregation being taught to follow Jesus, conspiring to break the law and to protect the oppressed

 

OK then.  Secondly, if you are not teaching in ways that help your flock understand the the practical significance of Jesus’ radical, upside-down kingdom ethics for engaging the politics of this world, then aren’t you failing in your pastoral responsibilities?

The answer to the second question is a resounding yes.
The principle failure of Christian (at least evangelical) teaching on politics today is the near-complete absence of Jesus and his kingdom ethics.
For many pastors, politics is almost all they talk about, but the life and teaching of Jesus have been erased from their playbook.
But those who refuse to talk politics at all are really no different.  They have simply erased Jesus with a different brand of eraser.

A Faithful Disciple in Rwanda

Brandon Stanton’s Twitter account is called Humans of New York (@humansofny).  Recently, he has been interviewing various people from Africa and telling their stories on his feed.  This is one of them:

This gentleman is a pastor living in Kigali, Rwanda.  When the genocide began in the spring of 1994, many locals fled to this man’s home

A Rwandan Pastor who rescued over 300 lives while risking his own

for protection.  Despite the many threats against himself and his wife, they were prepared to give their lives in protecting others.

They saved over 300 people by hiding them in their church.

Below are a few excerpts from his amazing story:

“That very first evening the militia came to my gate. Some were carrying guns. Others were carrying machetes.  They’d been told that I was hiding people.  They demanded to come inside and search the property. I stood in the doorway and told them they’d have to kill me first.  ‘We’ll be back,’ they said. ‘And thanks for gathering all the cockroaches in one place.’…All of our friends abandoned us. They pretended not to know us.  Only one pastor stood by our side.  He came to me one night and warned me there was a plan to attack the church.  I told the news to my wife and we both agreed we were ready to die.

“The next time the killers came, there were fifty of them. All of them had guns or machetes. They pushed straight past me and entered the pastor’s residence. They began pulling people out of the ceiling. They were kicking us and dragging us along the floor. I knew this was the end…We were put in three lines. We began to say our last prayers. I scanned the mob of killers for recognizable faces. Many of them were Christians. Some were even from my congregation. Every time I recognized a face, I called to him by name. I said, ‘When I die I am going to heaven. Where will you go?’  I then pointed to the next man…and the next…and the next…They began to argue among themselves. Nobody wanted to be the first to kill…And they began to leave, one by one, until all of them had run off.

“…When I look back, I believe the genocide could have been stopped had more pastors taken a stand. We were the ones with influence.  The killers belonged to our congregations. And we could have held them back. But instead we did nothing. And every pastor had a different excuse. Some said they didn’t know things would get so bad. Some said they were too afraid. Some said the government was too powerful to oppose. But when you’re standing aside while people die, every excuse is a lame one.” (emphasis mine)

Naturally, we all love heroic stories.  This man’s actions were truly heroic, though I suspect that he would simply say that he was only doing what Jesus wanted him to do.

I hope that I would be as faithful were I ever to encounter a similar situation.  But I honestly don’t know what I would do.

There were other pastors and priests who tried to hide people inside their

Hundreds were killed while hiding inside this Nyamata church, Rwanda

churches, and they were regularly massacred.  But what about his claim that the genocide could have been stopped if at least a majority of Christian leaders had spoken out in protest, refused to follow tribal orders, disobeyed government demands, and boldly confronted fellow church-goers with Jesus’ radical demands to love everyone and to only  do good to our neighbors?

The majority of church-goers in Rwanda, like the majority of church-goers in Nazi Germany, were a part of the problem, not the solution to Rwandan racism and tribalism.

Given the many despicable things we are witnessing in the United States today, why should anyone imagine that the majority of church-goers in America are any different?

When Disobedience is a Virtue, 3 — Do We Inhabit a Moral Universe Created by God’s Kingdom?

Brett Kavanaugh was officially appointed to the Supreme Court on Monday.  One of the “evangelical” representatives present at the White House ceremony was Robert Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas.  Jeffress is one of the president’s “spiritual counselors.”

Remember, Kavanaugh’s Senate hearings offered us the opportunity to watch a woman named Christine Blasey Ford expose her private humiliation to the American public as she retold the ugly story of her sexual assault.  Afterwards, the American president publicly vilified Dr. Ford.  He laughed and ridiculed her at a campaign rally in Mississippi, turning a woman’s trauma into his own personal burlesque comedy act.

Her family continues to hide in an undisclosed location because of the torrent of death threats they receive.

In the aftermath of all this, Robert Jeffress’ went on Fox News to describe Kavanaugh’s appointment as a sign that “good had triumphed over evil.”

Jeffress added, “I think, in many ways, the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh represents conservatives finally standing up and saying, to quote the movie: ‘We’re as mad as hell and we’re not going to take this any longer.’'”

Robert Jeffress and I do not inhabit the same moral universe.

The following excerpt is from pages 107-109 of my book I Pledge Allegiance: A Believers Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans 2018).  I discuss Nazi Germany as one example of the ways different societies construct their own “moral universes” and the challenges these different social universes present to citizens of the kingdom of God.

The two books I refer to are:

 David Gushee, The Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust: A Christian Interpretation (Fortress, 1994)

Peter J. Haas, Morality after Auschwitz: The Radical Challenge of the Nazi Ethic (Fortress, 1988)

“Although the decision to break the law by rescuing Jews may seem an obvious choice to us today, we should not forget that only a few in Germany actually made that difficult decision. The majority of German Christians offered no outward objections to Nazi policies. For instance, not a single public protest was ever launched by a Protestant church leader against Germany’s euthanasia laws when they were implemented.  When push came to shove, bad theology, fear, rationalizing, and self-preservation all trumped actualizing the gospel message, which leads us to Gushee’s second, tragic observation.

 “Christian rescuers were few and far between.  Rescuers, in general, were the exception to the rule in World War II; but rescuers claiming to be motivated by their Christian faith were rare even among this small group of heroes. This lamentable fact (at least lamentable for me as a Christian) requires a deeper analysis than we can give to it here, but it certainly illustrates just how difficult and unusual it is for self-professed Christians to give themselves over completely to the thoroughgoing, inside-out transformation desired by Christ. The widespread nature of this spiritual challenge is illustrated time and again by the historians who study the Christian church in Nazi Germany. For example, Richard Steigmann-Gall’s research on Nazi views of Christianity concludes: “Christianity, in the final analysis, did not constitute a barrier to Nazism. Quite the opposite: For many . . . the battles waged against Germany’s enemies constituted a war in the name of Christianity. . . . Nearly all the Nazis surveyed here believed they were defending good by waging war against evil, fighting for God against the Devil, for German against Jew.”

 “This is a chilling conclusion for anyone who loves Jesus.

 “My point in turning our attention to Nazi Germany is not to single out the German church or to suggest that the Third Reich was the only disastrous political movement that has co-opted Christianity and bastardized the gospel.  I have chosen these examples from the history of Nazi Germany because this is one of the few episodes in modern history that is relatively free of partisan wrangling. Almost everyone, regardless of nationality, political persuasion, or religion, will agree that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi doctrine were a consummate evil. I am confident that the majority of my readers will agree—whether their politics are Republican, Democratic, independent, socialist, Green Party, libertarian, or anarchist—that the bulk of the German church, both Protestant and Catholic, allowed the rules of this-worldly citizenship to smother their responsibilities as citizens of God’s kingdom. No one in a church composed of true pilgrims, strangers, and aliens in this world could ever uniformly adhere to the policies of the Nazi Party.

 “From this shared starting point, let me go on to say something that is perhaps more provocative: There is a close analogy to be made between the behavior of the American church today and that of the German church in 1933. No, America may not face the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler or National Socialism (whatever the current administration’s political opponents may say). But, like the people of Germany, we all live within a shared moral universe that defines both good and evil and then brings various forces to bear in pressuring us to conform. The Nazis managed to create a moral universe where racism and brutality were approved, even encouraged. The German people behaved accordingly.  Anti-Semitism and eugenics were morally good, while racial integration and opposition to the state were morally evil. Peter Haas rightly insists that ‘the Holocaust was not the incarnation of evil but instead reflected the human power to reconceive good and evil and then to shape society in the light of the new conception.’

 “Haas offers a crucial insight. Whether we recognize it or not, we all live within analogous ethical systems, where we blithely accept cultural definitions of good and evil without exercising any critical thinking. The issue is not the particular guise adopted by evil—whether it wears the face of Nazism, communism, consumerism, capitalism, imperialism, racism, or the class system—but the fact that evil always exists without always being self-evident to us. The moral universe created by twenty-first- century America is not identical with the moral universe envisioned by the gospel of Jesus Christ. But that will be shocking news to many members of the church in America.  This confusion makes the American church typical. The bulk of the German church did not fail because it was German but because it was human. The burdensome millstone hanging from the neck of world history is sinful human nature, a human nature that would rather create its own moral universe than live obediently in God’s. When given a choice, human nature always prefers to cling to its own precious, self-serving ideologies (no matter how idiotic, uninformed, xenophobic, or grotesque) over the self-renunciation, self-sacrifice, and servanthood demanded by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore, all Christians of every nation must ask themselves in a spirit of repentance, humility, and self-examination: What kind of moral universe is the church inhabiting today? What redefinitions of good and evil have we accepted for our own cultural convenience? What kinds of immorality are we ignoring, or even heartily endorsing, because we are more heavily invested in partisan politics, nationalism, capitalism, consumerism, discrimination, and the many other idolatrous ephemera born of the kingdom of this world than we are in following Jesus Christ?”

When Disobedience is a Virtue, 1 – Every Christian Must Be A Dissident

This is an excerpt from my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans 2018).  “When Disobedience is a Virtue” is the title of chapter 7.  I intend to offer a series of similar posts, all taken from this chapter of my book.

I give my attention to the nature of authority, its abuse and how easy it is – frighteningly easy – for people to fall prey to the most outlandish abuses by

Swastikas cover the altar of a German Christian church

dangerous authority figures.  The classic example, of course, is the German Christian church under the spell of Adolf Hitler.

No. I don’t believe that the US is now comparable to pre-war Germany, though I will refer you in an upcoming post to an American historian who convincingly argues that the two are closer than you might imagine.

What I do believe, however, is that the mindset controlling vast swaths of American Christianity today, especially in its more conservative sectors, reflects many of the same dangerous errors that eventually led the German Christian church to support Hitler.

Trump may not be Hitler.  But widespread Christian enthusiasm for a morally repugnant president who delights in dehumanizing others – reflexively, without inhibition or remorse – who demonstrates all the traits of a sociopath, suggests to me that conservative Christians in this country have managed to lobotomize the mind of Christ – at least within themselves. We have become expert at steeling ourselves against the work of the Holy Spirit, of silencing the Spirit’s voice, ignoring His conviction, and perhaps of expelling Him altogether.

Resistance is the spiritual imperative for every true disciple.  But who, what

Leshia Evans stands against police while standing up for Black Lives Matter

and where do we resist properly?  And how do we resist in a way that pleases our crucified Lord Jesus?

Here is the first excerpt, from page 98:

“…we all regularly face the challenge of knowing when to submit and when to disobey authority. Often the authority is as seemingly benign as public opinion, the status quo, cultural expectations, tradition, or peer pressure.  Yet, for a people who believe they have been called out of darkness into the light, who understand that living by the standards of God’s kingdom will frequently put them at odds with the practices and expectations of a fallen world, defying authority in some way should be common practice. Perhaps it means befriending the outcast shunned by everyone else at school. Or calling friends to account for laughing at a racist remark. Paul’s admonition in Romans 13:5—to act “because of conscience”—is one of the implications he draws from Romans 12:2: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (see chapter 4). Learning to defy the patterns of this world by renewing our minds after the model of Jesus and cultivating a genuinely Christian conscience requires learning when, where, and how to disobey any authority, no matter how familiar, issuing wrongful directives, regardless of the consequences. From this perspective, every Christian is called to be a dissident. Discipleship is the life of dissent from this world in the affirmation of Jesus and his kingdom.”

Don Lemon Exposes the Republican’s “White Men are Victims” Strategy for What It Is, Evil

Several days ago Don Lemon, an anchor at CNN, shared a moving testimony about how he was victimized by a pedophile when he was a young  boy.

Men like Mr. Lemon, and there are many of them, can easily identify with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s account of sexual assault.  They can also relate to the shameful Republican tactics, seemingly successful tactics, to silence the victim.  More than that, Republicans, with Donald Trump leading the way, have not only managed to silence Dr. Ford, they have erased her from their story altogether.

Please take a few minutes to watch Mr. Lemon’s excellent unveiling of the current Republican strategy for normalizing their disregard of sexual assault and all its victims:

Victims of sexual violence are non-entities today, at least in the realm of Republicanism.  They have announced that these women’s (and men’s) stories are not worth hearing.

Women like Dr. Ford are now mere specters floating in a moral vacuum.

Rendered invisible, even as she stands before us.

Made mute by the black magic of partisan voodoo.  Oppressive incantations intoned from the Senate floor.

Yet, if old white men like Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, Rush Limbaugh and many others are to be believed, this non-existent, mute, invisible, female  victim — who is really a non-victim in their eyes — poses a dire, existential threat to every man…every powerful man…every powerful white man in America today.

Of course, black men like Mr. Lemon don’t count.  And black women aren’t worth mentioning by the likes of these white, old Republicans who strut their stuff from the Capitol steps.

And all the while, white conservative America stands to cheer them on.

They laugh, smile, applaud and cheer as they stand with their young sons and daughters at campaign rallies, watching their Sexual Predator/Serial Adulterer/Misogynist/ Unapologetic Pussy Grabber-in-Chief mock this non-existent, invisible, mute, non-victim named Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

It goes without saying that most of those white men and women from the  Mississippi heartland, who were applauding the president’s demeaning imitation of a victim’s heart-rendering testimony, would call themselves Christians.  They go to church.  They even read the Bible, sometimes.  They listen to sermons from pastors who gloat as they destroy their old Nike gear in the pulpit.

“Heck of a visual aid, pastor,” they say.

But they know nothing about the victimized, brutalized, beaten, scarred and crucified Jesus of Nazareth, the man who loved abused women (and children), held them in his arms, wept over them, healed their brokenness, and made them equals to the men who followed Him.

Their is no true Christianity without discipleship.  Their is no discipleship that does not share in the sufferings of our Lord Jesus.  No one who shares in the suffering of Christ would EVER laugh at, mock, ridicule or dismiss the sufferings of another human being, whatever the circumstances.

We are watching the putrefaction of America’s false religion, most fully displayed in patriotic “evangelicalism.”  Only from the dung heap of idolatry can such a stench arise.

I’ll give Donald Trump this:  he has torn away the mask of evangelical, America-First piety and revealed this Beast for what it truly is.

EVIL.

Pure, unadulterated evil.

This is What Discipleship Looks Like

Recently, I received a message from a former student who is now also a friend.  I have his permission to share that message with you:

“I’ll give you an update in my life soon, but I’ve got a somewhat pressing question. Are the NT claims about marrying a divorced person as straightforward as they seem? I’ve never really had a chance to study the question but I’m getting to know a divorced woman I would like to date, but I don’t want to glibly say ‘the Bible’s teaching doesn’t make sense to me so I’m going to ignore it.’

 “My sexual orientation includes same sex attraction and I can’t figure out why God makes homosexuality off limits, but it’s clear to me that he does so I submit to Christ where I don’t understand him.

 “I’m willing to do that with dating divorced women too. But I’ve also learned not to trust my natural reading of the text ‘in plain English.’ As a retired pastor what are your pastoral and academic thoughts on the issue?”

Folks, that’s how a real citizen of God’s kingdom thinks.  That’s how a genuine disciple makes decisions, by answering the question, “What does Jesus ask of me?”

The commitment to say “No” to ourselves as we say “Yes” to Christ is the Biblical definition of faith.  My young friend illustrates just that – a life of faith oriented to the Lord Jesus, first, last and always, whatever the cost, no matter the sacrifice, regardless of the necessary self-denial.

Some people approach Christian living as if Jesus were a new, spiritual “app” for their lifestyle iPhone.  Nothing else changes; they simply add a Jesus button to their many options.

Feeling stressed?  Press the Jesus app.  He’ll help.

Need a pick-me-up?  Press the Jesus app.  He’ll be there.

Sorry, but that’s not real Christianity.

Truly following the crucified, resurrected Lord requires an entire rearrangement of life’s perspectives and priorities.  It means becoming functionally “unnatural,” an habitually counter-clockwise person in a very, very clock-wise world.

Following Jesus is like tossing the iPhone with all of its apps, bells and whistles over your shoulder, while strapping a simple, ticking Timex to your wrist with a second hand and numbers on its face.  And, oh yes, you must relearn how to wait until you are home again before even thinking about another phone call.

Following Jesus is a radical step.  He won’t become an addition to anybody’s life.  Jesus always wants to remake everything in His own image.  He will become the totality or he will become nothing to us at all.

I dedicated my last book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to KingdomCitizenship in 21st Century America, to those among my former students who understood the challenges and the amazing blessings of Christian discipleship.  They are scattered around the globe now risking everything for the kingdom of God.

That’s real Christianity.  And I am humbled to have had some small role in encouraging their life of faith.

This young friend of mine, a man who is making his future with Jesus Christ THE most important relationship of his life, is discipling me in what it means to follow Jesus.