Lost Sheep in the Church Podcast

On New Year’s Eve, my parents and I decided to rent Wicked from Amazon. It had just been released on video that day so it cost $20 but we all agreed it was worth it, and that was still cheaper than all three of us going to the theater. When the price comes down, I am going to rent it again and watch it with audio description because there were a few places where I couldn’t quite follow what was going on and it was difficult for Mom to describe. But I got the gist of it, and enjoyed the music, some of which I sang in choir.For our family who never supported Donald Trump, finding his amorality and narcissism repugnant, this month has felt strange. I love the way one writer I follow described it, like standing on railroad tracks knowing a train is going to hit you, but there’s nothing you can do about it. “I would link to it but I have read so much I cannot remember where I read it.) As I write this, Donald Trump has officially been president for one hour, so I guess the train is here. There is nothing really to say that hasn’t been said already, but I felt compelled to share some thoughts inspired by the opening number of Wicked that I believe will be valuable in putting this day in perspective and confronting Christian Nationalism, a political movement whose leaders are using Donald Trump to advance their agenda.It is in our human nature to want to leave a legacy, so perhaps the reason the position of President of the United States is so coveted by some, and campaigned for so nastily is because it offers the ultimate opportunity to leave a legacy unlike any other. In a sense, we all leave a legacy. If you are a parent, your legacy takes the form of the children you raise. In addition to passing on your genes, you pass down your values. If you are a teacher, your legacy is the students you inspire, and if you are lucky, former students will write you about how you left a lasting impression on them. If you were involved in your community, your legacy might be your positive attitude or kindness that inspired others. All these are wonderful legacies, but I once heard a sermon about the reality that the youngest baby at your funeral, in one hundred years or less, will also die, and as such, for most of us, our earthly legacies are not lasting. Most of us fade into the vast anonymity of human history. But as President of the United States, your decisions shape the course of U.S. and to some extent world history. Sadly, Satan takes advantage of this human instinct, this lust for power. Jesus, the perfection of humanity confidently resisted Satan’s temptation (Matthew 4:9) but no human government has ever been capable of fully resisting a bargain with the Devil. They don’t literally bow down and worship Satan of course, but they make decisions based on evil motives like holding onto power, or projecting strength via violence toward other countries, or oppression of their own people. We have never had, and never will have a perfect president because America’s earthly interests usually don’t align with Christ’s righteous standards, especially in the foreign policy realm. Every president panders to constituencies for whom it is politically expedient to serve, while overlooking the most marginalized, especially the extremely poor. I must say I am conflicted as to my opinion of Joe Biden. On the one hand, his big ego—which every president has, and perhaps is necessary to even seek a job as high-stakes as President of the United States—got him into trouble. That debate in June, with his declining health on full display, was painful to watch, and he exhibited poor judgment by choosing to run for a second term, and selfishness in waiting so long to drop out that there wasn’t time for a proper Democratic primary. But Donald Trump is only a few years younger than Biden, and while at surface level he seems more vigorous, he has shown significant cognitive decline over the years as well. So perhaps the shame should rest not on Joe Biden, but on our society who prioritizes superficial physical strength and vigor over content of character. Joe Biden may have had a big ego, but “out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34) and whenever Joe Biden spoke, he radiated genuine compassion for anyone experiencing hardship, whether it was cancer, financial insecurity, or the loss of a loved one in combat or due to gun violence, this empathy forged through tragedy in his own life. By contrast, whenever Donald Trump opens his mouth, he spews forth cruel rhetoric against immigrants or political opponents, mocks people with disabilities, and helps people experiencing hardship only if it is politically advantageous. And yet evangelicals overwhelmingly chose him again, despite his abandonment of the prolife platform, a sign that he has no true convictions. They still believe his administration can be a tool for “taking America back for God”, despite Jesus’s warning that “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit” (Matthew 7:18). Much like the Pharisees of Jesus’s day, Christian Nationalists seem to be interested only in legalistic, cultural Christianity, which bears no resemblance to the teachings of Jesus at all. Adding insult to injury has been watching all the charges dropped, despite overwhelming evidence of his corruption, and the sentencing in New York that wasn’t really a sentence at all. Ordinary people spend years in prison for far less serious crimes, and yet Donald Trump gets by with everything.But I was struck by the optics of Jimmy Carter’s funeral. Jimmy Carter, sadly and ironically, was treated similar to Biden by right-wing evangelicals. Jimmy Carter, another example of a man who was not perfect but lived out his faith, conducting himself with such integrity that he put his modest peanut farm into a blind trust, was scorned by evangelicals for, among other things, holding a summit on family policy that included LGBTQ families. But all hard feelings were left in the past, as even political opponents gave beautiful eulogies testifying to his integrity, his ability to negotiate peace treaties, and his legacy of service to the poor, building houses for Habitat for Humanity and eradicating diseases in third-world countries. Donald Trump attended this funeral because it wouldn’t look good politically if he didn’t, but his presence put the other dignitaries in awkward no-win positions. Depending on the political slant of the media outlet, Barack Obama was praised by some, and criticized by others for talking and laughing with Donald Trump. I couldn’t see the interplay for myself, but I imagine Barack Obama was trying to take the high road, going along with Trump’s banter, probably inappropriate for a funeral, to make the best of an awkward situation. Karen Pence, the wife of Mike Pence, was admired and rebuked, again depending on the slant of the media outlet, for snubbing Trump, which technically, if you take the Bible seriously, might have been wrong, but understandable from a human standpoint. After all, Donald Trump all but encouraged his supporters to hang her husband on January 6, 2021.Of course, only God is qualified to know the eternal destiny of Donald Trump, and we are all wicked in our own ways and would be condemned if it weren’t for God’s grace and forgiveness through Christ. But as I listened to the coverage of Jimmy Carter’s funeral, and the analysis of the behavior of Barack Obama and Karen Pence, I was reminded of a couple lines from the opening number of the movie Wicked: “A good man scorns the wicked. Through their lives our children learn what we miss when we misbehave.”Donald Trump may have skirted legal consequences for his actions, but I doubt he is genuinely happy. I have heard derisive laughter from him, in the context of mocking a political opponent, but never the genuine laughter aroused by a silly song, the cute antics of a child or the dog licking your face. In fact, he mocked Kamala Harris for her joyful laugh, viewing it as a sign of weakness. And when you are narcissistic, is it possible to have genuine friends? Big tech CEOs dined with him at Mar-a-Lago and have been involved in his transition, but it is clear they are flattering him because they want favors from him. Republican legislators are loyal to him because they want their party to stay in power. Leaders from other countries flatter him so that he will enact policies favorable to them. But does anyone genuinely enjoy passing an afternoon gulfing or enjoying a meal with him simply for his companionship, expecting nothing in return? Somehow I don’t think so. If I had children, I would love to point out how much joy he is missing out on in the absence of genuine friends, and his inability to laugh, how by being consumed with anger and thoughts of retribution, he is hurting others right now, but ultimately, as he lays on his deathbed, he may come to realize the person hurt most by his behavior was himself. And when he does pass on, I have no doubt the remaining living presidents and first ladies will attend his funeral out of respect, but given how he dehumanized them, will they be able to truly mourn him? And will history remember him kindly, or will he join the pariahs of history for whom any good they may have accomplished was overshadowed by the people they dehumanized? Has he yet contemplated these questions and felt a profound sense of loneliness?Christian Nationalism is a movement with a spectrum, so it would be unfair to paint all with a broad brush, but I see in the most ardent adherents to the movement an all-consuming anger and hostility similar to that of Donald Trump. They may have genuine friends, but only within their tribe of white evangelicals. They do not welcome immigrants despite the fact that Jesus was a refugee, and they seem to forget that Christ’s blood purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). With these Christian nationalists too, repentance is possible with God if they choose to let go of their pride and come to Christ for forgiveness. In eternal life, we will all learn in one way or another what joy we missed because we misbehaved in this life. But we can choose to start behaving better now. As the chaos and immigration raids commence once again, what if we Christians led the way in making the reputation of Christianity beautiful again by speaking up for the marginalized, the immigrant seeking asylum? What if, one community at a time, we could show the world what joy and flourishing they forfeit by choosing the path of nationalism, defined by hostility and resentment, instead of Christ’s path of inclusion and love? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

When my siblings and I were growing up, we learned that the phrase which irritated our parents the most was “I’m bored.” Perhaps to parents—understandably—this phrase seems to imply ingratitude. We were very fortunate, and thus had more toys than we knew what to do with indoors, and outdoors, we had a two acre yard, complete with a swing set and basketball hoop. They would run through the list of all our entertainment options, and all of us learned at some point to figure out how to amuse ourselves and quit whining, or else they would give us housework to do. During our childhood, Mom and Dad claimed there was so much work to do they were never bored, and now that they are retired, they say they don’t understand how their peers complain of being bored once they retired. Between errands and house maintenance, they say they are keeping as busy as ever.I remember one summer day in particular when I was eight years old. Mom and Dad were both at work, and my sister (six years older) was babysitting. I was a bit of a weird kid, a little more introspective than most kids my age, and that day, it was starting to occur to me—though I didn’t quite know how to verbalize it at the time—that what I was feeling was not boredom in the sense of having nothing to do, but a deep, abiding restlessness, a nagging sense that there had to be more to life than the endless school years of pointless worksheets, followed by summers of silly craft projects, children’s books and playing on the swing set. I wanted to do something real, something exciting, something meaningful. In other words, I was already contemplating in a childish way that universal human question: what is the meaning of life? Unable to articulate verbally exactly what I was feeling, I remember whining to my sister, “I want to do something I have never done before.” “Then do something you have never done before,” my sister said in a tone that clearly indicated annoyance with her little sister. I don’t remember how I ended up passing the time that day, but for the most part, I let the subject drop for the remainder of my childhood. Maybe the feeling would go away once I grew up and was allowed to do real work that made a difference in the real world rather than pointless school work that would be thrown into the recycling bin at the end of each semester. But in the adult world, I would discover that most jobs, though they may occasionally present opportunities to make a lasting difference in the world—or at least for one starfish as the parable goes—are mostly bureaucratic and ultimately pointless. And thus this restlessness is like a lifelong virus. It can be masked somewhat, but this side of heaven there is no cure. During the school year, children relieve its symptoms by rebelling—misbehaving in class or deciding not to do their homework. (I will neither confirm nor deny that I was one of the kids who decided not to do my homework.) During the summer, they mask it by passing the time doing a craft project, playing on the swing set, or escaping into a silly book or video game. During their working years, responsible adults like my parents learned to accept, and taught us kids to accept that the mundaneness of everyday life is an unavoidable reality. They intuitively lived out a modern take on the book of Ecclesiastes. The most you can hope for from life is a job that pays a fair wage, with a good company where your coworkers are pleasant and your boss treats everyone fairly. Despite what TV or social media might lead us to believe, it is actually extremely rare for people to land a job getting paid to do what they love. You go to work to pay the bills, keep your nose to the grindstone while you are there, come home and cherish time with family, finding time to pursue what you enjoy on evenings and weekends. That is a good life. Unfortunately, less responsible adults mask their restlessness by living beyond their means, doing the bare minimum in their jobs, indulging in shallow entertainment like reality TV, or self-medicating with junk food, pornography, drugs or alcohol. Middle-of-the-road adults like myself cope with boredom by getting overly excited anticipating man-made holiday traditions—singing Christmas music in October. As I write this, it is December 26 and I am coping with that annual post-Christmas malaise I feel every year. The week of Christmas, but especially Christmas Eve and Christmas Day always feels like a slice of heaven on Earth, as all society pauses from the routine of work to eat special food, play board games as a family, pack into church and sing joyful Christmas songs, and I have always found it difficult to come down from that emotional mountaintop and resume ordinary life.And since the reelection of Donald Trump, I have read some fascinating commentaries arguing that boredom at the societal level may explain the “burn it all down” mentality of so many that allowed for the rise of Donald Trump. In his book, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy, Tom Nichols quoted George Will who remarked in 2020 that “Affluent societies are often gripped by a hunger for apocalypse, a wish for a great struggle that could give drama and deeper meaning, a frisson of risk to the otherwise dull rhythm of life in a country that meets almost all of the needs of its population, at almost all times, and entertains them continuously while doing so.” Tom Nichols adds that “Democracy at its best is boring, and when a society becomes attached to the idea that boredom is a burden that government should alleviate, the attraction of politics beyond the edge of reason becomes a matter of entertainment rather than of justice or even of necessity” (Page 67). Tom Nichols wasn’t writing specifically to Christians, but we are no better. In a November 13 editorial in Christianity Today, Russell Moore remarked, “What we call politics these days offers people a sense of meaning and purpose, an interruption to the dead everydayness of life. A jolt of adrenaline can feel almost like life—for a little while.” But ultimately, news cycles full of political drama only leave us feeling burnt out and distract us from the truth, that this manufactured political drama is temporary, fleeting and pitiful.But the fact that we are discontent and bored with this life isn’t in and of itself a problem. In fact, for true Christians, it is a good thing, a sign that we recognize we were made for another world. As Augustine famously said, we were made for God and only He can fulfill what are restless hearts are longing for. And as Russell Moore noted later in his article, “You are meant to have a life of drama and adventure and excitement. Politics—of the left, right or center—can’t deliver it. News cycles can’t replicate it. For those of us who are Christians, we already have it. We need no Jungian hero’s journey. We are joined to the life of Jesus of Nazareth. His story is our story. Our lives are hidden in Him” (See Colossians 3:3). In other words, it is okay to long for drama, adventure and excitement. It is just that in our fallen state, we are prone to looking for this drama and excitement in all the wrong places.Still to this day after an especially tedious day of work, I can lapse into doubt and wonder, if only I had been able to land one of my dream jobs I longed for all my childhood—a reporter for a newspaper who would fill the hearts of dishonest politicians with terror and dread, or a paid singer in a fabulous choir or Broadway production—I wouldn’t feel this restlessness. But King Solomon had the ultimate dream job, king over Israel, the global superpower of his time, and yet many scholars believe he wrote the book of Ecclesiastes full of depressing rhetoric such as “Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:11). Ecclesiastes ultimately points to Christ, the only one who can redeem this fallen world and offer what our restless hearts long for.Our hearts should break for those who do not believe in Christ. They do not know that peace that passes understanding from a Father who forgives their sins and promises eternal life, and thus they are more susceptible to despair when life throws them curveballs because in their minds, this life, and this broken world, is all there is. But even for those who have accepted Him, life can feel pointless sometimes. God requires even his followers to endure the mundane tedium of everyday life, toiling at a job we don’t particularly enjoy because it is in the ordinariness of everyday life that our sincerity and commitment to our faith is tested. God also uses ordinary life, especially adversity, to cultivate character qualities that we will need to accomplish his true purpose for us. When we are first introduced to Joseph, he is a rather arrogant teenage boy, boastfully sharing his dreams that indicate that his brothers, and one day even his father would bow down to him. What his brothers did out of jealousy was wrong, but God used the experience of slavery, and what I am sure were long, tedious years in prison, to cultivate patience and humility so that when he was promoted to a prestigious position by the king of Egypt, he was prepared to exercise the authority he had been given for God’s glory, whereas if he had been given this position without first experiencing years of adversity, he almost certainly would have misused this authority, concerned only with his own worldly power.Though Scripture doesn’t say so, Moses would have had plenty of time while tending his father-in-law’s sheep day in and day out for forty years, to lament his impulsive and foolish decision to kill that Egyptian whom he witnessed beating a Hebrew slave. By God’s providence, he was rescued from the river as a baby by the pharaoh’s daughter and was raised in Pharaoh’s palace where he would have received a world-class education, only to be sentenced to a boring life tending sheep. But God would use the patience, gentleness and perseverance cultivated while tending sheep to rescue his people from slavery in Egypt and lead them to the Promise Land.In the apostle Peter’s day, all Jewish boys typically studied Scripture until around the age of 15, but the dream job was to be chosen to be a disciple of a Rabbi, who would train them to become rabbis and lifelong scholars of Scripture themselves. But only a select few boys made the cut to be discipled by a rabbi. Most were told to return home and learn the family trade. But through years of hard, unglamorous work fishing, and mending the nets, Peter learned important skills that Jesus would repurpose to make Peter “a fisher of people.”The reality is that in this fallen world, all jobs to some extent are tedious. None of us will find that magical job that fills the God-shaped hole in our hearts. In my case, I have heard interviews of former Broadway performers who say that performance schedules were so demanding they practically burned themselves out, not to mention that by the end of a production’s run on Broadway, they may have performed it hundreds of times. They know how to paste on a smile so the audience doesn’t know, but in their hearts, they are so sick of performing their role they can hardly stand it. In my mature moments, I know my job working in a call center isn’t really pointless. Occasionally, people will tell me that speaking with me brightened their day, and I have even had a few opportunities to inspire and encourage senior citizens experiencing vision loss. And most likely, God is aware of people for whom I have made a difference that I am unaware of at this time. So as we embark on this new year that is sure to be full of political drama, I pray that all Christians, myself very much included, will listen to the Bible instead of cable news or political podcasts, the Holy Spirit rather than social media. Instead of praying for a more exciting job by my standards, I need to pray that His will be done, and that he might help me recognize and appreciate the foretastes of Heaven he gives us all the time, like the wonderful fragrances of flowers or cookies baking, conversation and laughter around the dinner table with my parents, or a song so beautiful you could cry. And even on particularly tedious days, those days we all have when nothing seems to go right, we can still find abiding, internal joy in knowing that one day, we too will be resurrected to dwell with Christ forever in a fully redeemed creation free from the curse of sin, that life of drama, adventure and excitement we were really made for.That Reminds me of a Song: When I was seven years old, Mom ordered a collection of John Denver albums that was released to commemorate his tragic death in a plane crash just a few months prior. Immediately, I too fell in love with his music, and Mom and I spent many happy childhood hours listening to these albums together. But my absolute favorite of these songs has always been Wild Montana Skies. I have always been fascinated by its aura of mysteriousness. It tells the story of a man whose mother died the summer after his birth, but her prayer as she nursed him, and the refrain of the song was a prayer for practical needs—a home, the love of a good family, a wife someday—but also that he would have a fire in his heart, a light in his eyes, the wild wind for a brother, and the wild Montana skies. His uncle raised him, gave him a good home, but he never quite fit in: “There was something in the city that he said he couldn’t breathe. There was something in the country that he said he couldn’t leave.” I remember turning this song over in my mind at seven years old, and I still ponder this song today. In a Creative Writing class, I wrote an essay reflecting on this song. Perhaps the city is a metaphor for conformity, resignation, dashed hopes and dreams, whereas maybe the country is a metaphor for freedom, and the life God intended for us. There is no mention of God in this song: his mother prays to Montana. But this song came to mind again as I wrote this post. Perhaps there is Christian symbolism in this song. Perhaps we need to find the courage to not fit in, to flee the “city” with its petty political drama, its shallow concept of entertainment and its culture of striving for things that will never satisfy our restless hearts, and live differently, taking seriously the truth that we were meant for another world. The song never definitively answers the question of whether Montana ever gave this man the fire in his heart, the light in his eyes that his mother prayed for, but these prayers can be answered in Christ. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

Well readers, all I can say is I guess I am naïve. I still genuinely believe everything I wrote last week. No election, not even this one, is of eternal spiritual significance. God is sovereign over everything, so ultimately, all things will work for the good of those who love Him and are called according to his purposes (Romans 8:28). But I had a good feeling in my heart that Kamala Harris would win. Like all of us, she is a human who would not have been able to be completely faithful to a biblical standard of righteousness, but at least our country would be led by someone who has genuine compassion for people other than herself and wouldn’t undermine the way of Jesus in everything she says and does. I knew all the predictions that the election would be close, but since 2016, I have learned to be skeptical of polls. I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016, and I was shocked that he won via the electoral college despite all of his racist, misogynistic and crude remarks which I am sure would have ended the campaign of any other candidate, but somehow didn’t affect Donald Trump. I also felt embarrassed to call myself Christian when I learned that 81 percent of my fellow white evangelicals voted for him. For a brief time, I felt a sense of shock, of mourning on behalf of our country. But because he did not win the popular vote, I could console myself with the belief that technically, most of my fellow countrymen were decent people. After a couple days, I was able to pick myself up and carry on with life, and join those willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe when campaigning was over and the reality of actually being president hit him, he would be humbled, and he would grow into the position. These hopes were quickly dashed, as it seemed we woke up every day to a fresh dose of chaos, dangerous rhetoric or cruelty. I felt a sense of relief on November 7, 2020. Though the election was still disturbingly close, a decisive majority of Americans came to their senses and elected a sane, compassionate adult for president. Maybe our country’s fascination with Donald Trump was like a fever that had broken. Then January 6 would prove it hadn’t. Even as the pandemic trauma gradually faded into the rear-view mirror under competent, adult leadership, Donald Trump never faded from the news cycle, and everyone I talked to seemed exhausted. Surely when the rubber met the road and people stared at his name on their ballot, they would remember the chaos and trauma his first administration wrought, his campaign rhetoric that was even more violent, crude and unhinged than it was in 2016 or 2020, the warnings from people who worked in his first administration that he admired fascist dictators, and there would be no guardrails this time around, they would not be able to vote for him. But they did, and this time, he even won the popular vote, making it a fully legitimate win. So I woke up Wednesday morning to a déjà vu feeling, my innocent faith in the goodness of most people called into question.The prayer guide I mentioned last week had three parts, and Wednesday was supposed to be dedicated to prayers for our political enemies. But that morning, my parents and I weren’t ready for that. We vacillated between sadness and anger, even ruminating about how much we were looking forward to seeing Trump supporters getting what they deserve, when his policies end up hurting them. As a writer, I also felt discouraged, not so much for myself but on behalf of the talented scholars, journalists and Christian activists whose blogs I follow. I am not fond of social media and am too introverted to be an effective marketer of my writing by appearing on podcasts or doing speaking engagements, so while I am grateful to all 18 of you subscribers, I never expected my writing to make a difference in the outcome of this election. I write because I sense God calling me to write, and I trust that somehow, someday, He will use it to reach someone. But I grieved for scholars, reporters and Christian activists whose blogs have thousands of followers, who practically drove themselves to exhaustion in the months leading up to the election touring the country trying to be a prophetic voice, begging Americans to follow their better angels. Ultimately, none of their efforts made a difference, and it briefly made me wonder if the very act of writing was pointless. But we cannot “become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9). The prophetic books are a case in point that God does not judge us by the results of our efforts. That is out of our control. He judges us on our obedience to his call on our lives. I also remembered that if the written word had no power, authoritarian leaders all through history wouldn’t find it necessary to ban books or persecute journalists. I don’t want to be overly dramatic. For the time being, writers don’t have to worry about outright persecution in this country. But the same cannot be said for writers in Russia whose leader Donald Trump admires, and the Washington Post’s decision to cancel their endorsement of Kamala Harris was alarming to me. I pray that if persecution comes to these shores, I will find the courage to speak the truth through the written word as my act of resistance.But on Saturday, I felt ready to go through the prayer guide. Loving our enemies doesn’t mean we cannot be angry. In fact, Scripture encourages us to be honest with God about how we feel toward our enemies (Psalm 109). We just cannot allow ourselves to linger in this anger. Otherwise, we are no different from the world to which we are called to be salt and light. Even Pagans, tax collectors—and loyal Trump supporters—are capable of loving those who love them, and being kind to those that are kind to them (Matthew 5:46-47). Not only that, but when we overcome evil with good, we metaphorically heap burning coals on the heads of our enemies (Proverbs 25:22, Romans 12:20-21). For a modern-day example of what Paul meant by this, I think Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s commitment to this radical love is why television coverage of Civil Rights marches resonated so powerfully, even drawing white allies to the movement. If the black protestors had fought back when they were beaten, sprayed with firehoses, mauled by dogs, the world would have just seen a riot with the perpetrators indistinguishable from the victims. But when these protestors remained as innocent as doves even as they were beaten and mauled, public opinion for millions of Americans turned against these Southern police officers and Ku-Klux Klan members, and inspired many white allies, especially college students to join the cause of these protestors. And occasionally, perpetrators of evil who experience this radical love are moved to repent and come to Christ. Thus if I am really serious about rescuing people from the false teachings of Christian Nationalism, I must love my political enemies. Otherwise my pleas for them to follow the true teachings of Christ will have no credibility.Figuring out how to do this in practice will be an ongoing process that will take more than this one blog post to sort out. But I think a good place to start is by contemplating the words Jesus spoke when his enemies crucified him. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). This verse came into my mind on Thursday when I read this article detailing how all the efforts of honest reporters who tried to warn the country of the dangerous implications of a second Trump administration were no match against the right-wing media empire which traffics in disinformation and fear. In some small towns and rural areas of the country, right-wing propaganda outlets have even taken over local news. Even when balanced media coverage is available, vulnerable people—the lonely, the elderly, the cognitively impaired—can get drawn in by this propaganda and lose their ability to discern the truth. On top of that, many Americans get their news exclusively from social media. Since acquiring Twitter (X), Elon Musk has made no effort to crack down on bots produced by foreign adversaries seeking to divide us against each other, such that the day after the election, Twitter users reported a dramatic drop-off in followers, as the bots, having accomplished their evil mission, went away.As for the black men and Latino men who on the surface seemed to vote against their own best interests, Jonathan Walton offers an enlightening perspective in this live podcast recorded on Wednesday. He believes that whiteness is not just about skin tone. It is an ideology based on a hierarchy of race, gender and class that even minorities can be drawn to in search of acceptance. So a black or Latino man might vote for Trump in search of acceptance based on their masculinity. Donald Trump clearly distinguishes “us” from “them”, and Latino men, due to their history of colonization, are susceptible to a mindset that says if they double down on toxic masculinity, patriarchy, vilify LGBTQ people, they will be treated better and not find themselves on the wrong side of an oppressive system. They will soon realize however that this insecurity was exploited to win their vote, and that authoritarians like Donald Trump don’t actually care about them one bit. This doesn’t mean excusing the sins of white supremacy, toxic masculinity, or resentment. But perhaps loving our enemies starts with an attitude of forgiveness which simply means letting go of any bitterness, or in my case, a sense of moral superiority that dehumanizes Trump voters, and acknowledging that as a college-educated, white woman living in an affluent suburb, I take my privilege for granted. As unimaginable as it seems from my pedestal of privilege, it is possible there are many Americans who need to be forgiven because they have been led astray by wolves in sheep’s clothing in the form of right-wing news outlets, and social media algorithms, and do not yet realize the grievous mistake they made. It is only through a posture of humility and mercy when Trump voters inevitably get hurt by his policies that these lost sheep have any hope of being rescued. If Jesus could forgive those who crucified him, I can forgive my political enemies.That Reminds me of a Song: All week, I have been thinking about the opening of Saturday Night Live after the 2016 election, when the actress that played Hillary Clinton sang Leonard Cohen’s Halleluia, and then sounding genuinely sad but resolute, said, “I’m not giving up and neither should you.” You wouldn’t think of Saturday Night Live, and crying in the same sentence, but I found my eyes getting teary that night, as this opening so beautifully captured the shock and sadness those of us who saw Donald Trump for who he was, were feeling. And though Saturday Night Live is not known for its reverence of religion, the decision to sing this song was poignant from a religious perspective as well, a beautiful reminder that no matter how tumultuous and uncertain the times we are living through, and even though it feels as if all is going wrong now, we will one day stand before the Lord of song, and sing Halleluia. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

In 2013, my parents and I awaited the week before Easter with eager anticipation. That was when The Bible, an epic dramatization of the whole biblical narrative produced by Roma Downey and Mark Burnett was set to release. Each evening that week, my parents and I tuned in for the next episode, and after each, we raved about how well-produced it was, how it could really help to reach a younger generation with the Good News. That was, until the episode when Jesus was tempted by the Devil in the wilderness, and Mom gasped, appalled and told me that the Devil character bore an unmistakable resemblance to Barack Obama. Just like that, we went from praising the series, to mourning the opportunity for evangelism that the producers, whom I now recognize as Christian Nationalists, had squandered. With this one production decision, they no doubt confirmed the suspicion of untold numbers of young people and seekers, that Christianity in America had become a propaganda vehicle for the Republican party. But to be fair, it is no less sinful to use Christianity in service of the Democratic party. In a few moments of immaturity during the Trump administration, I found myself intrigued by articles speculating whether Donald Trump was the antichrist, and when we came to 2 Thessalonians in my New Testament overview course at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, I did a doubletake when I came to the verse about the man of lawlessness being revealed at the end of the age. “Could Donald Trump be that man?” I briefly wondered. Donald Trump certainly is a man of lawlessness when it comes to respecting civil authorities, or our Constitution. But biblically speaking, if you read the verse in the full context of the passage it is in (2 Thessalonians 2:1-12), he is not the man of lawlessness Paul is referring to. That person will perform supernatural signs and wonders that deceive many and has yet to emerge in human history. Donald Trump is just your garden variety human mortal who happens to be a narcissistic megalomaniac who admires and wants to be a fascist dictator. Unfortunately there have been many of his type in human history. And as inspiring as Barack Obama was, and Kamala Harris is, they too are humans who, like all of us, fall short of Christ’s righteous standards. It is wrong for Republicans to depict them as Satanic, but it is also wrong for supporters like me to elevate them to Messiah-like status, to believe that electing them will save America and solve all of our problems.Family Radio, the Christian station I love to listen to while I work has been running public service announcements leading up to Election Day. One of these announcements, narrated by John MacArthur has been driving me crazy. He said a question he frequently gets around Election time is “should Christians vote?” His response is that any time Christians have an opportunity to take a stand for righteousness, we must do so, and in our context, voting is one such opportunity. So far, not bad. But then he says that Christians have an obligation to vote for the candidate who honors God and who is “faithful to a biblical standard of righteousness.” On the surface, this seems completely reasonable too, which is what is so dangerous about Christian Nationalism. To a vulnerable, naïve person, such a statement is benign and perfectly reasonable. But true Christians need to think critically about the credibility of the people making such statements, what honoring God looks like in practice, and about what a truly biblical standard of righteousness actually means. John MacArthur doesn’t say who Christians should vote for, and to be fair, this message could have been recorded years ago in a different election cycle. Or as much as I don’t want to be cynical, it could be that endorsing a particular candidate would jeopardize his church’s tax exempt status. But given his extreme and unbiblical complementarian views, and comments about slavery which I have written about before, I have little doubt he will be voting for Donald Trump. With all due respect, I cannot understand how any true Christian can say with a straight face that Donald Trump honors God and is more faithful to a biblical standard of righteousness than Kamala Harris. Donald Trump’s bad character is well-documented, so I won’t rehash all of his disqualifications here, but it is worth repeating that God is not pleased with cultural Christianity that goes through the motions of a Christian life but lacks genuine love (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). Like all politicians, Kamala Harris isn’t entirely truthful, and her positions change with the political winds. It is also important to note that while the Christian Nationalism of the Right is more blatant, there is a kind of soft nationalism that Christians need to be aware of in the Democratic party as well. Overall, Kamala Harris’s speech at the Ellipse was inspiring, and the symbolism of speaking at the same site where Trump inspired his followers to attack the U.S. Capitol was fitting. But I was a little uncomfortable with how she ended the speech with the line about turning the page and writing the next chapter of the most extraordinary story ever told. Though this line may have been spoken with good intentions—an effort to rally all Americans behind a common cause of figuring out how to live peacefully together—we as Christians should be weary of rhetoric that perpetuates the harmful concept of American Exceptionalism, a form of idolatry. The story of our country is not the most extraordinary story ever told.Both Jerry Falwell Jr., and Zack Hunt, a former pastor and the author of Godbreathed who spoke on a Zoom call for Evangelicals for Harris a call that was discussed in this Rolling Stone article, agree that the goal of a presidential election is not electing a pastor. But Zack Hunt sums up the key difference between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris perfectly. “The problem for Christians is not that Trump fails to live up to the Christian principles he claims to defend.”—We all do, even pastors—“The problem is he actively and aggressively works to undermine the way of Jesus with everything he says and does, and with every policy he wants to enact.” Even if you just arrived from another planet and know nothing about the policy track records of Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, you ought to be able to tell who genuinely seeks to honor God just by listening to them speak in side-by-side clips: I am always struck by the contrast between Donald Trump who doesn’t even try to tame his tongue, giving it free reign to spew deadly, poisonous rhetoric that inspires division, hatred and violence, while Kamala Harris seeks to heal and inspire all Americans with an inclusive, optimistic vision for our country’s future.But in an article published in Religion News Service, Caitlyn Schiess cautions that as commendable as it is for true Christians, especially young people to reclaim true Christian principles by breaking away from the white supremacist, xenophobic, Christian Nationalist platform of their parents’ Republican Party, we must be careful not to make the same underlying mistake as our parents’ generation, the mistake of believing that the spiritual stakes for our country are high every election year, meaning that our votes are of eternal spiritual significance. “We have forgotten that for Christians, all of politics is contingent and provisional,” Caitlyn Schiess writes, “Our votes, cast by and for fallen and finite creatures will always and only be heavily mediated opportunities to aim at the best good available to us. They cannot bear the weight of expressing our Christian identity or representing everything the Bible commands of us.” This absolutely does not mean Christians should not vote, especially in this particular election. Although no election has eternal spiritual significance, the conscience of true Christians should be stirred to “seek the peace and prosperity of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7) which to my conscience means voting against candidates who admire and wish to emulate fascist dictators whose lust for power aggressively undermined the way of Jesus, and led to some of the darkest moments of human history. Of course Old Testament verses must be applied cautiously to our context. As I have written before, the United States is not a covenant nation as ancient Israel was, but we can learn from the principle that all Christians in a sense are living in exile. This country is not our true home and yet we are called to contribute to its peace and prosperity, and in so doing, offer a foretaste of God’s kingdom. But no matter who wins the election, true Christians must never forget that until Christ returns, we will not find a candidate completely faithful to a biblical standard of righteousness, and because we, the voters are also fallen and finite beings, we cannot fully imagine what a biblical standard of righteousness even means in practice. This is why it is dangerous to apply “spiritual warfare” language to secular activities like elections.Spiritual warfare is theological speak for the reality that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). But in his book Losing Our Religion, Russel Moore explains that when tribalism connects with resentment, and resentment connects with fear, culture wars are viewed in terms of spiritual warfare, with human beings as the irredeemable “demons” to be opposed. Reading this explanation, and remembering the backlash against the first black president that was all over the news at that time, the portrayal of the devil as Barack Obama sadly makes sense. Furthermore, even if you know that your political opponents are not literally demons, Russel Moore reminds us that metaphors matter. In the same way that history has shown that referring to a minority group as vermin can eventually provide a permission structure for genocide, using spiritual warfare language against political opponents likely provided the permission structure for the insurrection on January 6, and continues to provide the permission structure for conspiracy theories and efforts to sabotage the election by setting drop boxes on fire or threatening election officials. And for my part, as appalled as I am by this paranoia and misuse of spiritual warfare language, it is hard not to respond by becoming a little fearful and paranoid myself. If I voted early, could our Republican municipal clerk throw away my ballot? Even on Election Day, could my ballot be rejected? After another election—pre-pandemic when election conspiracy theories were nowhere near as intense as they are now—I know of a Republican poll worker who was suspicious of a woman with a disability whose mother helped her fill out her ballot. But our country’s turmoil will not end until we all get out of this mindset. “The entire point of spiritual warfare is that it is not present or absent based on tribes or factions,” Russel Moore reminds us, “If spiritual warfare were simply another way of saying “arguing with each other” or “owning the Libs” or “raging against the corporate machine” or whatever, spiritual warfare would mean that some people are exempt, and other people are unsalvageable, irredeemable” (Losing our Religion Page 133). This would mean denying two of the most fundamental truths of Scripture, that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) and all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved (Romans 10:13). Though Donald Trump’s words and external deeds undermine the way of Jesus, only God knows what is really in his heart. He, like me is just another broken but redeemable human being. The angry election deniers threatening violence if the election doesn’t go their way, are just broken but redeemable human beings too. All humans are made in God’s image, and God loves us even though none of us is righteous. That is why Jesus says that those who genuinely desire to follow him must love their enemies.I admit I am terribly undisciplined when it comes to formal prayer time, but I agree with pastors who advise that we should pray in preparation for Election Day and the days that follow, as the outcome won’t be known right away. But be careful. Christian Nationalist organizations are promoting prayer events tomorrow night. One event is calling people in all 50 states to gather for one hour and pray for God to save our country, unify our people and heal our land. On the surface, this sounds nice and innocent. But the United States is not a covenant nation. God’s plan is far bigger than the United States of America. We are just another empire whose existence Scripture already told us will not be eternal. And, you have to ask what kind of unity these organizers are praying for. Is it a biblical unity, the kind of unity that “makes every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3), or is it a manipulative call for unity behind a political agenda to restore a nostalgic cultural Christianity that is contradictory to the teachings of Christ? I will be using a prayer guide from Intervarsity Press, recommended by KTF Press, a Substack publication that seeks to elevate marginalized voices and help Christians break free of the harmful influence colonization and white supremacy has had on the American church. The important thing to remember is that the purpose of prayer is not to give God our wish list. During a dark season of anxiety in a previous job, I viewed prayer this way, and was a mixture of angry and devastated when my wish for a different job was not granted. But eventually, the stress and anxiety of the job was removed with a simple change of position within the same company. This taught me a valuable lesson, that God’s wisdom is far superior to ours, so the purpose of prayer should be to ground ourselves in Christ, and align our hearts to his. Because all political candidates will fall short of God’s righteous standard, we should pray for trust that no matter the outcome, God is sovereign and His will will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. If the outcome we wanted is granted, we should pray that we are not tempted into an attitude of smugness toward our acquaintances who voted for the losing candidate, or into political idolatry toward our candidate. Since all candidates will fall short of God’s righteous standard, Christians will need to hold power to account no matter the outcome, so we should pray for humility and discernment. We can pray a genuine prayer that election officials will conduct the vote counting with integrity, but we should also pray that everyone, especially professed Christians, will peacefully accept the results of the election, remembering that the political activities of this world are contingent and provisional. But most importantly, we must pray for our political enemies. In my case, whether or not he wins the election, I should pray for Donald Trump, in the sense of praying that he might have a change of heart and repent of all the ways he has undermined the way of Christ, and that if he does, I will rejoice and not be resentful like the workers in the parable who worked a full day in the vineyard and resented the workers who only worked the last hour and received the same wage (Matthew 20:1-16). We should lament and ask forgiveness for the times we may have been complicit in mistreating people we disagree with whether through name-calling or mean-spirited jokes. We should pray that we will show mercy and compassion to our enemies if they are hurt by the policies of the candidate they voted for. And above all, if someone in our lives comes to see the error of their political idolatry, we should be quick to reconcile with them and warmly welcome them back into the fold, just as Christ does when we stray from him.That Reminds me of a Song: As I was writing this, The Kingdom of Jesus from the Porter’s Gate came to mind. It artfully reminds us that the kingdom of Jesus is both something that is within us which we have the power to give the world a glimpse of, and a future home we can joyfully anticipate. In both cases, this kingdom is so much greater, so much more powerful than the kingdom of this world. This should give us comfort when it seems as though evil is prevailing. I especially love how the song has the recurring motif “oh say, can you see” an allusion to our national anthem, used to remind us that we can only have one allegiance, and allegiance to the kingdom of Jesus has so much more to offer than allegiance to the United States of America. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

In his memoir, Walking with Peety, Eric O’Grey recounts how in 2010, he was in a very dark place. At 5 feet 10 inches and 340 pounds, he was morbidly obese. He had no social life, and because his obesity caused too much pain and exhaustion to take his laundry to the coin-operated machines in his apartment, the spare bedroom was piled high with dirty underwear. It was easier to just order new underwear every couple weeks on Amazon. He hated his job as an appliance salesman but had to work long hours to afford all the medications he needed for Type 2 Diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Worst of all, his job occasionally required him to travel by plane, which was always a painful, humiliating ordeal. He tried every gimmicky diet, but as is typical, these diets were unsustainable long-term, so he would gain all the weight back, and then some. He went through the preparation process for bariatric surgery, but changed his mind as he didn’t like what he saw as a barbaric, grotesque approach, removing a large portion of his stomach.But in my view, as bleak as this man’s life was, we haven’t gotten to the worst part of it. What struck me as even more tragic than this man’s grim situation was the way others treated him. Most doctors, after spending no more than ten minutes with him, would just throw a prescription at him, never caring to see his humanity, to enquire into the root cause of his condition rather than just treat the symptoms. One doctor, after looking at his bloodwork, even told him to buy a cemetery plot because if he stayed on his current trajectory, he wouldn’t live more than five years. Perhaps this doctor had good intentions. There are some who believe that “scaring people straight” will motivate them to change, but anecdotal evidence I have read, and personal experience has convinced me that more often than not, this approach just leaves the recipient feeling more humiliated and ashamed, and a natural response is to turn to comfort food to soothe this shame and humiliation. Eric says he officially hit rock bottom after a particularly humiliating flight home from a business trip when the airplane ran out of seatbelt extenders and had to transfer one from another plane, delaying takeoff by 45 minutes. The man sitting next to him was so angry about this that he turned to Eric, seething, and said out loud, “Great! I’m going to miss my connection because you are so fat.” When he arrived home after this ordeal, he devoured two extra-large meat lovers pizzas from Dominoes and collapsed on the floor, regretting that he did not own a gun, or have any pills strong enough to end his life, and praying to God that He could just end his life that night. But God had other plans.Eric said he was never particularly religious. The only times he went to church were for the occasional wedding or funeral. But that night, he blacked out, and during this blackout, felt what he could only describe as a sense of God’s presence. The next morning, he was still in physical pain, but had a renewed sense of hope, and felt an urge to order a Bible from Amazon, which he read voraciously from cover to cover when it arrived. To make a long story short, God led him to Dr. Preety, who spent an hour and a half with him, treated him as a whole person, prescribed a plant-based diet, and a shelter dog.At the shelter, Casaundra, a compassionate adoption counselor said she knew the perfect dog for him, a dog who also had a sad past and was morbidly obese. With the intervention of these compassionate humans, and the unconditional love from Peety, who held Eric accountable in a nonjudgmental way, Eric ultimately turned his life around completely. I first read this man’s story in a 2018 issue of Reader’s Digest, but in a similar fashion as John Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance I discussed last week, this man’s story seemed to randomly come back to mind this week. But it occurred to me that this man’s story could be an allegory—if not an outright case study given that his transformation started with a desperate cry out to God and an urge to read the Bible—for how God intended for us to relate to one another. The long walks required to get from place to place and the lack of places to sit to take off your shoes at the airport, and the narrow airplane seats represents a society that privileges thin people and shows no grace to people who struggle to manage their weight, a metaphor for how some seek to create a society that privileges Christianity and shows no grace to people with different beliefs. The gimmicky diets could be a metaphor for hucksters that promise healing to desperate, vulnerable people if they send money, and when these victims are not healed, they are made to feel like failures, that they just didn’t try hard enough or have enough faith. All the people that stared at Eric in disgust or made a point of avoiding him could be a metaphor for the self-righteous, judgmental hypocrites that are the hallmark of Christian Nationalism. We all have planks we need to take out of our own eyes, just as most Americans are either overweight, or eat unhealthy diets devoid of fruits and vegetables that will catch up with them someday. Just because someone takes a vice to an extreme that I don’t understand does not give me permission to judge them or mistreat them because I am not the picture of perfect health myself, and but for the grace of God, I could have been in Eric’s position. How would I want to be treated if I were Eric?Lest anyone think I am self-righteous, I should confess I was especially shocked by the cruelty of the man sitting next to Eric on the plane. But then I came to the sobering realization that I hate being inconvenienced too, especially if it is on the flight home. I hate traveling to begin with, and judging by the shameful way I seethed in anger one road trip when we got a flat tire that delayed our arrival home by two hours, I must confess that I cannot claim I wouldn’t have been absolutely irate if I missed my connection waiting for a seat belt extender. I hope I wouldn’t have expressed my anger out loud to the obese passenger responsible for the delay, but I am pretty sure I would have been seething, consumed with thoughts expressing this same sentiment, and Christ taught this is a distinction without a difference (Matthew 5:21-28).The doctor who tried to scare Eric straight could represent pastors and politicians—some well-intentioned, many not—who spend an inordinate amount of time preaching God’s judgment or eternal punishment if they don’t change their lifestyle, or even if they vote for a pro-choice candidate. This is not to say sin won’t be punished one day, but I think it is dangerous and irresponsible, maybe even blasphemous to make this the starting place for our evangelistic efforts, or to presume we know what God’s verdict for anyone will be, especially given how Jesus says that we will be judged by the same measure we use to judge others (Matthew 7:1-2). Also, when you are young, the prospect of death and eternal punishment someday does not inspire genuine motivation to change, just as when I was a child, warnings of heart failure or diabetes someday—I envisioned myself the age of Grandma and Grandpa—didn’t inspire a genuine motivation to change my habits long-term. I would commit myself to a sort of legalism for a few months, exercising diligently and depriving myself of all my favorite foods. It was nice having concerned loved ones, teachers and doctors off my back, complementing my will-power instead of lecturing me, but changes never stick if that is the only motivation behind them. Though this is not a perfect allegory, I think it is still useful in the sense that the temptation toward fear-mongering and legalism is an unfortunate reality that religion and diet culture have in common with tragic consequences in both cases. The downstream victims of fearmongering pastors and politicians may vote as they are told, sit in church every Sunday, speak out on the latest culture war issues at every family gathering, but the dominant emotions in their lives are anger and anxiety. Or, similar to Eric, who almost gave up on the idea of ever being healthy and resigned himself to an early death until God intervened, they give up on Christianity altogether, having been led to believe that following Christ is like being on an extreme weight-loss plan with strict rules, a demanding exercise regimen, no flavor, no pleasure. Make one mistake, succumb to temptation in a moment of weakness and you are a failure.The doctors who just threw a prescription Eric’s way could represent the politicians and activists motivated by Christian Nationalism who are looking for a quick fix, a simple solution to a complex situation. This is not the time to get into the weeds of the abortion debate, except to say that I believe passages like Exodus 21:22-23 and Luke 1:41 suggest that abortion should not be approached with a cavalier attitude. However, Jesus never directly discusses abortion—or any of the other current culture war issues for that matter—but he says quite a bit about showing mercy for the poor and marginalized of society, and compassion for the physical and mental well-being of women. If politicians truly wanted to make America more Christian, they would champion wholistic legislation that aligns with the teachings of Christ, rather than just competing to pass the strictest abortion ban for political gain.I am blessed that regarding both my spiritual health and my physical health, I have not needed to transform my life from a place of extreme desperation like Eric, or the homeless person addicted to drugs for whom Christ was her last hope. But even in my comparatively privileged life, I know the joy of realizing I am lighter on my feet, have more energy, rarely come down sick, when I was persuaded by the positive attitude of new friends and the wonderful smell of healthy recipes cooking, to turn away from the typical American diet and eat a gluten free, mostly plant-based, and very flavorful diet. I was also blessed to meet some friends who did not compartmentalize their faith, and was persuaded by the peace and contentment that seemed to radiate from their countercultural lives. It grieves me to know that Christian Nationalism is depriving many people, some of whom are my own friends and family, of the peace and joy of a relationship with the true Jesus.So how should Christians apply this allegory? Obviously on an individual level, we should behave like Dr. Preety, Casaundra, and even Peety, and not like the man on the airplane or the doctors who employ scare tactics or quick fixes. But on the societal level, as counter-intuitive as it may seem to some Christians, we need to learn to accept a secular approach to governing that does not privilege Christianity over other religions in the public square. In their book, Jesus and the Powers, N.T. Wright and Michael Bird concede that secularism can be anti-religious. I immediately thought of authoritarian regimes where religion is either strictly prohibited or closely regulated by the state. But in its best form, secularism is a safeguard against theocracy on the one hand—the Taliban came to my mind—and atheist fanatics seeking to eradicate religion. “In a healthy liberal democracy, Christian voices will not be stymied, but neither will non-Christian voices be censored. The purpose of Christian influence is not the pursuit of Christian hegemony, but the giving of faithful Christian witness. Christian hegemony treats Christians as a type of invisible ruling class or an unspoken civil religion that demands public assent. In contrast, Christian witness is offered in a spirit of persuasion, not in a spirit of pursuing raw, public power” (Jesus and the Powers Chapter 4). Unfortunately, I believe the most influential pastors and politicians who champion Christian Nationalism are the wolves in sheep’s clothing Jesus warned us about. They have no interest in faithful Christian witness: they intentionally misappropriate Christianity for worldly political gain. But sadly, many ordinary people downstream of these pastors and politicians—our loved ones at the family reunion—are like vulnerable sheep. They want to be, and often sincerely believe they are giving faithful Christian witness. In their family, and their often homogenous community, they are compassionate people who are the first to respond when anyone needs help or comfort. But the wolves have figured out how to exploit a variety of factors from economic disadvantage, to fear of change, to nostalgia for a Christian nation that never really was, to convince these people that Christian hegemony pleases God. But the Bible states in no uncertain terms that God has no interest in a culturally Christian nation (Matthew 7:22-23, 1 Corinthians 13:1-3). A nation that reduces Christianity to legalistic rules, a faith that goes through the motions of following Christ but shows no love for the marginalized, or for people of different religious beliefs or ethnic backgrounds, is not a Christian nation at all. God desires genuine Christians who will persuade others to follow Christ, not via coercion, self-righteous, judgmental lectures, or scare tactics, but via the sincere, unconditional love, peace and joy that radiates from their lives. And a healthy liberal democracy, where everyone’s religious liberty is protected is the ideal environment for this genuine Christianity to flourish.That Reminds me of a Song: Whenever I listen to the music of Bill and Gloria Gaither, I think of my maternal Grandma, (Granny), who passed away just after Christmas last year. She was a Quaker, and a beautiful example of someone who quietly lived out her faith, but never self-righteously shoved it down the throats of others. Her memory is likely why, while writing this post, I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say… one of my favorite songs on an Israel Homecoming album she gave me came to mind. The song is based on Matthew 11:28-30 where Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” These words of comfort, combined with a calming melody, and intentional instrumentation that invites the listener to rest, I think this song is a beautiful musical picture for how true Christians are called to live and represent Christ to others. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

Perhaps the spirit of the back-to-school season has given me a feeling of nostalgia for my Political Science courses as an undergraduate at Carroll University because this week, I found myself contemplating philosopher John Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance. Basically, this is a thought experiment in which Rawls proposes we imagine ourselves behind a veil of ignorance where we draft principles for a fair and equitable society, not knowing what our own social position—gender, race, socioeconomic status or abilities—will be. This is an effort to curb the human tendency to think only of our self-interest. Of course, in reality this theory falls short because we are incapable of surrendering completely to this way of thinking. Our social position, and the thought patterns that come along with it, are so engrained in us that they will inevitably influence how we think.This theory came to mind when I heard the horrible, baseless story last week that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating people’s pets. From a Christian perspective, this rhetoric is despicable on so many levels. For one thing, God did not include any qualifiers in the commandment “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor” (Exodus 20:16), so the fact that some of the same politicians who want the Ten Commandments posted in every public school classroom, can justify this cruel, racist lie for political gain is our first clue that Christian Nationalism is their true religion, a completely different religion from the teachings of Christ. I would also add that I believe that most people possess a basic sense of decency, a component of God’s general revelation, evidenced by the fact that prohibitions against stealing other people’s property, killing or otherwise harming one another, are included in the moral codes of all mainstream religions, both Eastern and Western. Even humanists and Atheists recognize that it is in our best interest to have an orderly society where we don’t have to fear for our safety and where personal property is respected. Of course in practice, the Doctrine of Total Depravity means that all humanity, across every race and religion is susceptible to lust, greed, jealousy, and thus theft and cruelty are not uncommon occurrences. Thus even if pets had been stolen and eaten, the proper Christian response requires recognizing that but for the grace of God, any one of us, put into the right circumstances, is capable of egregious conduct, which is why we can seek restitution, through proper legal channels, from the individual responsible, but ultimately, we must forgive, and attribute our hardship solely to the total depravity of all humanity, not any particular ethnic group.But as Kaitlyn Schiess insightfully points out in this week’s episode of The Holy Post, this was never even about immigrants causing harm, such as the little boy in Springfield who was killed in a bus accident by one of these Haitian immigrants, nor even about the isolated incidents across the country of undocumented immigrants murdering people. If it were, the politicians could have stayed focused on these stories. But the motive for spreading a baseless claim on social media that Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets is far more sinister: to argue that these immigrants are fundamentally different from us, subhuman, savages. It should go without saying that God would disagree (Genesis 1:27). Again, there are no qualifiers: all humanity was created in God’s image and are to be treated with dignity. For all the ways we, in our fallen nature have come up with to divide ourselves, the Bible makes it abundantly clear that there are really only two types of people in this world, those who are near to Christ, and those who are far from Christ, whom God calls us to minister to so that they too might draw near to Christ (See especially Ephesians 2). In The Holy Post, Phil Visher also sited a statistic that 47 percent of the world’s migrants are Christian, so our shame should be magnified if we stop and consider that when we dehumanize immigrants, there is a good chance we are dehumanizing many of our own brothers and sisters in Christ. But dehumanizing those who may not be Christian is no less shameful. In fact, it is tragic because our misrepresentation of the true Gospel may be so off-putting that they never trust in Christ.But I want to return to the idea of the Veil of Ignorance. We are incapable of putting ourselves behind a veil of ignorance, and actually, even if we were, this wouldn’t be the most Christian response to the injustice and inequity of our society. Sure, it could yield excellent earthly outcomes of fairness and equity. But Christ is not interested in merely our external behavior but our motives, and thus if I am crafting social policy that lifts up women, the poor, people of color simply because I might be born into one of these groups and will have to live with the consequences of my policies, I am still acting in my own self-interest, albeit in a roundabout way. True Christianity requires that even affluent white men advocate for policies that lift up the marginalized, even if it costs them wealth, or status or political power, motivated by genuine love and a desire to offer society a foretaste of God’s kingdom where there will be no social stratification.Shortly after leaving the Catholic church and joining a nondenominational Protestant church, I was listening to a radio sermon from Pete Briscoe, the son of renowned pastors and missionaries Jill and Stuart Briscoe. He mentioned how as a kid, he asked his parents one day why he lived in comfort, when so many he met on the mission field with his parents lived in extreme poverty. I wasn’t a missionary kid, but as someone who grew up in a stable, loving family in an affluent suburb, I had often wondered the same thing. The response of his parents was one simple word: grace. Growing up Catholic, I understood grace from a theological perspective. We are all sinners who deserve eternal punishment and separation from God. But God graciously sent his Son to atone for our sins so that we may enjoy eternal life. But with this broadened application of grace, so much more of the Bible, and our lives in this world make sense. There was nothing particularly virtuous about anyone in the Old Testament. In fact, it has all the makings for a gripping television drama: deception, betrayal, jealousy, even incest. But God, by his grace, chose flawed people to play a part in his redemption plan, and long before Christ came to dwell among us, even before God gave the Law to Moses, formally prohibiting things like deception and incest, the Bible tells us that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6, James 2:23). I did absolutely nothing in a previous life or anything to deserve my good fortune, and children born in a war-torn region like Gaza, a slum in India, or even a family or community right here in America plagued by drug addiction or violence certainly did nothing to deserve their hardship. But God did not set Abraham apart for a life of privilege in a vacuum. God told Abraham that “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3). In other words, while God doesn’t tell us why he chose Abraham for the lineage that would become Israel, or why for that matter, he declared the Israelites his chosen people, God was very clear as to how the Israelites were supposed to respond to this grace: to be a blessing to others. In the same way, God does not tell us why to this day, some of us live in peace and comfort while others are born into war and poverty, but he is clear that he did not endow us with these blessings so that we could hoard them for ourselves, like lighting a lamp and then putting it under a bowl (Matthew 5:15). We too were shown grace so that we might be a blessing to others, like putting our lamp in its stand so that it gives light to everyone in the house (Matthew 5:16).Such a massive influx of immigrants to one small community is a legitimate logistical concern that needs to be rationally addressed. But to respond to these Haitian immigrants, and all immigrants for that matter, with hateful rhetoric about how they are taking our jobs, or buying up our houses making housing unaffordable, or requiring us to pay higher taxes, is reprehensible because from a Christian perspective, these resources were never ours to begin with. Our financial resources, even the land we occupy, are gifts from God we were given not because of anything virtuous we ever did to deserve them, but by virtue of God’s grace, so that we could be a blessing to those less fortunate, like these Haitian immigrants, who came legally by the way, fleeing extreme poverty and lawlessness in their country.When I was eighteen years old and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I chose to study Political Science because I found political discussions interesting in high school, and being the typical young idealist, I thought maybe if I studied Political Science, I could pursue a career in government and in this way, have the power to make a positive difference for society. I had accepted Christ, but my faith was a compartmentalized faith. I went to church every Sunday and generally tried to be a good person, but I didn’t fully appreciate how the Christian faith is supposed to radically transform our entire outlook on life. But looking back on my studies with the perspective of a much more mature faith, I have come to realize that no political ideology, no silly theory like John Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance has the power to make a genuine, positive difference in the world. The Oxford English Dictionary defines politics as “the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power.” This desire for power means that self-interest is inseparable from governance. Jesus said that no man can serve two masters, and he was right because history proves time and again that when people try to combine Christianity with a political philosophy, Nationalism, the lust for political power inevitably wins out, resulting in supposed Christians misusing the name of the Lord, and twisting Scripture to justify all kinds of evil, including the hoarding of God’s grace for themselves. As discussed above, the Veil of Ignorance thought experiment is impossible to actually carry out, and even if we could stand behind such a veil, we would still be, in an indirect sense, acting out of self-interest. Ideologies like Socialism or Communism are feeble attempts to manufacture fairness and equity without God that do not account for the evil in every human heart. This is not to say Christians should completely disengage from politics: On the contrary, Christians are called to “seek the good of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7) which in our context means praying that the Holy Spirit speaks into our conscience, voting accordingly, and then continuing to speak truth to whomever is elected because every political candidate will fall short of Christ’s righteous standard, including Kamala Harris. In the interest of full transparency though, I have to say here that I believe character matters above all else. Sticking with the immigration context, the Biden/Harris administration has unfortunately succumbed to political pressure to secure the border by denying migrants the chance to request asylum if border arrests rise above 2,500 per day for a week, a policy that is arbitrary and cruel from a Christian perspective, but overall, you can tell by the way they speak that both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have compassion in their hearts, that they at least recognize the humanity of these migrants, even if they like all politicians, sometimes put political expediency ahead of doing what is right. But I cannot fathom how honest Christians can vote for someone who says that immigrants are poisoning the blood of this country, and who amplified the horrible rumor in Springfield. But ultimately, true Christians recognize there is no political solution to the immigration debate, or any of the other social issues for that matter. Only a truly biblical worldview that recognizes the grace we have been shown, and our mandate to respond to this grace by being a blessing to others has the power to make a genuine, positive difference in this world.That Reminds Me of a Song: But for the Grace of God, sung by Keith Urban is technically not a song in the Christian music genre. It is a country song expressing gratitude for the love of his wife. I kind of quit listening to country music several years ago when it took on a more pop sound, so I hadn’t heard this song in years, but as I was writing this post, it came back to mind. In the first verse, he sings of the neighbors who are always fighting, and how he has to turn the radio up to drown out the shouting. Then in the second verse, he sings of a man in his neighborhood who is materially rich but spiritually poor. No one calls him or comes to visit, so he wanders through his empty home, surrounded by his things. Meanwhile, the narrator is blessed to have a peaceful life with a wife who loves him, which he correctly credits to the grace of God. In the refrain you can almost imagine him crying as he is clearly aware that but for the grace of God, his life could have turned out very differently. The song doesn’t tell us whether he responds to this recognition of God’s grace by reaching out to these troubled, lonely neighbors, but what if we used this song to imagine a third verse to God’s grace in our own lives? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

Back in March, I mentioned that I listen to Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur, and promised that I would take him to task someday on his extreme complementarian views. But then I put this post on the back burner. This is partly due to the fact that current events inspired other posts which I felt took priority, but if I am being honest, I also didn’t fully recognize and appreciate the overlap of Christian Nationalism with complementarianism. I am passionate about the mission I sense God has given me, to speak out against Christian Nationalism. I read every book and article, listen to every podcast or documentary I can get my hands on to make sure I fully understand this unbiblical philosophy in all of its nuance. Family and friends who know about this passion will sometimes even send me material, asking “did you see this?” But I must humbly confess that I am still learning. At the root of Christian Nationalism is fear of change, which has resulted in men, especially white men, fearing a loss of authority and status as women broke into careers that have long been pretty much the exclusive domain of men, and as black Americans fought for and won basic civil rights, to distort Scripture to justify racial subjugation and patriarchy. People are complex, and I still give John MacArthur credit for recognizing the foolishness of Christians lobbying in Washington. But lobbying in Washington is just the tip of the iceberg of the harmful repercussions of Christian Nationalism, and unfortunately, John Macarthur has serious blind spots in his interpretation of Scripture. I was horrified when I read recently that John Macarthur commented back in 2012 that he found it strange that we have such an aversion to the human institution of slavery because for some slaves working for a gentle, caring, loving master was the best of all possible worlds. But perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course, I am not implying that holding complementarian views also means you condone slavery. But given the insecurity at the root of Christian Nationalism, it makes perfect sense how for John MacArthur, as well as those who don’t want children to learn just how evil the institution of chattel slavery was, downplaying slavery and preaching complementarian theology would go hand-in-hand. Our God is a God of progressive revelation, and perhaps this applies not only to God’s gradual revelation of his redemptive plan for humanity over the course of about a thousand years, but also to a more enlightened understanding of Scripture, as new archeological evidence comes to light and scholars gain new insights. Christians still have a lot of work to do toward living as Christ calls us to live, evidenced by the fact that Sunday mornings are still the most segregated time of the week. I am also well aware that globally, there are more people working as slaves today than there were in the 18th and 19th centuries. But at least in principle, the vast majority of American Christians would agree that slavery, especially Chattel slavery, was an ungodly institution according to Scripture, read in its proper context. Our understanding of God’s view of women has not caught up to this level of enlightenment yet. But in The Making of Biblical Womanhood, Beth Allison Barr raises a compelling question: “When we rightly understand that biblical passages discussing slavery must be framed within their historical context and that, when framed through the lens of this historical context, we can better see slavery as an ungodly system that stands contrary to the gospel of Christ, how can we not then apply the same standards to biblical texts about women?” (Page 34) Given the rise of Kamala Harris to the top of the Democratic ticket, and the fact that many prominent figures, most notably J.D. Vance share John MacArthur’s view that a woman’s place is in the home, caring for (biological) children, it is time to give this issue priority.In her book Nobody’s Mother: Artemis of the Ephesians in Antiquity and the New Testament, Sandra L. Glahn, before diving into the academic focus of the book, shares her personal story. She grew up in a large, traditional family. Her father had a good job with the federal government, and her mother loved being a homemaker and doted on Sandra and her four siblings. Sandra always dreamed of being a mother, and church teaching she was exposed to reenforced this, teaching that motherhood and homemaking was God’s ordained purpose for women. But after multiple miscarriages, an ectopic pregnancy and three failed attempts to adopt, Sandra struggled not only with the emotional and financial toll of infertility treatments and hopes dashed, but also with the question of what God’s purpose was for women like her? It is this question which inspired her to study more carefully the cultural context of ancient Ephesus, the backdrop of 1 Timothy 2:15 in which Paul writes, “But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.” Beth Allison Barr, a Southern Baptist who grew up immersed in complementarian theology, and a history professor who teaches about women in Medieval and early modern church history, was inspired to write her book after her husband, a youth pastor, was fired for challenging the church’s position on women in ministry. Both Sandra Glahn and Beth Allison Barr acknowledge that everyone reads Scripture through the grid of their personal experiences. As I have discussed frequently on this blog, Christian Nationalists also twist Scripture out of context, or cherry-pick passages that support their political agenda, while ignoring others that do not. But what if Beth Allison Barr and Sandra Glahn were doing the same thing? It is true that the extreme positions taken by some evangelicals, or at least the self-righteous, judgmental way biblical principles are applied, is contrary to the teachings of Jesus. But it is also true that God’s ways are higher than our ways, and as such, true Christians can expect that at some point in their study of Scripture, the Holy Spirit will reveal something we don’t want to hear, or that goes against the cultural trends of the day. Put another way, one of our pastors once said that if God always agrees with you in every matter, it could be that you are creating God in your own image. But Sandra Glahn and Beth Allison Barr make a commitment to set their personal experiences aside, and to evaluate, as impartially as is humanly possible, the emerging research of Bible scholars, and archeological discoveries related to the cultural contexts of ancient Ephesus and Corinth. In so doing, these women make a compelling argument that “biblical patriarchy” isn’t really biblical at all.The concept of biblical patriarchy, as Beth Allison Barr pointed out, goes all the way back to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:16 when God told Eve, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” This is after Adam and Eve had disobeyed God and eaten from the forbidden tree. This is Scripture’s first indication that biblical patriarchy was not ordained by God, and not part of God’s original creation but another consequence of the fall. The curse of sin will not be fully reversed until Christ returns, but if Christ called Christians to be salt and light, offering the world a foretaste of God’s kingdom, we should be taking our cues from other passages of Scripture, especially Galatians 3:28, not from the culture around us, or even from church history. Beth Allison Barr notes that “Christians in the past may have used Paul to exclude women from leadership, but this doesn’t mean the subjugation of women is biblical. It just means that Christians today are repeating the same mistake of Christians in the past—modeling our treatment of women after the world around us instead of the world Jesus shows us is possible” (Page 41).According to Sandra Glahn, it is also worth noting that in Proverbs 31, the Old Testament passage proponents of complementarian theology turn to most, the virtuous woman described does fulfill domestic duties—providing food, sewing garments—and submits to her husband. But she also “sees that her trading is profitable” (31:18), makes and sells linen garments (31:24), and “speaks with wisdom” implying that a virtuous woman could teach (31:26). In other words, a virtuous woman could provide for her family while also earning money outside the home.In the Gospel accounts, Jesus models a level of respect for women that was radical for his time. In Luke 10:42 for example, Jesus is invited for dinner at the home of Martha and her sister Mary, but Martha is upset that her sister is sitting at Jesus’s feet listening to him teach, rather than helping her with dinner preparation. In response, Jesus says, “Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her,” prompting Sandra Glahn to quip that “The first female seminarian was not feminist Betty Friedan’s idea, but Jesus Christ’s” (Page 10).People hostile to Christianity love to hate Paul, but this hostility is due to an inadequate understanding of the context of Paul’s letters, perpetuated by prominent pastors like John MacArthur. When framed properly in their cultural contexts, Paul’s letters actually offer the most compelling repudiations of biblical patriarchy. While proponents of complementarian theology, and those hostile to Paul, for different reasons cannot get past Ephesians 5:22—wives, submit to your husbands—the women Paul was speaking to would have focused on Ephesians 5:27—husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them—and this would have been revolutionary in a historical context where Roman law viewed women as the property of men, and Pagan husbands frequently beat their wives. According to Beth Allison Barr, Roman civil law required women to submit to their husbands. Paul believed that the credibility of the Gospel of Christ depended on everyone living quiet lives, obeying to the greatest extent possible all the civil laws so as not to cause trouble. But Paul also believed it was possible to simultaneously live quiet lives in obedience to Roman civil law, yet also live subversively as people who recognize they are ultimately citizens of another world.If God ordained marriage for all women, (1 Timothy 5:14), then why, in 1 Corinthians 7:8 does he tell Corinthian widows it is good to stay unmarried? It is clear that these books of the Bible, which are letters Paul wrote to specific churches to address specific situations that arose based on the unique cultural contexts of each church. Moreover, Paul makes it clear through the use of first-person pronouns—so I counsel other widows—that his words are not a command directly from the Lord as the words of the prophets were, but words of wisdom in his own voice, informed by prayer and study of Scripture no doubt, but still his own words to address specific circumstances, not decrees for all time. And if Paul’s wisdom, informed by the Holy Spirit and study of Scripture held that it is good for some women to remain unmarried, and if the Law, Prophets, and Christ himself were clear that marriage is a necessary prerequisite to childbearing, then Paul could not have been teaching in 1 Timothy 2:15 that childbearing is necessary for a woman’s eternal salvation. The Catholic church I grew up in is extremely patriarchal: only men can become priests, despite the fact that in 1 Corinthians 11:5, Paul presumed that women would prophesy, and on the day of Pentecost, both men and women prophesied. But the Catholic requirement that nuns and priests live celibate lives is a testament to the recognition that while raising children is a beautiful, high calling, so is celibacy, as it allows people to devote their lives to serving the Lord at a level that would not be feasible if they had to juggle marriage and family responsibilities.Artemis has long been thought to be a fertility goddess, but archeological evidence disputes this, as literary, epigraphic and architectural artifacts have revealed that Artemis was a virgin, though she indirectly contributed to fertility as a midwife whom the Ephesians believed could deliver women safely through childbirth, a perilous experience that killed many women before modern medicine, or if the woman must die, kill her quickly and painlessly. Paul would have understood how newly converted Ephesian women might have been tempted, due to social pressure and internal anxiety, to cover all their bases, praying to Jesus while also, secretly if necessary, going to the temple and offering a sacrifice to Artemis. Thus, Sandra Glahn makes the compelling argument that Paul received assurance from the Holy Spirit, and was passing this assurance on to Timothy, that during this foundational period for the church when the influence of false deities was still powerful, women in Timothy’s pastoral care would not die in childbirth so long as they fully trusted in the true Savior and deliverer.This is not an exhaustive overview of all the biblical passages that repudiate complementarian theology. An exhaustive overview would have turned this blog post into a novel. But I hope it is enough to soften the hearts of people hostile to Christianity, and to comfort others who may be like me. You see, the brain tumor that caused my blindness also damaged my pituitary gland, so it would be risky, if not impossible for me to have children. Furthermore, I haven’t yet met a life partner anyway, not that I am really looking for one. After observing friends and coworkers using online dating apps that encourage superficiality, and after reading articles about how abusive, controlling men sometimes seek out women with disabilities, I have decided not to force things. If God wants me to marry someday, he will put me in contact with the right guy who may join my choir, or be out walking his dog at the same time I am walking mine. Until then, I am content to be a single, childless cat lady, and it is comforting to be assured through Scripture, the Holy Spirit, and the scholarly research presented in the books I have mentioned, that there is nothing wrong with that. Of course, I do need to be mindful that my love for my cat doesn’t cross the line into idolatry. Like maybe I shouldn’t have spent $17 on a fancy laser toy for him on Chewy last week. That money could have gone to mission work. But in all seriousness, if you are reading this as a woman who has found a life partner and you have been  blessed with the joy of holding a baby in your lap, you are fulfilling a beautiful, high calling in raising the next generation. But if you are reading this as a woman who has not found a life partner, does not feel called to raise children, or you are unable to have children, and you spend your evenings watching television with a purring cat in your lap, your life is no less virtuous or beautiful. It may be that God has blessed you with an equally beautiful, high calling, to devote your life fully to serving the Lord. Don’t listen to insecure male pastors or politicians who twist Scripture to convince you otherwise. And if you grew up going to church, but you left because of complementarian theology, I pray you might come back, and give Christianity another chance because complementarian theology is a byproduct of Christian Nationalism, not true Christianity.That Reminds me of a Song: Every Sunday morning for several years, I listened to Rick Jackson’s Country Hall of Fame on the radio, which featured older country songs no longer played regularly on the radio. Easter Sunday featured one of my favorite episodes of the year, as the theme was gospel music. That is where I first heard He’s Alive, sung by Dolly Parton. It is told from Peter’s point of view, but it tells the story of how women were the first to discover that Jesus’s body was no longer in the tomb. A pastor once explained that in the Roman world, if someone committed a crime and 100 women witnessed it, but no men had witnessed it, the court would not find their testimony credible, and the alleged criminal would likely go free. But the testimony of one man would be taken seriously. Knowing this, it is easy to understand how Peter could not believe Mary at first, until he saw Jesus for himself. This is a thrilling song, and one I make sure to play every Easter, even though Rick Jackson’s Country Hall of Fame is no longer on the air. But what I love about this song as it relates to this blog, is how it pierces the soul as only music can, not only with the liberating power of Christ’s resurrection itself, but also the fact that the incredible privilege of being the first to see the empty tomb, and spread this most important testimony in human history was given to women. That ought to be enough to repudiate complementarian theology once and for all. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

Last Saturday, July 13, my brother and his wife came to visit, and we were finishing up a lovely dinner of mahi-mahi grilled to perfection when Mom got a text from my sister in Maryland. It simply read “Turn on the news.” That is how we found out that someone attempted to assassinate former President Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.Though I strive to keep this blog focused on Christ rather than partisan politics, I have been fully transparent regarding my rebuke of Donald Trump. Jesus was neither a democrat nor a republican, and all elected officials will fall short of God’s righteous standards. But Donald Trump’s conduct is particularly egregious, made worse by the fact that many of his supporters misuse the name of God to condone it. But this does not, by any means justify the assassination attempt on him. Political violence of any kind is inexcusable, not only because it is a threat to the values of liberal democracy, but also because it is unbiblical. Satan is clever in his ability to convince us that political violence can be righteous. Peter no doubt thought he was doing the right thing, defending Jesus by striking Malchus, the servant of the high priest who came to arrest Jesus, with his sword cutting off a piece of his ear. But in addition to Jesus’s rebuke of Peter because his crucifixion had to happen in order for Scripture to be fulfilled, Jesus also said, “Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). In other words, Jesus understood that in sinful human hands, violence only leads to more violence, or put another way, anarchy. Our God is a god of law and order—and not in the coded racism sense of the phrase. No one, regardless of ethnicity or socioeconomic status is above the law, and in fact Jesus teaches that those blessed with societal privilege are held to an even higher standard (Mark 12:41-44). We don’t yet know the motive of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the young man who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we find out, consistent with past perpetrators of political violence, that his dislike of Donald Trump was so intense he irrationally believed he was justified in attempting to kill him. The problem is that because of the evil in every human heart, if we start tolerating political violence against anyone, it starts a dangerous cycle of continuous retribution, which carried out to its logical conclusion, can trigger civil war. That is why Jesus insists that until his return and final redemption of Creation, we must submit to the earthly governments of our respective countries, trusting that God will judge justly. Jesus himself could have called on his Father who would have sent “more than twelve legions of angels” to save him, but while on earth, even he submitted to the governing authorities—paying his taxes, and not resisting when he was arrested and ultimately crucified.That being said, we have a unique privilege that was unheard of in biblical times, the privilege of having some say in who governs us. Thus in our context, wouldn’t loving God with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength involve stewarding this privilege for God’s glory by voting for the candidate whose life shows evidence of good fruit? Couldn’t ministering to “the least of these” in our context include voting for the candidate more likely to take “the least of these” into consideration when enacting policy, rather than thinking only of our own interests?This past week, Milwaukee hosted the Republican National Convention. We live in a suburb just a short drive from the convention site. My parents and I decided not to venture downtown, but I couldn’t resist watching it every night on television after work. If not for the events of last Saturday, the convention would have been difficult enough to watch, what with speaker after speaker riling up the delegates with alternative facts about the success of Donald Trump’s first term, and downplaying what a second term would mean for “the least of these.” But in light of last Saturday’s tragedy, I have found something especially offensive about the way proponents of Christian Nationalism like Franklin Graham gushed that God saved Trump’s life for a reason. Again, for the record, I’m glad Donald Trump didn’t lose his life last Saturday. Jesus and the apostle Paul both rebuked those who sought to resolve political differences with violence, and if Donald Trump had lost his life, I shutter to think of the anger, the calls for retribution, and societal instability that might have ensued. It is also unbiblical to demonize political opponents as the devil incarnate when they, like us are bearers of God’s image whom we are called to love and pray for, and we are just as capable of the pride and narcissism we criticize in them. And just on a human level, when Donald Trump Jr.’s daughter Kai spoke about how her grandpa gives the grandkids candy and soda when their parents aren’t looking and loved to hear how they were doing in school, it softened my heart a little, not enough to believe he should be our next president, but enough to realize that while most of us only know him from a distance, to some he is Dad or Grandpa, and I cannot imagine how difficult it would have been to have to grieve the loss of your dad or Grandpa with the whole world watching, and a few on social media no doubt taking partisan politics way too far by celebrating his death. I wouldn’t wish this kind of trauma on any family, especially innocent grandchildren like Kai. But to say that God spared Donald Trump for a reason is unbiblical.Due to his common grace, God allows sun to shine, and rain to fall, on righteous and unrighteous alike (Matthew 5:45). In our context, you could say God allows cancer, car accidents, gun violence to befall righteous and unrighteous alike, and therefore according to Philip Yancey, we should never presume anything about the righteousness of the people involved when say, an earthquake in South America kills a lower percentage of Christians compared to the rest of the population. Given this theological reality, the statement that God spared Donald Trump for a reason is incredibly offensive in its disrespect and dismissiveness toward Corey Comperatore’s grieving family.But this argument is also flawed because in reality, there is no one righteous, not even one (Romans 3:10). In the context of Matthew 5:45, Jesus is referring to those who have accepted Him as righteous, which theologically speaking, they are because we are saved by faith alone. But sanctification is a lifelong process, and thus, I don’t know about you, but I am always grateful when I am given one more day to try and do better, be a little kinder to my parents, a little more patient with difficult situations at work, a little less envious of other people’s lives. But if my acceptance of Christ could serve as a sort of vaccine that would forever prevent hardship from befalling me in this life, this sanctification would be stunted. I would become complacent, take life for granted, become entitled in the sense that I would see no higher purpose to life than pursuing comfort and pleasure and ultimately, decide I can get along just fine without God. That is why God does not interfere with the laws of nature, or human free will, thus allowing suffering to impact righteous and unrighteous alike (Luke 13:1-5). Put another way, catastrophe “joins together victim and bystander in a call to repentance, by abruptly reminding us of the brevity of life” (Where is God When It Hurts, Philip Yancey page 84). As a baby, I survived a brain tumor which damaged my optic nerve, which is why I am blind. The tumor also damaged my pituitary and this means that occasionally, my electrolytes get off-balance, especially if I catch a stomach bug. Of course, I don’t remember the three surgeries required to treat the tumor itself, or the touch-and-go recovery process after each. But this experience brought the fragility of life into sharper focus for my parents. Then during my 20s, I had to go to the emergency room 3 separate times for aforementioned electrolyte imbalances, which brought the fragility of life into my awareness, and into sharper focus for my parents again. After each of these incidents, I came away with renewed gratitude and appreciation for the little things, like gathering around the dinner table with my parents, savoring the smell of fresh Spring air, or singing along to a beautiful song. The scariest of these experiences was the seizure in 2017 due to low sodium. When I came home from the hospital after that experience, I had what I can only describe as a sort of born-again sensation. A sense of contentment and peace seemed to surround me as I went about my work, and certain things that used to upset me like office drama, I realized just don’t ultimately matter. Instead of getting emotionally invested in the drama, I found I could just smile and go about my work, letting the office drama just swirl around me like meaningless background noise.The whole nation has been a bystander to the assassination attempt against Donald Trump last Saturday, and many did recognize it as a call to repentance, a recognition that united we stand, divided and polarized we fall, and therefore we need to tone down the rhetoric. Christianity is all about redemption and second chances, and as such, I, like Skye Jethani, a host of The Holy Post podcast, hoped that this incident would serve as a “road to Damascus” moment for Donald Trump, where he, similar to the apostle Paul, might repent for his contribution to the violent rhetoric that led to the incident, take responsibility for the crimes he has committed and make amends to the people he has hurt over his lifetime from the women he sexually assaulted, to the people he cheated in his real estate deals, to the children separated from their parents at the border to the whole country with the “big lie” and the insurrection on January 6, 2021. But judging by his abandonment of the unity speech on the teleprompter in favor of his usual hate-filled tangents, and his ungracious response to Biden’s wrenching decision to withdraw from the race, it is becoming painfully evident that the assassination attempt against him didn’t change him at all. I will grant that with the passage of time, the vividness of God’s grace in keeping you alive can fade, and with it, the appreciation for the fragility of life. In the years since my seizure, I have gotten into a couple bitter arguments with my parents, ironically, over their anxiety about letting me stay home alone because had I been home alone on the occasions my electrolytes got off-balance, I might not have survived. We have come to a compromise where they will let me stay home alone when they occasionally go out of town as long as I promise to keep my phone with me at all times, answer it when they call, and consent to a Ring “spy camera” in the kitchen so they can monitor from a distance if I don’t look well. But my distaste for gossip and drama, as well as shallow television shows that have no socially redeeming value, has stuck with me to this day. So the absence of any noticeable spiritual fruit even in the immediate afterglow of realizing he survived an assassination attempt, is chilling to me.Donald Trump and proponents of Christian Nationalism did make one theologically correct statement. It is by the grace of God that Donald Trump survived. But sadly, both have a warped understanding of what grace actually means. Since God does not interfere with the laws of nature or human free will, allowing suffering to impact righteous and unrighteous alike, any time someone survives an incident that took the lives of others, it is a blessing that is undeserved, the very definition of grace. But instead of being humbled by this grace from God, it has made Donald Trump, and the proponents of Christian Nationalism who support him more arrogant. If proponents of Christian Nationalism were sincerely interested in true Christianity, they would have viewed Donald Trump’s survival as an opportunity to administer much-needed spiritual care, helping him turn toward God and repent for the behavior that led to this incident, and our country’s polarization in general. Instead, they have reinforced the arrogant notion that God saved Donald Trump for a reason: God is on America’s side, and He has ordained Donald Trump to “make America great again!” And in this way, it would seem human nature hasn’t progressed at all from the Ancient Near East, the cultural context in which the Old Testament was written, when kings were allowed to believe they were God.That Reminds me of a Song: Just a few days after the hospitalization for my seizure in 2017, I was watching Last Man Standing—a cute sitcom that is no longer on the air—with my parents. In this particular episode, there was a church scene, and in the background, they played Put Your Hand in the Hand, by Ocean. It has a definite 1970s sound, like something that might have been performed at Woodstock. Something about this song struck my born-again brain as particularly beautiful, and I couldn’t stop singing it for days. I didn’t fully realize it then, but looking back, I think it resonated with me because it is all about the importance of humility, and appreciating the peace and grace Christ offers when we put our hand in His hand. In these tumultuous times, that is what we all need to do. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

But more important than honoring the legacy of our founders, given the purpose of this blog, is that requiring posters of the Ten Commandments is a misrepresentation of true Christianity to the children of other religions. To be clear, I do believe that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16) including the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament. After all, Jesus did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17). But like Tim Alberta, it never struck me as a coincidence that the vast majority of references to Scripture from politicians came from the Old Testament. “Jesus, in his three years of teaching, taught mostly about helping the poor, humbling oneself, and having no earthly ambition but to gain eternal life. Suffice it to say, the beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount were never conducive to a stump speech” (The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory Page 47). It is obvious from the money invested in these battles, the contempt for the poor or the refugee, and the political partisanship behind them that proponents of Christian Nationalism have no interest in eternal life, only earthly wealth and status. Not only that, but they blatantly violate Exodus 20:7. When most people think of taking the Lord’s name in vain—I think the NIV’s translation, “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God” is more accurate—we think of using God in a curse word, which of course we shouldn’t do. But this commandment also encompasses the wicked practice of co-opting God’s name for nefarious purposes. Isn’t that what Christian Nationalists are doing when they use God’s name to advance their political agenda?But for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that the motives for Louisiana’s law are pure, and proponents of Louisiana’s law are truly motivated by nothing more than a genuine desire to ensure that in today’s tumultuous world, America’s children have a strong moral foundation. Just as with religious persuasion, moral education is also primarily the responsibility of parents, but given that children generally spend around seven hours a day, five days a week, nine months of the year in school, schools also have a significant influence on the moral education of children. Let us also imagine just for argument’s sake that you also had a genuine desire to make sure every child is exposed to the good news of the gospel, not to make them fully American, but because Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and you worry if they aren’t exposed to God’s word in school, they never will be and thus they will wander in darkness their whole lives. Other religions, including Humanism, share moral principles in common with Christianity—charity to those in need, compassion and humility—because these basic moral principles are a component of God’s general revelation to all of humanity. But only Christianity offers the hope of eternal salvation. I would still argue there are more appropriate passages to accomplish these purposes than the Ten Commandments. For an example of what I mean, let’s look at Exodus 20:4: “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.” Lifelong Christians like David French and myself might not think anything of this commandment on the poster because we are part of the privileged majority and we understand what it really means for our day. While in the Old Testament, people worshipped gold statues of animals that were referred to as idols, every sermon I have heard on Exodus 20:4 agrees that when this principal is carried over to the New Testament, an idol is anything that we prioritize before God in our lives which could include, our career, pleasure, money or power. But for a child from a Hindu family who just sees this poster and doesn’t have the full context of the New Testament, they might go home and feel confused or ashamed by the statues of other gods in their home and depending on the culture where they live, they may even be bullied about this by classmates, even teachers who embrace Christian Nationalism. This is definitely not how Jesus intended for the good news of the gospel to be shared. In fact, this self-righteous, legalistic way of sharing the gospel feels ominously comparable to the behavior of the Pharisees whom Jesus rebuked sharply.What if, instead, the poster on every classroom wall read, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs” (1 Corinthians 13:4-5)? It is not overtly religious so as to confuse or shame children of other faiths, or no religion at all. The longing to be loved unconditionally, to be treated with dignity and respect, is a longing planted in the hearts of all humans according to God’s general revelation. Thus, if you insist on having a poster with Scripture in every classroom, at least 1 Corinthians 13:4-5 starts from a place where we can all agree, and these verses have more potential than the Ten Commandments to open doors for the Holy Spirit to prompt a child to tell a Muslim friend about Jesus on the playground, or a Christian parent to reach out to the parents of their child’s Hindu or Atheist friend.But I think the apostle Paul would say that regardless of the Scripture printed on the poster, Scripture is “only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1) if the words aren’t lived out in the overall culture of the school. It is also important to remember again that while 1 Corinthians 13:4-5 seems like it would be a mutually acceptable passage for people of all faiths or none at all, my perception may be clouded by the fact that I am part of the privileged Christian majority, and people of other faiths may see even this verse as unwelcome, indirect proselytism in the same category as sacred choral music. Given all of these realities, how about we live at peace with everyone, and honor Christ more appropriately by decorating classroom walls with cheerful artwork, and devote our energy instead to the lived out culture of the school. After all, Jesus taught that the Law and the Prophets can be summed up with one simple principal: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12). This is not “chasing God out of the schools.” God is almighty. Nowhere in the universe is beyond His reach. “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast” (Psalm 139:7-10). I think we can safely infer from this beautiful psalm that to fear that the absence of superficial expressions of religion in public schools such as formal prayer time and posters with the Ten Commandments amounts to locking God out reveals a tragic lack of genuine faith.That Reminds me of a Song: My Catholic education in childhood gave me an excellent Christian moral foundation, but one thing I missed out on was learning fun Sunday School songs. That wasn’t really part of the Catholic tradition. But my mom who was raised in the Quaker tradition, taught some of these songs to me, and as I was writing this, “They’ll Know We Are Christians” came to mind. It has an upbeat melody that would be fun for children to sing. The song is all about seeking unity, honoring each person’s dignity and living in peace. The refrain states, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love. They will know we are Christians by our love.” My mom remembers her parents saying on numerous occasions that if someone has to tell you they are Christian, you should be wary of them. It should be obvious by the fruit of their lives. Thus, in the spirit of this song, true Christians should be wary of proponents of Christian Nationalism who want the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, while their policies demonstrate contempt for the poor, the orphan, the widow and the refugee, and their rhetoric inspires hate and divisiveness. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

I am the product of public schools where technically speaking, no one religion was promoted above others, but almost everyone was Christian, at least culturally. No one talked about church or God in the cafeteria, but everyone talked about celebrating Christmas and Easter, and several of my classmates I knew for sure were Christian because I saw them again at Tuesday or Thursday evening Catholic Formation class at Saint Dominics. Once I became aware that a few of my classmates did not celebrate these holidays, I felt sorry for them. I wondered what the few Jewish or Muslim or Hindu students were thinking as everyone talked excitedly about Christmas plans. Did they come home in tears, pleading with their parents to become Christian just so they wouldn’t feel left out? In high school, other aspects of being the privileged cultural majority started to occur to me. For example, given that we are a culturally Christian nation, it is easy to take for granted that schools are always closed for Christmas, but one year in high school, an important dress rehearsal in preparation for a choir concert conflicted with a Muslim holiday that two boys in the choir observed. They received approval from the choir director to miss the rehearsal, but this had to be an awkward conversation for these teenage boys, and as is the case any time you are absent, it is the student’s responsibility to figure out what they missed and catch up.And speaking of choir, Christianity inspired such an extensive and rich tradition of choral music that when I attended concerts at other high schools in our area, which we were required to do each semester, the difference in the beauty and sophistication of the music chosen by schools that excluded religious texts was noticeable, and honestly sad. Some schools sang romantic, and sometimes challenging madrigals, but more often than not, the concert was full of choral renditions of silly pop songs. But one year in high school, someone—not the parents of the Muslim boys—complained that the songs our choral director had selected amounted to the unconstitutional promotion of religion in public school. As a high school student, I wasn’t privy to every detail of this situation the choral director had to deal with, but with the hindsight of adulthood, I speculate that my choir director, whose passion for quality choral music was deep, had likely been to such concerts too, and she wasn’t going to let this happen at our school. That is why, I suspect, she abruptly switched from preparing us for a Christmas concert full of sacred English texts, culminating with the Hallelujah Chorus, to a classic Latin requiem. That way, she could argue that songs were chosen strictly for their artistic and educational value, and not for their religious message since no one speaks Latin these days. The position of choir director would be tailor-made for someone who did wish to illegally proselytize in a public school, by giving sermons on the theological significance of the texts we were singing, or having students read the Bible passages that inspired the songs. But my choir director never did anything like that. Thus I am confident that the original English pieces she selected were chosen strictly for their artistic and educational value, but singing Latin music gave additional credibility to this argument. Of course, I acknowledge that my perception could be colored by the fact that I belong to the privileged majority religion, and if I put myself in the shoes of someone from a minority religion or no religion at all, I can appreciate how they might feel as though indirect proselytism was taking place even if this wasn’t the choir director’s intention at all. To be fair, one could argue there is room for ambiguity regarding whether Louisiana’s law requiring a poster with the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom also qualifies as proselytism. It is just a poster after all, and David French, who grew up in Kentucky when the Ten Commandments were posted in every classroom until the Supreme Court deemed Kentucky’s law unconstitutional remarked that “There is a real belief that the Ten Commandments have a form of spiritual power over the hearts and minds of students, and that posting the displays can change their lives.” But he does not believe that documents, in and of themselves radiate powers of personal virtue. As such, these “faded posters” on the wall had no impact on the lives of him or his classmates. It is true that sometimes, adults make a bigger deal of things than they should. But I would still argue that requiring posters of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms is a threat to religious liberty and a dangerous misrepresentation of Christianity that should be regarded warily by true Christians.Proponents of Louisiana’s law argue that The Ten Commandments had a profound influence on the founders of this country, and so they view these posters as a historical document to inspire children when they look up at them. It is true that the Bible had a significant influence on our founders. As I was brushing up on my U.S. history for this post, I was struck anew by the number of references to the Bible and God’s laws in the oratory of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Patrick Henry. Louisiana state representative Dodie Horton also argued, “The measure allows for our children to look up and see what God says is right, and what he says is wrong. It doesn’t preach a certain religion, but it definitely shows what a moral code we all should live by is.” Our country’s founders should not be idolized or mythologized. We should not let the inspiring biblical references in their oratory cloud the reality that they, like all of us lived lives that fell far short of God’s righteous standards, evidenced by their hypocrisy in speaking inspiring rhetoric about creating a nation free of tyranny when they owned slaves. But they were right about the importance of complete religious liberty, to allow both the nation, and genuine religious expression to flourish. This is not to say that even in the aftermath of the American Revolution, there wasn’t a temptation to declare America a Christian nation. According to the website of the Colonial Williamsburg museum, historians debate whether Patrick Henry, the first governor of Virginia following the Declaration of Independence, actually said “Give me liberty or give me death!” He never wrote out his speeches in advance, so they have been reconstructed based on accounts of other people. But if he did say these words, I find it ironic that he did not make the connection that complete religious liberty is a crucial component of overall liberty. In The Religious History of America, Edwin Gaustad and Leigh Schmidt lay out how, before the Revolution, the only officially recognized religion was the Anglican church of England. All other forms of religious expression, including other Christian denominations, faced persecution. After the Revolution, everyone recognized that some degree of disassociation with the tyranny imposed by the church of England was necessary, but some feared that abandoning all governmental alliance with religion would turn “all history and society upside down” (The Religious History of America Page 124). To that end, Patrick Henry and the legislature of Virginia were tempted to compromise by not establishing any particular church or sect, but Christianity itself as the official religion. Patrick Henry argued that this compromise would not discriminate against (Christian) dissenters yet it would “help safeguard the social and moral order that a new state needed even more than before” (Page 124). Of course in practice, we have always fallen short of our founders ideal of complete religious liberty. The cruel attempt to erase Native American culture by requiring Native American Children to attend abusive boarding schools, a practice that persisted through the 1970s, is a sad testament to this, as is the Islamophobia and antisemitism that persist to this day. But in theory, the arguments for full religious liberty ultimately won out. In a Memorial and Remonstrance written in opposition to Patrick Henry’s bill, James Madison argued that “legislators simply do not have the right, much less the wisdom, to set themselves up as judges of religious truth” (Page 125). Only “the Supreme Lawgiver of the Universe” is truly qualified to make laws pertaining to religion, and He chose to give humankind freedom of conscience. In 1789, the first paragraph of the Virginia Statute for Religious freedom, composed by Thomas Jefferson declared that, “Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishment, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was his Almighty power to do.”Furthermore, James Madison argued that if Virginia could establish Christianity to the exclusion of all other religions today, what would stop them from establishing a particular denomination of Christianity tomorrow, putting Virginia right back where they started before fighting a Revolution to end tyranny. After all, as Boston Minister Jonathan Mayhew (1720-1766) pointed out, “People are not generally deprived of their liberties all at once, but gradually, by one encroachment after another, as it is found they are disposed to bear them” (Page 123). Thus, I would argue that if we truly wanted to honor the legacy of our founders, we would keep all blatant references to religion—“you shall have no other Gods before me” (Exodus 20:3)—out of public schools. I speculate that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, if they were alive today, would oppose Louisiana’s law, arguing that religious persuasion should be the sole responsibility of parents until children are old enough to think for themselves. I also speculate that Jonathan Mayhew would join ranks with people like Catherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers, who has shown that small victories like Louisiana’s law should not be dismissed as isolated incidents, but as part of a larger war to chip away at public education so that the prosperity and privilege that comes with a high quality education is accessible only to (predominantly white) children of the right religious persuasion. Thus, the Ten Commandments law is in reality closely related to the seemingly unrelated and separate battles over book bans, Bible study clubs inside public schools, and vouchers to give parents “choice.” I would also say the volatility of school board meetings surrounding these battles in recent years are the definition of hypocrisy and meanness, as is Governor Landry’s comment “I can’t wait to be sued.” This is definitely at odds with the teachings of Jesus: “Blessed are the peacemakers (Matthew 5:9). And how does he know he will be sued? Because the decision to pass this law demonstrates a willful disregard for Supreme Court precedent, and the teaching of the apostle Paul: “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established” (Romans 13:1). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

As I write this, it is the 80th anniversary of D-Day, and last week, we observed Memorial Day. Thus I think it is fitting to reflect again on militarism and how it relates to Christian Nationalism. As I wrote about just a week after Hamas’s brutal October 7 attack, I was in sixth grade on 9/11, and even I got swept up in nationalistic fervor. As an adult, I found arguments for Christian Pacifism compelling. But then Hamas’s attack presented a conundrum. Does God really expect Christians to turn the other cheek when terrorists take women, children and elderly people in wheelchairs hostage and brutally murders infants? Can you really negotiate in good faith with an organization whose charter calls for the extermination of the Jewish people? Though I hadn’t taken the time to carefully study what Scripture has to say about war, I was starting to intuitively understand that Pacifism taken to the extreme might be naïve and potentially dangerous. In War, Peace and Violence: Four Christian Views, Eric Patterson begins his defense of the Just War position with a quote from C. S. Lewis. The Nazis forced him to contemplate the same question Hamas forced me to contemplate. In an address titled Why I am Not a Pacifist, C. S. Lewis asked the rhetorical question, “Does anyone suppose that our Lord’s hearers understood him to mean that if a homicidal maniac, attempting to murder a third party, tried to knock me out of the way, I must stand aside and let him get his victims?”In the Old Testament, God commands the Israelites to wage war, using the Israelites to manifest his justice by punishing wicked nations. In the New Testament, neither Jesus nor the apostles directly discuss whether war is justified, and the Pacifists and the proponents of Just War theory can both find verses in the New Testament that compellingly support their positions. So perhaps like many aspects of the Christian life, this is a matter where Christians have freedom of conscience. Perhaps God calls some to be a godly influence on the battlefield, helping to ensure that war is conducted with sobriety, seeking as far as is humanly possible to distinguish true, hard-hearted perpetrators of evil from innocent civilians, or even enemy combatants conscripted or violently coerced to fight for a wicked cause they don’t really believe in, and may not even understand as conscripts are often poor, uneducated victims of government propaganda. Other Christians, God may call to serve in vocations that seek to prevent war. According to Myles Werntz, the position of the true pacifist is not one of naïve optimism, but simply a recognition that while war may resolve a particular conflict in the short-term, it often “creates the conditions and fractures that will lead to and justify the next war” (War, Peace and Violence, Page 69). I fear the Israel Hamas War proves this point. Two things can be simultaneously true. It is true that what Hamas did on October 7 was horrific and inexcusable, and that they intentionally use civilians as human shields so that the world would turn against Israel. But it is also true that Israel has been oppressing the Palestinian people for decades, driving them from their land and relegating them to Gaza, which I have heard described as a ghetto, and that the right-wing administration of Netanyahu has crossed the line from precisely targeting Hamas infrastructure, into a war of vengeance, just as we did after 9/11. And I fear this lack of concern for civilians in Gaza may mean that as we speak seeds of hatred are being sown in the hearts of Palestinian children whose lives have been torn apart by the war, and they will grow up to be the next generation of terrorists, continuing the cycle of violence. Thus I believe the world needs the voices of committed Christians who have an accurate understanding of the Just War position and the Pacifist position because “just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Romans 12:4-5).However if you carefully apply the biblical principles laid out by proponents of the Just War theory, I would argue that with the possible exception of World War II, the United States has never fought a just war. I say “possible exception” because while a compelling biblical argument could be made to support the position that we had a duty to assist Europe in the defeat of Hitler whom C. S. Lewis was right to call a homicidal maniac, the United States also had its fair share of antisemitism, and Hitler drew inspiration for Germany’s eugenics laws from the American eugenics movement. We should also keep in mind that Russia was one of our allies during World War II, yet Stalin was also a homicidal maniac who murdered millions of people. As for Japan, a compelling argument could be made that we had to respond to the attack on Pearl Harbor which killed 2,400 Americans. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because they wanted to modernize by becoming a colonial power, and fearing American retaliation if they expanded into the Philippines, Japan hoped that attacking Pearl Harbor would weaken our military. But we should not forget that we were also a colonial power who unjustly acquired territory in the Pacific via conquest, and to this day, we have yet to fully acknowledge and repent for our subjugation of indigenous people in these territories. True Christianity cannot dismiss the reality that “there is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10). Even if our involvement in World War II was just, we frequently violated biblical principles for fighting a just war. On a personal note, our involvement on the Pacific front during World War II is particularly complicated because my maternal grandfather (Papaw) served in the Philippines, so it is possible that if we hadn’t dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the war would have dragged on much longer, my Papaw could have been killed and I wouldn’t be here. But in college, I read the book Hiroshima by John Hersey. In this book, Hersey documents the lives of 6 survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and the magnitude of suffering, both in the immediate aftermath of the bomb, and the long-term effects of radiation sickness was chilling. After reading Hiroshima, anyone with any humanity in them should seriously contemplate whether the staggering loss of life—100,000 in Hiroshima—and the suffering innocent civilians had to endure was out of proportion to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Committed Christians are free to hold different positions on whether war is permissible, but Genesis 1:26 is non-negotiable. If all humans were created in God’s image, then a Christian discussion of war cannot place greater value on American lives than on Japanese civilians.I just finished reading The Power Worshippers by Catherine Stewart. The documentary God and Country was actually based on this book, which shows how numerous organizations which much of the American public thinks are grassroots Christian organizations, are actually part of a well-funded, interconnected network that is threatening religious liberty, democracy, and I would argue, the true teachings of Jesus. One of the prominent figures in the Christian Nationalism movement that Catherine Stewart profiled was Ralph Drollinger, who founded Capitol Ministries, an organization that creates Bible studies for members of Congress that were also attended by many in President Trump’s cabinet. These Bible studies are also available for free to the public, so for research purposes, I downloaded Drollinger’s two-part Bible study titled The Bible on When War is Justifiable.I have often written here that Christian Nationalism is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and this Bible study is a prime example of this. It is not that this study is complete heresy, a misrepresentation of biblical teaching. Its advocacy of Just War theory is biblically sound. But there are two problems with this study that jumped out at me, problems that pose a threat to the credibility of Christianity for a watching, secular world, but subtle enough to lead vulnerable sheep astray. First, although this Bible study accurately presents the biblical argument for the Just War theory, it gives credence to this position only. It inaccurately presents the Pacifist position as a naïve optimism, and calls it unbiblical and irresponsible. Sincere commitment to teaching biblical principles requires accurately and impartially presenting arguments for both of these positions. Second, this Bible study bares false witness when it comes to applying Just War principles to our country’s history. In Part 2 of this Bible study, after summarizing the four principles for fighting a just war, Drollinger states, “Fortunately and historically, America’s culture of war has largely been informed by these principles, and our nation has demonstrated these values in its use of force.” The truth is that from our use of the atomic bomb in World War II, to the devastating consequences of Agent Orange in Vietnam, to our indefinite detention without a trial, and torture of people at Guantanamo Bay, our history is full of violations of the biblical principles for fighting a just war. In Part 1, Drollinger accurately teaches that “To in any way invade, usurp or colonize another nation is the wrong objective for the use of war,” but then inaccurately proclaims, “Thank God that this Genesis 11:8 idea is deeply, unwaveringly embedded in our nation’s fabric.” The truth is that deeply, and unwaveringly embedded in our fabric, from the genocide of Native Americans and our theft and plunder of lands they stewarded beautifully for thousands of years, to our usurpation of Vietnam’s desire for independence from the French, is a history of colonization and usurpation of the sovereignty of other nations. Taken together, these two problems reveal figures like Ralph Drollinger to be dangerous wolves leading vulnerable sheep astray by teaching American idolatry, but disguising it well in biblical clothing.Christian Nationalism is an ideology with a spectrum, and fortunately, I would say my church is on the mild end of the spectrum. It does not sing patriotic songs, meddle in partisan politics, or have an American flag on the pulpit. It is overall a wonderful church with pastors committed to sound biblical teaching. But to some extent, Christian Nationalism is woven into our country’s  history such that it is as ubiquitous and unavoidable as the air we breathe. The Sunday before Memorial Day, a Vietnam veteran began the service with a prayer. Please understand that what I am about to say next is not intended to imply any disrespect toward this veteran who likely mourns the loss of dear comrades every Memorial Day. I can understand how it might be too painful, even disrespectful on the solemn occasion of Memorial Day, after witnessing firsthand the brutality of war, to give voice to the truth that our government’s rationale for subjecting him and his comrades to this trauma was unjust. Overall, it was a very nice prayer. It first gave glory to God, and then he prayed for the day when wars would cease and peace would prevail, and asked God to comfort the families of fallen soldiers. But in words so reflexive I used to utter them without a second thought, he thanked God for the soldiers who died so that we could be free. The thing is, Craig Watts, in his book Bowing Toward Babylon, points out that religious freedom was never at stake in a single American war. Most of our wars were wars of colonial conquest, or wars to usurp the sovereignty of “weak” nations, wars that had nothing to do with defending freedom or punishing evil.I do not write all of this because I hate America. This past Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes featured an Iranian national who sought asylum in America because her government wanted to kill her for her involvement in protests against the oppression of women in Iran. But it turned out that Iran secretly hired a hit man in America to spy on her, and kill her when he got the opportunity. Our government alerted her to this plot and is providing protection for her. Through tears she said, “my home country is trying to kill me, but my adopted country is protecting me.” This about made me cry too, and I sensed the Holy Spirit convicting me, reminding me that despite all of our country’s problems, it is not sinful to acknowledge when we have been a force for good. But American idolatry is not an expression of genuine love. It is a superficial love, similar to the love parents think they are showing when they believe their belligerent child can do no wrong and thus never disciplines him, which ultimately hurts the child long-term. In fact, love of God and genuine love of country go hand in hand in the sense that we show our love for God by being careful stewards of the sphere of influence he has given us in this life. So it is out of genuine love that I feel called to speak truth, and the truth is that the common thread among friends and family that no longer want to call themselves Christian is not feminism, or science, or liberal college professors. It is Christian Nationalism. Our watching pluralistic society is longing for the authentic Christianity Jesus preached, which does not glorify literal war, or worship worldly power, but stands against these dark forces with the belt of truth buckled around our waists, the breastplate of righteousness in place, our feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the Gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:14-17).That Reminds Me of a Song: Please forgive me for sharing a Christmas song in June, but this song perfectly encompasses the sentiments I have tried to express here. Belleau Wood, sung by Garth Brooks, tells the story of what became known as the Christmas truce of 1914, when German and British soldiers came out of their trenches and sang Silent Night together. Two lines of this song are especially poignant to me. First, the narrator notices a German soldier standing beside him smiling as if to say, “Here’s hoping we might live to see us find a better way.” Then, sadly but predictably, the song ends with “the devil’s clock” striking midnight and the war raging once again, but in that brief, heavenly moment, it became so clear to the narrator that “Heaven’s not beyond the clouds. It’s just beyond the fear.” In that moment, God gave those soldiers a glimpse of how his creation was supposed to be. Christian Nationalism is an ideology fueled by fear of increasing secularism and the collapse of American culture, and I suspect this ideology’s glorification of war, its unwillingness to acknowledge our country’s history of unjust wars, is a manifestation of this fear. I am actually planning another post to unpack this more, but for now, I pray this song might remind us that while God doesn’t forbid war as a means of justice in this fallen world, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Here’s hoping for a revival of an authentic Christianity willing to repent of our history, cast aside ungodly fear so that we might not have to wait until Christ’s return to see us find a better way. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

In 2016, I was “feeling the Bern” and in our 2016 Presidential Primary election, I voted for Bernie Sanders. I knew that Socialism, and its more extreme cousin Communism were vulnerable to corruption. I was aware of the oppression people experienced living in the Soviet Union. (I had always thought the Nazis advocated socialism, as Nazi translates into English as “National Socialist German Workers Party.” But in Kingdom of Rage, Elizabeth Neumann, a former counterterrorism official with the Department of Homeland Security, explains that this name was a misnomer, a political ploy to appeal to working class Germans in the 1920s. The Nazis were vehemently Anti-communist and Anti-Marxist. They believed in Capitalism, although they thought the current banking system was controlled by Jews and foreigners.)But I had heard that in the Western manifestation of Socialism in countries like Norway, Denmark and France where all workers receive six weeks of paid vacation a year and the government provides free college tuition, universal healthcare and affordable childcare, people are happier. I was fortunate that I could live with my parents, so I didn’t have the stress of trying to make ends meet every month, but like my coworkers, I was starting to experience symptoms of burnout and depression with only five days of PTO per year. One day when Bernie Sanders came to Milwaukee, a contingent of them went to his rally together after work. I didn’t feel like going to a rally, but I was excited to vote for him. I didn’t think he had a chance—just like I thought Donald Trump didn’t have a chance—but in my mind, and in the minds of a lot of young people I interacted with, maybe a little France or Denmark-style Socialism was what this country needed to straighten out the corporate greed and our terrible health and happiness statistics compared with other Western countries. I didn’t know anything about Bernie Sanders’s religious background at the time—I recently found out he is Jewish—but I suspected that the Christian faith right-wing candidates talked about on the campaign trail wasn’t always genuine, and Bernie Sanders’s righteous anger about corporate greed reminded me of Jesus’s righteous anger when he overturned the money tables in the temple.But with maturity, I have come to understand that my idolization of Socialism was misguided: indeed the idolization of any political ideology is misguided. Because of our fallen state, every form of earthly government we institute will fall short of God’s righteous standard. In Jesus and the Powers, N.T. Wright and Michael Bird explain that as compelling as Marxist ideology sounds in theory, with its concern for the poor, and its commitment to social justice, virtues that Christians would agree with, Communism falls woefully short because it articulates “a vision of Messianic justice, but without God” (Chapter 6). It tries to bring heavenly justice to earth by violent revolution, and tries to manufacture the conditions where the last will be first and the first will be last, when as Christians, we know that true prosperity and justice will only come when hearts are changed. Communism also falls short in that it lacks the doctrine of total depravity, meaning that it calls Capitalism, the bourgeois and factory owners evil, but fails to recognize that evil runs through every human heart. Proponents of Communism have cited Acts 4:32 to argue that the Bible endorses Communism. This verse reads “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.” But what the church in Acts 4:32 displayed was not actually Communism. Communism is like cake batter with the eggs left out. It cannot hold together long because the sharing of possessions and the common ownership of everything is compelled by force, whereas the church in Acts 4:32—a foretaste of God’s eternal kingdom—had the underappreciated but essential eggs of the Holy Spirit, who transformed their hearts such that this radical lifestyle was voluntary, genuine and lived out with joy.Proponents of capitalism meanwhile site Matthew 25:14-30, the Parable of the Talents, to argue that Jesus endorses capitalism. But according to Morgan Guyton, this passage is neither an endorsement, nor a condemnation of capitalism itself, but rather an illustration contrasting two different kinds of fear. The first two servants, given the equivalent of $2 million and $800,000 respectively, displayed a healthy kind of fear, a reverent fear of the Lord, which allowed them to be entrepreneurs, fearlessly stewarding the money given to them without the worldly fear that they would lose it all or be punished. By contrast, the third servant exhibited a cowardly, worldly fear of punishment, viewing his master as a hard man who harvests where he did not sow. This kind of fear exhibited by the third servant is what led to the price gouging of pilgrims to Jerusalem when they had to exchange Caesar’s currency for Tyrian currency and buy animal sacrifices from the temple vendors. And this kind of fear is what leads the moneychangers of our day to exploit loopholes in the market to siphon money, living in constant fear of scarcity, no matter how much money they have. Though God’s image in us was damaged by the fall, God’s purpose for humanity, to rule over Creation for his glory, has not been rescinded, and an economic system is an important component for bringing order to human societies. So money itself is not evil, nor is it sinful for a person gifted with entrepreneurial skills or an innovative idea to acquire tremendous wealth in a capitalist society. In fact, in his book The Spirit of the Disciplines, Dallas Willard points out that “possession and direction of the forces of wealth are as legitimate an expression of the redemptive rule of God in human life as is Bible teaching or a prayer meeting” and the poor would actually benefit more from the godly controlling the goods of this world than from Christians performing a “pious handwashing”, potentially relinquishing their wealth to people who do not honor God (Page 214). It really is the love of money, the worship of and trust in money over God, that is the root of all kinds of evil (1 Timothy 6:10).When Paul wrote Romans 13:1-2, which states that Christians must submit themselves to the governing authorities because all government authorities have been established by God, the concept of a liberal democracy where the people elect political representatives, was unheard of. For most of human history, monarchies were the norm, and during his lifetime, kings were especially brutal in their persecution of the early Christian church. But perhaps what Paul was trying to teach was first and foremost, that by His resurrection, Christ had already ultimately won victory over the dark powers of the world, but also that the persecution he was experiencing, and the persecution Scripture foretold would persist until Christ returned, could persist under any and every human political experiment, or God could be glorified under any political system because the problem is not with the type of government itself, or whether the elected leader is a Democrat or a Republican. The problem is that just as cowardly fear leading to the love of and trust in money is possible in any economic system, so cowardly fear leading to the love of and trust in power or status is a temptation under any and every political system. Overthrowing the government would accomplish nothing in terms of improving the circumstances of the oppressed, nor in terms of “taking America back for God.” It is a rebellion against God because it trusts in worldly trappings to address problems that only reverent fear of God can address. You can stage a coup and install a new king. You can replace monarchy with democracy. But if the reverent fear of God is absent, the oppression will simply continue under a new name. Today, because of our dark history of colonization, we associate monarchies with tyranny, but this tyranny is not caused by the concept of a monarchy itself. It is caused by the king’s lack of reverence for God. Everyone in society could prosper under a benevolent king who recognized that his responsibility is to “defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy” and “crush the oppressor” (Psalm 72:4). In theory, everyone should prosper under a government of the people, by the people and for the people, but we know all too well that even with our Constitution with its checks and balances, corruption, lust for power, and the cowardly fear of persecution or cultural irrelevance—stand in the way of government truly working for all people.Of course, given that evil runs through every human heart, it should come as no surprise that you will find corruption and a lust for power on both sides of the political aisle. But the Christian Nationalism ideology that has pervaded the Republican Party is particularly dangerous in my view because it is an attempt to manufacture a Christian nation without Christ. According to Michael Bird and N.T. Wright, “Christian Nationalism is impoverished as it seeks a kingdom without a cross. It pursues a victory without mercy. It acclaims the love of God’s power rather than the power of God’s love” (Chapter 6). And it confuses and repels the very secular society Christ called us to witness to.But by imploring Christians to reject Christian Nationalism, I am not at all implying that Christians should “opt for an escapist piety in the present and a distant heaven in the future, leaving the present world untouched lest they get embroiled in its messy ways” (Jesus and the Powers Chapter 3). But neither should they opt for the candidate who panders to Christians with the promise of fighting culture wars on their behalf but whose fruit of the spirit, if he possesses any at all is “not hanging low enough to be picked” (Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory Page 24), over the candidate who generally speaking, has demonstrated genuine compassion for the marginalized of our society. We are called to speak truth to power, carrying on the tradition of the prophets of ancient Israel, and the early Christian church. This means focusing less on who is in power or how they acquired their power, and more on whether, now that they have acquired power, they are exercising their authority with Psalm 72:4 at the forefront of their mind, a standard which by the way is part of God’s general revelation, the conscience he created in every human being and that every human even if they profess to have no religion at all, can freely choose to obey or disregard (Romans 2:14-15). As such, it is possible for the marginalized to prosper with a professed humanist or Atheist for president who rules in reverent fear of the Lord—even though they wouldn’t call it that—by governing with a conscience. And time and again, history has proven that tyranny is the result when government is controlled by “Pharisees” whose rule is based on religious hegemony and enforced legalism, with no interest in mercy, who love God’s power more than the power of God’s love.Regardless of who wins the election in November, I will respect Romans 13:1-2 and John 19:11 where even Jesus acknowledges that the Father has given governing authority to humans. I will not participate in or condone an insurrection. We will have to speak truth to power no matter who wins the election because all earthly government falls short of God’s righteous standard. At the same time, we should not take for granted that we have a privilege unimaginable in Jesus and Paul’s day, the privilege of having a say in who acquires power. What if we as Christians redefined what it means to “take America back for God” and use this historically unprecedented privilege to vote with a reverent fear of the Lord, with Psalm 72:4—not the latest culture war—at the forefront of our minds, rather than succumbing to the cowardly fear of persecution or cultural irrelevance?That Reminds me of a Song: As I was writing this, The Wanderer, a collaboration of Johnny Cash and U2 came to my mind. It is an abstract song, so abstract that I consulted Wikipedia for its backstory. The song was written by U2, a modern take on the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, where the Preacher wanders through a post-apocalyptic world to find meaning and experience everything a man can before he repents. But Bono, the lead singer for U2 said the song had to be sung by Johnny Cash because he had the voice and the life story that this song required. Even before learning the backstory of this song, it always struck me that Christian Nationalism was referenced in this bleak world the narrator wandered through. The line that always gives me chills is, “I stopped outside a church house, where the citizens like to sit. They say they want the kingdom, but they don’t want God in it.” This reminded me of the churches Tim Alberta profiled where the American flag or partisan politics took precedence over Christ. Later Johnny Cash sings, “I went walking, with a Bible and a gun. The word of God lay heavy on my heart. I was sure I was the one” which I interpret as a reference to the self-righteous attitude of some on the far right who think they are honoring God when in fact they are conflating Christianity with American culture and a toxic masculinity that bares no resemblance to Christ. These lyrics, combined with dystopian and at times haunting background music poignantly portrays a bleak, post-apocalyptic world without a soul, where Christian Nationalism seems to be a feature. Let’s do our part to make sure the bleak world portrayed in this song doesn’t come to be. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

Before I start my planned post, I want to make a quick public service announcement. I was under the impression that it would be several months before God and Country was released on video. But on a whim, I searched for it the afternoon of Easter, and it is available to buy or rent on AppleTV. So I encourage you to rent the movie and see it for yourself if you did not manage to see it in theaters. It is well worth your time.It just so happens that in God’s perfect timing, the day after my parents and I saw God and Country in the theater, the sermon in church was on Daniel 9. In Daniel 9, Daniel who was a teenager when first kidnapped by Nebuchadnezzar, is now an elderly man, and he is offering a prayer of corporate repentance. He is confessing that God is righteous and just, and his people deserved his judgment against them for their collective sin. But for the sake of God’s reputation in a watching Pagan world, Daniel pleas with God for God’s mercy and forgiveness.When I first wrote about our church’s study of Daniel in January, I mentioned that I felt frustrated because there were so many opportunities for application of the book of Daniel to the American church’s epidemic of Christian Nationalism that I felt our church was tiptoeing around. I was relatively confident the church leadership wasn’t actively promoting this counterfeit religion. They do honor military service which bothers me slightly, but they have never endorsed a political candidate or invited political operatives into the church. But was my church complicit in the sense of ignoring the giant elephant in the room, similar to the Christian playground ethic that if you witness someone being bullied but stand by doing nothing, you are complicit even if you didn’t actively participate in the bullying? Or was my church merely treading lightly, using tact and wisdom to speak the truth, but subtly so as not to alienate people with different perspectives? This I could understand. As satisfying as it would be for the pastor to affirm the hypocrisy of Christians getting behind Donald Trump, it is a slippery slope between speaking this truth, and implying that Jesus would be a Democrat, a mistake some churches make on the other extreme. Not only would sliding down this slippery slope alienate people, but it is also unbiblical. Sure, you could argue that Democrats are more committed to social justice and equality right now, but Jesus would rebuke the behavior of both Democrats and Republicans if he returned today, just as he rebuked Caesar’s government and the religious leaders during his earthly ministry. Jesus had no partisan loyalties, and neither should we. Sadly, these days, I cannot help but view all Christian media and pastors with suspicion, listening for the subtle code words to discern where they stand before I can fully trust them. So I was so delighted by the sermon on Daniel 9, given by our church’s pastor of Missions, that I e-mailed him a note of encouragement. First, he remarked that the American church also needs to pray a prayer of corporate repentance, and for God’s reputation to be restored for his sake, not so we can “get the right person into the white house so that we can have things our way again.” Then a few minutes later, he made a connection between Daniel 9 and Matthew 5:13, using as an example the fact that him and his wife made the decision to send their children to public school because Christians cannot be salt and light to the world if we isolate ourselves from it.In other words, whether we want to be or not, God calls us all to be influencers, but instead of persuading people to spend money on a silly cup or fashion item, we have the privilege, and responsibility of leading  people to Christ and eternal life. In a sermon on Matthew 5:13, John MacArthur quoted Elihu Burritt, a humanitarian activist (1810-1879) who described our responsibility as influencers in a sobering way: “Thousands of my fellow beings will yearly enter eternity with characters differing from those they would have carried thither had I never lived.” But at the root of Christian Nationalism is a misguided understanding of how Christians ought to influence the broader society. Only God knows what is in anyone’s heart, but I suspect that some politicians, pastors and high-level political operatives do not have a genuine personal relationship with Christ but are using Christians to gain political power. But as I was reading The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory, I could tell by the way Tim Alberta depicted some of the political operatives and pastors promoting Christian Nationalism that they have charismatic personalities that draw in ordinary people who could be my friends, relatives and neighbors. Just as a charismatic salesman can cause even educated people to fall for a scam, so I believe charismatic pastors and political operatives have persuaded good people who have a genuine personal relationship with Christ and want to do what is right to buy into what I have called counterfeit Christianity, a scam with potentially eternal consequences.This became especially apparent to me in Chapter 8 when Tim Alberta discussed how Matthew 5:13 has been twisted by proponents of Christian Nationalism. Chad Conelly, a political operative Tim Alberta met in Ohio, had a compelling Christian testimony and a charismatic personality. Nonetheless, he declared to an audience gathered in the atrium of the Ohio state Capitol building, a stop on the American Restoration Tour, “If Christians who outnumber all the whiners and complainers and God-haters in America, if Christians would just be the salt and light Jesus asked us to be, we wouldn’t have this mess” (Page 164). There is so much biblically wrong with this statement, it would be laughable if the ramifications for all the evangelicals people like Conelly were leading astray weren’t so serious. First, Jesus never used immature, demeaning language—whiners and complainers—to characterize anyone. He certainly got angry on a couple occasions and rebuked self-righteous hypocrites. But even his rebukes were spoken in a spirit of love, calling all to repent of their wicked ways and follow him, and he would forgive them and reward them with eternal life. Second, and just as important, Jesus taught that we are sent into the world, but we were never supposed to love the world (John 17:14-16). By pursuing political power and privilege, aren’t we allowing ourselves to become too comfortable in the world? I love reading about the early church, who understood that being the salt of the earth meant being rubbed into the world like salt rubbed into meat to preserve it, and yet being distinct from it, caring for the sick that the Pagan world wouldn’t touch, adopting babies that the Pagan world abandoned.Jim Wright, an audience member Tim Alberta interviewed after another stop of the American Restoration Tour, a church, said, “Some Christians say we should stay out of politics, that we don’t have to worry about any of this because this isn’t our home. But it is our home right now. And the persecution that’s all around the world is coming for us” (Page 174). Therefore, Jim Wright believed Christians were justified in pursuing partisan victories to keep this persecution at bay. The first half of Wright’s statement has a grain of truth in it. In the prophet Jeremiah’s day, when God allowed the Israelites to be carried off to Babylon as judgment for their sins, false prophets were spreading alternative facts, giving people false hope that this exile would be so brief it wasn’t worth settling down in Babylon. God gave Jeremiah the responsibility of speaking the truth, that this exile would last 70 years, so they should build houses, settle down, marry, have children. And they should also “seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jeremiah 29:7). We too should think of ourselves as exiles in a Pagan world, but while faith alone is all that is necessary for salvation, if our faith is genuine, it should render us unable to ignore the injustice in the world. Moreover, in his Great Commission, Jesus did not command his disciples to hunker down in a monastery and pray. He commanded them to go out into the world, spreading the gospel and that is what we are supposed to do too. Of course, most of us in this day and age are not called to be itinerant preachers, but we can still “preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words” (Saint Francis of Assisi).But the second half of Jim Wright’s statement is misguided. After all, immediately preceding Matthew 5:13 is Matthew 5:11-12 which reads, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” We are not being persecuted. Sure, some states could have handled pandemic restrictions more tactfully. Christians who argue that bars and stores should not have been open while churches were required to shut down have a valid point. But a building with people packed close together in pews is not necessary for worship. People could still gather for worship outdoors, and the government did not block the websites of churches who livestreamed worship every Sunday. To say even then that Christians were persecuted, I think is an insult to parts of the world where Christians have to worship in whispers, and could be arrested, tortured or killed for worshipping Jesus. True persecution may be our reality someday. In fact, one pastor at my church pointed out that Jesus does not say “blessed are you if people persecute you.” He believed Jesus’s use of the word “when” is intentional. Persecution is a reality of our fallen world where the Bible, on numerous occasions prophesies that most people will reject Jesus, and hate those who follow him. The level of religious freedom we have in the United States is an anomaly, not the historic norm, and while I am grateful and hope that doesn’t change, Jim Wright may be half-correct that persecution is coming for us. But given that the Bible prophesies that persecution is an entrenched reality of this fallen world, pledging allegiance to either political party with the hope of keeping persecution at bay is like building your house on sinking sand (Matthew 7:26-27). It is foolish to think that mortal, fallen human politicians will be able to keep at bay what Jesus prophesied is entrenched in our fallen world, and because politics is a product of “the world” and it is apparent that most politicians are motivated by accruing power, not a genuine faith, both parties would be capable of perpetrating persecution. We are not being the salt of the earth by working for partisan victories. In fact, the hateful rhetoric that always accompanies these partisan efforts renders Christianity as repulsive as the smell of rotting meat to a watching world. We are the salt of the earth when we behave as the early church did, showing compassion for the poor, the sick, the oppressed, when the fruits of the spirit are evident in the way we treat our family, coworkers, neighbors, people that aggravate us. I am not looking forward to the day when real persecution may come for us, but I would rather endure it as the early church did and show I am Christian by my love then potentially forfeit eternal life by pledging allegiance to a political party whose power is fleeting and who ultimately will not be able to keep persecution at bay.That Reminds me of a Song: I grew up Catholic, and while I wasn’t fond of some of the songs we sang in church—they felt like dirges—I loved one particular song we sang on occasion, and it came back to my memory as I wrote this blog. Bring Forth the Kingdom begins by referencing Matthew 5:13, “You are salt of the earth oh people, salt for the kingdom of God.” The refrain admonishes Christians to “Bring forth the kingdom of mercy, bring forth the kingdom of peace, bring forth the kingdom of justice, bring forth the city of God.” The sermons in the Catholic church were not as bible-focused as the sermons at the church I attend today, so back then I didn’t fully understand the concept of God’s kingdom and how we are to offer the world a foretaste of this eternal kingdom here and now. But this song had the right theology, and when I think of it, it makes me smile and strive to preach the gospel with the same lively spirit as conveyed by this song. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

Hello readers. Shortly after writing my last post, I started a new medication to treat migraines which for a couple weeks made me really sleepy and lacking in ambition. But I have not given up on my mission to speak out against Christian Nationalism. On February 17, my parents and I saw God and Country in the theater. I don’t generally like going to movie theaters because they crank up the volume unnecessarily loud, and you cannot pause the movie to go and get a drink or to comment on a scene. But Jemar Tisby, author of The Color of Compromise, an excellent book on the American church’s complicity with slavery and racism whose blog I also follow, urged people to see God and Country in theaters because if the movie does well in theaters, it is more likely to be picked up by a streaming platform, thus helping to better raise awareness about this dangerous political movement to the broader public who does not follow the news as closely as we do. Unfortunately, there were only two other women in the theater with us, and when Mom went to see it again with a friend, they had the theater to themselves. I hope it drew a larger crowd at other theaters.It was an excellent movie that I would highly recommend seeing if you haven’t already. I especially appreciated how the movie didn’t just address this movement’s threat to Democracy, but its threat to the reputation of Christianity itself in secular society, an important element that I believe Christian scholars have an obligation to address. To that end, the quote that stood out to me the most from this movie was spoken by a black man who represented Repairer’s of the Breach. (His name flashed on the screen for the sighted people, but I didn’t catch it.) He remarked that a hallmark of Christian Nationalism is that it is very loud regarding issues Jesus says very little about—abortion, same-sex marriage—and silent on issues Jesus spoke a lot about, like compassion for the poor.During my blogging hiatus, I also read The Kingdom The Power and the Glory, written by Tim Alberta, a reporter for The Atlantic, as well as a committed Christian whose father was a pastor. In 2019, shortly after the launch of American Carnage, a book Tim Alberta wrote that was critical of Donald Trump and his alliance with Evangelicals, his father died unexpectedly of a heart attack. When he returned home for the funeral, he and his wife were shocked by horrible things that were said to him about this work by church elders he had known most of his life, on the occasion of his father’s funeral. This, along with the last conversation with his father that now haunted him, inspired him to turn away from political reporting and embark on this project, which he viewed as a project of eternal significance, an investigation of his Evangelical tradition and its abandonment of the Gospel for imperial citizenship and earthly power. Each chapter began with a quote from Jesus, and then the chapter would illustrate how people in the Christian Nationalism movement would twist Jesus’s words out of context, or misinterpret them. We have all at some point in our lives been hurt by someone who misinterprets something we said, or twists something we said out of context, but as much as these human misunderstandings upset us, how much more must it upset Jesus to have his words twisted, or exploited for temporal, worldly power?While I work my remote call center job, I love to listen to Family Radio. For the first half of my typical shift, this station plays beautiful hymns, and then the second half is devoted to biblical teaching from several different pastors. I reveal this information not to sound holier than thou. I am not against people listening to secular music while they work, and I have done so myself. But while I am extremely grateful for this job with a company committed to the employment of blind people, where I have a level of support I don’t think I would find anywhere else, like any job in this fallen world, it causes me to grumble sometimes. It can get tedious, and sometimes takes me out of my comfort zone. I found that this station sooths me in a way that secular stations could not. The beautiful music for the first half of my shift is calming and has soothed my anxiety on a few occasions, and the Bible teaching of the second half is intellectually stimulating, alleviating some of the tedium. If a sermon is interrupted by a call, all of the programs are available as podcasts which I can give my undivided attention after work, but there is often three or four minutes of downtime between calls, long enough to hear most of the sermon and get the gist of it.One of these programs is Grace to You, the ministry of John MacArthur. Now, I must include a disclaimer here. I don’t fully condone all the teachings of John MacArthur. He is a complementarian—a view which espouses that there are significant differences between men and women—to the extreme. Of course, there are biological differences between men and women. Only women can give birth to babies or nurse babies, and because men produce testosterone, my dad has the physical strength to do certain chores that Mom and I do not have. But some of MacArthur’s teachings imply that women are less intelligent, less capable of living morally, which make me want to scream at him through the radio sometimes. In Jesus and John Wayne, Kristin Kobes Du Mez writes about how as president of Masters Seminary, John MacArthur failed to comply with the Violence Against Women Act, which I speculate is probably because he doesn’t believe women should be in college, the purpose of which is to prepare people for careers outside the home, to begin with. Their place is in the home. Of course, God’s ways are higher than our ways, and so it is true that when we have a visceral negative reaction to a pastor’s teaching, we need to pray and reflect on whether the teaching really disagrees with Scripture, or merely our culture. But still, I think, based on other sermons and commentaries I have read over the years, some of the implications for the role of women drawn from Paul’s writings are specific to the culture and circumstances of particular churches, and at some point, I am going to take him to task. But people are complex, and his teaching on other matters is spot-on. In a recent sermon discussing how Christians need to prioritize eternal life over this world, he said something that made me cheer. He had recently spoken to a prominent man in Washington who told him, “Everything that Christians do to put pressure to put their agenda through is counterproductive to the gospel because the people here see them as just another political pressure group with a temporal earthly agenda. They succumb to pressure because of money, but when the money and pressure run out, they revert to the way they used to be, only now they have a deep resentment for these people who pressured them to conduct themselves in a manner contrary to their own convictions.”In 2005, Bart Ehrman, a former Evangelical who became an agnostic, wrote a book called Misquoting Jesus. The book argues that the Bible cannot be trusted because we do not have the original manuscript, and scribes tasked with copying the Bible before the printing press sometimes intentionally made additions or changes to the Bible. For the record, of the 400,000 variants in the Bible manuscripts, the vast majority are insignificant discrepancies in spelling, grammar, punctuation and word order that do not affect the meaning of the passages. Less than 1 percent—around 400 words—are actually significant. Scholars are transparent about these discrepancies in footnotes and even these variants do not change the overarching cohesiveness of the Bible. But Jesus had compassion for people with doubts, questions. What really angered Jesus were hypocrites, and those who caused his children to stumble (Matthew 18:6). Almost all of my posts here have incorporated Scripture that is misrepresented or ignored by Christian Nationalism, and while I don’t fear the upcoming election because God is in control, I think it is time to start an ongoing series which I am titling “Misrepresenting Jesus” in which I will focus on a particular passage of Scripture and try to remind us all, myself as much as anyone what Jesus was really trying to say, and how we must resist the loud voices of shepherds with evil intentions, and trust only in the words of the Good Shepherd.That Reminds me of a Song: I realize this post was more of an update than a substantive reflection, but I thought you might enjoy a particularly soothing hymn played on Family Radio. I first heard This Is My Father’s World performed by Fernando Ortega, and it is beautiful in its own right. But I recently heard another version, performed by Michael O’Brien that is especially beautiful because he is accompanied by Timmy O’Brien—I bet that is his brother—and their lyrics, combined with the harmony thrills my heart. I hope you all enjoy the beauty of this song as well, and if I am not able to get another post together before Easter, I wish you a blessed Holy Week and Easter. Remember, He is risen, and because of this, we have nothing to fear from the political nonsense going on right now! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

In 1897, eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon asked her father if Santa was real, as some of her little friends were telling her there is no Santa Claus. A loyal reader of the New York Sun, her father suggested she pose her question to the newspaper because “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” The editor of The Sun published her letter and replied that her little friends were wrong, affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. “They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.” The existence of Santa Claus is as certain as the existence of love, generosity and devotion.This is such a beautiful letter I had a difficult time selecting just one quote from it. I encourage you to read it in its entirety. This letter came to mind because I think that this editor’s explanation to Virginia O’Hanlon is similar to what God is trying to explain to us through the Scriptures, the key difference of course being that I believe Scripture’s literal promise of eternal life will come to fruition. God’s promises are no mere figment of human imagination, but in our day and age, when a scientific worldview is predominant in our culture, it is difficult for even the most committed Christians not to feel the influence of this skeptical age. Yet the Bible is clear that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). In Mark 10:15, Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” In sermons I have heard on this passage over the years, the pastor explains that we must receive the kingdom of God with a spirit of humility. In Jesus’s day, children were not valued, and had very little social status in Roman society, and yet they approached Jesus with sincerity, whereas some people of high social status mistakenly thought their high position in this world would grant them entrance into God’s kingdom. But I also wonder if in this verse, Jesus is also trying to teach us that we must anticipate his kingdom with the same innocence, the same unvarnished joy as children anticipating the arrival of Santa Claus.When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from the forbidden tree allowing sin to enter the world, their sin separated them and us from God, and cursed all of creation. God longs to redeem us, and reverse the curse of sin, which is why he sent his son to atone for our sins, yet he revealed himself in such a way that no one would find him through intellect alone. “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate” (Isaiah 29:14, 1 Corinthians 1:19). Jesus also wasn’t fooled by the multitudes who followed him just to witness the miracles he was performing when their hearts were hard and he knew they had no interest in surrendering their lives to him. This is why he taught in parables, so that those sincerely seeking him would understand, but the eyes of those with hard hearts would be metaphorically blinded, unable to understand Christ’s message or receive the kingdom of God. Sadly, for all of our advances in scientific knowledge and technology, human nature hasn’t changed at all in two thousand years. Today, just as in Jesus’s day, there are people who refuse to accept Christ employing either scientific analysis to try and prove that God does not exist, or textual criticism to argue that the Bible is a “Big lie.” And even worse, there are grifters, people who pretend to believe, but exploit religion for purposes of wealth or political power. While I pray that God might soften the hearts of these people, I do not want to argue with these people today. There are apologists far more qualified than I am who argue the case far more eloquently than I could, and if they cannot change the hearts of these people—heck, if Jesus couldn’t change the hearts of many of the people in his day—I certainly won’t have any impact in this area. And no matter what I say, skeptics will cry that I am biased because I already presume God’s promises in the Bible are true. But in response, I ask, aren’t you also biased if you have already decided that God doesn’t exist? There is no such thing in this world as a completely impartial, unbiased person. We all have unique life experiences that inevitably shape our thoughts and attitudes.I am not qualified to give an answer to every scientific objection or textual criticism. All I know is when I sing sacred texts with my choir, I often find the music is so beautiful I cry. When I sit on the porch swing in Spring and hear the majestic call of the sandhill crane, or hear black-capped chickadees literally sing in coordinated harmony, or when my parents and I go for a walk or drive slowly with the windows rolled down and a warm breeze carries the aroma of lilacs in bloom I am filled with a sense of awe and wonder words cannot explain. In these moments, as John Eldredge eloquently describes in his book All Things New: Heaven, Earth and the Restoration of Everything You Love, I find that my heart also whispers, “This is what we were meant for” (Page 38). But when I visited my grandma in a stinky nursing home and Mom helped her eat gross pureed food—and when she passed away the day after Christmas—when I am incapacitated for the day with a migraine, when people I love make me irrationally angry and I quarrel with them, when I watch the news full of stories of war, petty partisan politics and environmental devastation, I have a nagging sense that it wasn’t supposed to be this way. As Blaise Pascal rhetorically asked in 1670, “What else does this craving, and this helplessness proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace?”But while I consider myself a committed Christian, I must confess that sometimes, I can identify with Virginia. I want to believe, to trust fully in God’s promises, but it is so hard sometimes not to be discouraged by the skepticism of our secular society and its view that this life is all there is. And while I can only speak for myself, I have a feeling I am not alone here. But I am convinced that if we committed Christians had a more tangible understanding of what being a citizen of Heaven will mean, and if we truly believed, fully trusted in these promises, we would sin less, realizing how short-sighted, silly and ridiculous all of our sin, from misguided Christian Nationalism, to my impatience and self-centered idolatry of worldly comfort and independence really is compared to God’s incredible eternal promises.So what will being a citizen of Heaven mean? If you remember nothing else from this post good Christian brothers and sisters, when Scripture speaks of eternal life, this does not mean some vague heaven where we sit on clouds and play harps. In fact, in his book Heaven, Randy Alcorn argues that this misconception is why even many committed Christians fear death. This kind of eternal life is boring, no life at all, and has no basis in Scripture. Randy Alcorn argues that the reason many Christians have this misconception about eternal life is because seminary schools where pastors are trained devote little if any attention to this subject, and the reason for this is because “Satan is determined to rob us of the joy we’d have if we believed what God tells us about the magnificent world to come” (Page 12). He does this by causing our weak minds to succumb to naturalism, the idea that what we cannot see isn’t real, or by convincing us that Heaven is a place of boring, unearthly existence so that we will focus on this life rather than the next, and be unmotivated to share our faith. “The blind must take by faith that there are stars in the sky. If they depend on their ability to see, they will conclude there are no stars” (Page 13). I take it by faith from my parents when they describe how beautiful the sky is some nights. And I also take it by faith that one day, I will get to see the sky for myself because Jesus spoke confidently of a coming renewal of all things (Matthew 19:28), and Peter, an original apostle who sat at Christ’s feet recognized that Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s promise to restore all things “as he promised long ago through his Holy prophets” (Acts 3:21). Isaiah 35:5-6 declares “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.” Whenever I hear of oppression or injustice in the news, or even if I am just having a discouraging day at work, I rejoice in Isaiah 65:21-22 which promises that “They—the people of the new Jerusalem—will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands.” This passage suggests that all oppression will cease, and that we will be doing work familiar to us, but this work will be free from the curse of sin. I also like to think that given other passages that describe gladness and singing in the New Jerusalem, and the fact that the purpose for our work will be glorifying God rather than meeting company quotas, there will be plenty of time for singing, probably even the freedom to sing while I work. And as much as I enjoy sitting on the porch swing and listening for the sandhill cranes and black-capped chickadees, I know I will be thrilled on that day when I get to witness the wolf living with the lamb, the leopard lying down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling feeding together, and a little child leading them” (Isaiah 11:6). I wonder if at first, we will freak out if we see an infant playing near the hole of a cobra, or a young child putting his hand into a viper’s nest (Isaiah 11:8) but we will soon realize we have nothing to fear because “they will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9). There are so many other beautiful passages I could reference, but I don’t want this post to turn into a novel. But you can bet I will be referencing more passages in the future whenever context allows.Some of my inspiration for this post I owe to a couple years of joyful Saturday conversations with my friends who were Jehovah’s Witnesses. I wrote about them last summer, and while I did not convert because many of their beliefs are theologically inaccurate, their belief that one day those who accept Christ will live on a paradise earth is correct, and they were not afraid to talk about it in literal terms. One of my friends mentioned a woman in their congregation who is autistic and nonverbal, and she loves to imagine the day when this woman will be able to talk to her heart’s content, and I mentioned how I cannot wait for the day when I can run, both arms swinging at my side without needing a cane, dog or sighted person to keep me safe, and gaze at the sky for myself. Conversations like this were a much-needed well of hope and joy in a difficult season for me, and I believe this kind of talk was why my friends aren’t rattled by current events like the rest of us are. When I brought this up to a friend at our church, she expressed the fear that too much talk of eternal life would cause us to be so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good. But Randy Alcorn points to C. S. Lewis who noted that history shows that Christians who contributed the most to the present world were those who thought most of the next. “We need a generation of heavenly minded people who see human beings and the earth itself not simply as they are, but as God intends them to be” (Page 21).Imagine that you were a diehard Taylor Swift fan and you managed to score tickets to one of her concerts. (I am not a Taylor Swift fan for the record, just trying to use a culturally relevant analogy). You would be so excited for the upcoming show that you would be humming her songs as you went about your days, and it would be difficult to resist telling your friends, neighbors, coworkers, anyone who will listen how awesome she is. You might be so excited you don’t wait until concert night to wear your friendship bracelets. We should anticipate God’s promises regarding our eternal heavenly citizenship with an even greater degree of excitement. We should “talk about them when you sit at home, and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (Deuteronomy 6:7). And all this talk should have us so excited we cannot wait to give the world a little foretaste of God’s kingdom via our treatment of the poor, minorities and asylum-seekers via our unconditional love even toward those we disagree with, via our priorities when we vote here and now.That Reminds me of a Song: While I was writing this, Brooks & Dunn’s song Believe, was playing in my head. The narrator of the song is a young man reflecting back on a couple summers he spent on the porch swing talking to an old man in his neighborhood. The old man had a lot of tragedy in his life, including the loss of his wife and child, but he knew he would see them in just a little while because he was confident in the “words written in red”, meaning the words Jesus spoke, which are written in red in the NIV bible. When the young man went off to college, and his mother called to tell him the old man died, the young man “didn’t know whether to cry or laugh” and this old man’s faith made such an impression on the young man that he too became convinced that it does not end with a slow ride in a hearse, that this world cannot be all there is. I don’t think this song would bring a tear to my eye if our God wasn’t real. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

You may have heard the story of how, in 1910, The Times posed a question to prominent writers, philosophers and religious leaders: “What’s wrong with the world?” The story goes that G. K. Chesterton, a theologian responded simply, “Dear Sirs, I am. Yours, G. K. Chesterton.” This story isn’t entirely accurate. G. K. Chesterton did write a letter to The Daily News in 1905 expressing this sentiment, though it was part of a much longer letter. I encourage you to read the full letter as it is very relevant to the times we are living in today. Though Chesterton’s statement is not as succinct and witty, it is still poignant: ‘The answer to the question “What is Wrong?” is, or should be, “I am wrong.” Until a man can give that answer, his idealism is only a hobby.’ My biggest fear when I started this blog, and one I haven’t fully shaken, is the fear that I will come off to you readers as self-righteous, someone who relishes pointing out the speck of sawdust in my brother’s eye while ignoring the plank in my own eye. Christian Nationalism is an ugly sin which I believe God is calling me to oppose, but it would be naïve to allow myself to believe that eradicating Christian Nationalism would solve all the problems of this fallen world. Christian Nationalism is only one type of invasive weed among the wide variety of sins that all too often choke off the good seed we would like to grow in our hearts. Of course, Jesus makes it clear through the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, that the weeds of sin are too prolific and entrenched for us to uproot on our own this side of heaven, which is why we trust in his grace and forgiveness. But since Jesus also had no tolerance of self-righteousness and hypocrisy, I sense it is time to introduce you to a few of the weeds I struggle with, lest anyone think my passionate opposition to Christian Nationalism is merely a hobby.This may shock some of you, but I hate going on vacation. Packing, especially having to plan out every outfit, is a tedious pain in the neck in my opinion. Once we arrive at our vacation destination, it isn’t long before I am homesick: homesick for familiar surroundings where I can flit about confidently, rather than having to learn my way around cautiously like a fish out of water; homesick for the independence of preparing my food in a familiar kitchen complete with tactile dots on the microwave rather than having to depend on family for help; homesick for a good night’s sleep free from the snoring or coughing of other family members or loud refrigerator or air conditioner units; homesick for peace and quiet to recover from the wicked migraines I often wake up with due to the change in climate or aforementioned lack of sleep; homesick for just the ability to retreat to my bedroom sanctuary to write or enjoy a good book as opposed to organized—or disorganized—family activities. I have felt this way since my teenage years, when children naturally start craving independence, but my hatred of vacations intensified when I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease in 2012, requiring me to eat a strict, gluten free diet. Now in addition to being homesick for independence, each trip also riddled me with anxiety, as some places we visited had limited gluten free options. I understand that travel is necessary on occasion, as is going to the dentist, but while the rest of the family views the vacation as a treat to savor for as long as possible with late checkout if possible, scenic routes or side trips, I just wish this vacation would end already and we could just get home! But as my church is studying the book of Daniel, it is starting to occur to me that the reason I hate going on vacation is that vacations are God’s way of testing my character. When my life is just humming along independently at home, it is easy to fool myself into thinking I am a righteous person. But nothing exposes my ugly shortcomings, my pride, my self-centered attitude like a few days in unfamiliar surroundings where I have to depend on others to cook my oatmeal. And unlike Daniel, I usually fail these character tests. I am a little better than I used to be. I used to have full meltdowns into tears, especially if I was tired and hungry and we were having a difficult time finding gluten free options. These days, we have gotten better about researching and planning, so the Celiac anxiety is less now, but I don’t think I have yet gotten through a trip without lashing out at a family member over something, or fuming in the backseat because I was unsuccessful talking my parents out of a side trip that was delaying our arrival home by several hours. When we finally do get home and I have had a good night’s sleep, and a bowl of oatmeal cooked properly, I am crushed by a guilty conscience and apologize for being a jerk, but then the next trip comes and once again “what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing” (Romans 7:19).At this point, I need to interrupt this blog for an example of comical/sad irony. The previous paragraph was written Saturday night, and I am coming back to write on Sunday night. I have to work starting at 2:00 most Sunday afternoons, but Mom and I still have plenty of time to go to the 10:45 church service and get home in time for a leisurely lunch. Usually, we come straight home, and are home by around 12:20, giving me time for a leisurely lunch plus about 40 minutes to read or listen to a podcast before work. But today, Mom was craving a fancy coffee from Panera Bread. I tried to convince her to take me home and go back for it because fancy coffees seem to take an eternity to prepare, but she chastised me, rightly in retrospect that this would be a silly waste of gas because Panera Bread was on the way home. So grudgingly, I waited in the car for what seemed like an eternity while she went in to get the coffee. I had just started to cool down when I noticed we had to stop for a train, and the train too seemed to take an eternity. If Mom didn’t insist on stopping for that stupid coffee, we wouldn’t be stuck behind this stupid train! When the train finally passed and we were moving, I just started to calm down when we had to stop for like three long red lights. To make a long story short, we finally made it home at 12:46. I had plenty of time to eat lunch, but didn’t really have spare time to do anything else before I had to start working, which made me mad. But then while listening to Christian hymns as I waited for phone calls, the comical irony hit me. I was angry, and acted out sinfully because I didn’t get home in time to get as much writing done as I had hoped, on the blog post lamenting my sin!I have no desire for a political position, or even a position as the CEO of a large corporation. Sure, such a position would offer power, status and potentially a lot of money, but such positions also come with a lot of stress and responsibility that does not appeal to me as a highly sensitive person who almost lost her mind with anxiety in a previous paralegal position over relatively small mistakes. But as the “baby” of the family, as well as a person with a disability, I sometimes lust after a different kind of power, a power motivated by envy of my siblings and peers who live independently. But due to various circumstances, I still live with my parents. I know I should be content, especially because my parents have given me the best of everything. They respect my privacy, and only ask me to pay for my medical insurance costs—which don’t come out to very much—so I don’t have to struggle, living paycheck to paycheck like many of my peers. I also recognize that if I lived on my own, I would have to work full-time to afford rent, and would be solely responsible for housekeeping, grocery shopping and cooking, likely leaving little time to pursue the mission of this blog. And during the pandemic, I came to a deeper appreciation for the companionship of my parents which still endures today. Most of the day, we are three adults doing our own things, but we always manage to sit around the table together for one or two meals each day, and although this may seem like a small thing, as I watched friends who live alone spiral into depression and anxiety, I came to appreciate what a blessing companionship is. And yet when my siblings come home, like the older son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, I sometimes resent how excited my parents get, how they roll out the red carpet for them, staying up late into the night to catch up with them, buying special food. And while I am sure this is not my siblings’ intention, and I am probably reading things into innocent statements that are unfair, sometimes my siblings say things that convince me they don’t see me as an autonomous adult, and sometimes my anger about this is so intense, I retreat to my room and wonder if this needs to be the year I throw caution to the wind and get a place of my own. Maybe then, I will finally be recognized as an adult. As an added bonus, depending on how far away I move from my parents, I could make my own travel arrangements for family vacations. I hate the fact that I have these thoughts, but it is as if the person I want to be has been hijacked.And worst of all, I am so full of pride that I never pray to God to help me overcome these sins, which is probably why I usually fail. “I just need to try harder,” I tell myself, forgetting that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). On our own, none of us stands a chance against these forces. Thank you Lord for inspiring me to write this post, and thank you for giving me the ability and the opportunity to speak out against Christian Nationalism. But I pray that in this endeavor, you will keep me humble, reveal my own shortcomings, make sure I never forget that even if Christian Nationalism can be eradicated, there will still be a lot wrong with this world until Christ returns because of impatient, self-centered, ungrateful, prideful sinners like me.That Reminds me of a Song: I have been listening to a lot of music from Bill and Gloria Gaither and the Gaither Vocal Band this month. My maternal grandma (Granny) passed away the day after Christmas, and she loved the Gaithers. She bought VHS tapes of their concerts, and introduced me to them in high school when I made the personal decision to commit my life to Christ. We enjoyed listening to Gaither videos together when I came to visit, so this music reminds me of her. And as I was writing this, Recovering Pharisee was playing in my mind. I love southern gospel songs like this, complete with banjo and fiddle, for their power to convey profound truths in a winsome, memorable way, and this song echoes the sentiment of this post brilliantly. I too am a recovering pharisee. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

The late Stuart Briscoe, the first senior pastor of my home church, liked to tell the story of how, before becoming a pastor, he worked at a bank. One day, a phone call came in that the boss didn’t want to deal with, so he told Stuart, “tell them I’m not here.” Stuart refused to comply with this request, so the boss grudgingly took the call. When the boss expressed his displeasure to Stuart after the call, Stuart explained that his loyalty was to God, and the Bible explicitly forbids lying. Furthermore, earthly loyalty is fickle, and therefore if someone is willing to lie for you, they would also be willing to lie about you someday under the right circumstances.God sprinkles all of our lives with small loyalty tests that I, a sinner, will be the first to admit I don’t always pass, and I’m sure Stuart Briscoe fell short on occasion as well. Will we worship God, or will we worship wealth, worldly pleasure, or career achievement? Will we reflect God’s love by loving our neighbor, or will we only love ourselves? In school, teachers give us textbooks and lecture notes to study, and then give us quizzes to test our knowledge. On a cosmic scale, God does the same thing. He gives us Scripture and the Holy Spirit to teach us how we should conduct ourselves, and then allows the world to throw temptations at us to test our character. Sanctification, the fancy theological word that describes the process of dying to sin, is a lifelong process. We will all fall short at times, and no one fully escapes the burden of sin this side of heaven.When Christian Nationalists opposed Bill Clinton in the 1990s, arguing that character matters, they had a valid point. We should all, regardless of our profession or socioeconomic status, be people of good character. But character is especially critical for people who hold political positions which present people with unique kinds of temptation, especially the temptation to become addicted to, or corrupted by a perception of God-like power. One stroke of the pen can impact the lives of millions of constituents, or alter the course of history. But what distinguishes citizens of this world—which I believe Christian Nationalists, wolves in sheep’s clothing ultimately are—from true Christians is that true Christians recognize that character always matters.Daniel and his friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah) understood this. I think if I were in Shadrach, Meshach or Abednego’s situation, I would have, in my human worldly nature thought, at least for a split second, “would it really be a big deal if I just fell down and worshipped Nebuchadnezzar’s  silly gold image, the loyalty test he gave all of the officials in his court, to avoid a painful death in a fiery furnace?” But because Daniel and his friends resolved to be loyal to God alone, God gave them wisdom beyond their teenage years and they understood that if they conformed in this matter, their integrity would be compromised and before long, they would take the easy road of conformity in every situation until they were full-fledged friends of the world, and because Babylon worshipped other gods, and Babylonian values were contrary to God’s values, they knew that conforming to Babylonian culture would make them enemies of God.Our pastor pointed out another detail in this passage that is often overlooked. The image that Nebuchadnezzar set up was nine feet wide and ninety feet tall. The pastor encouraged us to go home and try to build a tower ten blocks high with sugar cubes or dominoes. A tower with a 10 to 1 ratio is wobbly, unstable. It wouldn’t have taken much for Nebuchadnezzar’s statue to come tumbling down and crush anyone lying prostrate under it. It is possible Daniel and his friends refused to worship the image, not only to protect themselves from defilement by the world, but because they literally didn’t trust that tower. They wanted to be ready to run if it started to topple. All worldly loyalties are like that tower. Career achievement, or wealth, or access to power may seem like magnificent, strong towers at first, but if we worship these things, they will one day crush us, betray us. The pastor pointed out that when God commands us to have no other gods besides him, this is not because God struggles with insecurity. It is because he loves us and doesn’t want us to be crushed by things that are temporary when our heavenly citizenship is the only thing that will endure forever.It is unbiblical to draw direct parallels between events that took place in ancient Israel, and the United States. While we have been uniquely blessed, enjoying a level of freedom and prosperity unprecedented in human history, God never entered into a covenant with the United States. A remnant of Christ’s followers will be salvaged from every nation, including the United States. But ultimately, we are just another worldly empire that will one day be abolished (Daniel 2:43-45). Some Bible scholars have speculated that the feet of the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, made of a mixture of iron and baked clay, represent the United States, but others disagree, and in any case, such speculation is unproductive. We may not be the last empire, but numerous passages in the other prophetic books, and the New Testament confirm that in God’s perfect time, all earthly empires will pass away.But as the pastor discussed Nebuchadnezzar, I couldn’t help thinking of the similarities between Nebuchadnezzar and a certain former president who wants to be president again. He also likes to use loyalty tests. Before he appointed anyone to his cabinet, he could do a preliminary loyalty test of combing the internet to see if they had ever criticized him in the past. If so, they were deemed ineligible, and if someone sang his praises in an editorial or interview, they were appointed, even if they were completely unqualified. Once appointed, this former president would test their loyalty by demanding they engage in unethical or illegal conduct. It is not our place to judge where people loyal to this former president stand with God, but even from an earthly perspective, I think it is reasonable to speculate that those who realized they needed to run from the wobbly tower of loyalty to Trump and do the right thing (recuse themselves from presiding over an investigation, testify truthfully before a bipartisan Congressional hearing, fulfill their constitutional duty to certify election results that even Trump-appointed judges ruled were legitimate) while they may currently be experiencing a metaphorical fiery furnace of vicious social media posts, demotion from prestigious positions, even death threats, they will ultimately be treated kindly by the history books, whereas those who remain blindly loyal to Trump may be enjoying their access to power now, but will never be trusted once Trump is out of the picture, and history will remember them as cowards.The repercussions of Christian Nationalist pastors and politicians loyal to Trump have already proven devastating. When pastors like Robert Jeffress decided to get behind Trump, they acknowledged that his character was the complete antithesis of the example set by Christ, and their own exacting moral standards for people in public office. But they reasoned, Christianity in America was under siege by secular liberal elites and Godless government bureaucrats. Perhaps by abandoning Christian virtue and electing someone mean and tough, a “fighter” who could be used by God just as God used pagan kings in the Old Testament, this nation could be saved.But this way of thinking is the definition of hypocrisy, and Jesus had no mercy for hypocrites (Matthew 23:13-15). And this hypocrisy is only crushing the Christian cause in America, dividing churches, causing pastors who try to speak the truth to leave the ministry discouraged, causing lifelong Christians to abandon the faith because they have been so wounded by this hypocrisy, and preventing good people—some of whom are my friends and family—from accepting Christ because the influence of Christian Nationalism has become so pervasive in our culture they don’t realize this kind of Christianity bares no resemblance to the teachings of Christ. I would also argue this way of thinking is a form of blasphemy. The God who created the heavens and the earth, the God who can command a storm to subside (Luke 8:25), the God who conquered death, does not need a “fighter” to preserve his church through worldly political power and legislation. He actually doesn’t need us at all, as John the Baptist warned the pharisees and Sadducees when he said “I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham” (Matthew 3:9). But God invites us to be “Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20), and the defining feature of Christ’s heavenly kingdom is radical love. I am still a work in progress who doesn’t have all the answers, cannot fully comprehend what such perfect love looks like in every situation the world throws at us. But an excellent place to start would be running as fast as we can away from the wobbly tower of Christian Nationalism and resolving to be loyal to the real Jesus. When Nebuchadnezzar witnessed God saving Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from the fiery furnace, even this capricious Pagan king came to respect God, and promoted Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the province of Babylon. And if we American Christians, who are called by Christ’s name, will humble ourselves and pray and seek his face and turn from our wicked ways, then will God hear from heaven and forgive our sin and…he won’t heal our land because he never entered into a covenant with the United States, but he might heal our churches, and Christ’s reputation in a watching pluralistic society (a play on 2 Chronicles 7:14, which Christian Nationalists, especially Mike Pence like to quote out of context).That Reminds me of a Song: The song that came to mind while writing this isn’t explicitly a Christian song, but I have sensed God speaking to me through the practical wisdom of country music, and I cannot think of a more fitting song for the theme of this post than Aaron Tippin’s You’ve Got to Stand for Something.” The narrator is a son, imparting wisdom from his father. I pray we might let this song be a rallying cry for all of us Christians, to stand for Christ so we don’t fall for worldly things that will only betray us, to never compromise what’s right, to uphold our family name, our family being the family of God we were all adopted into when we committed our lives to Christ. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

On January 6 while I was finishing my Christmas series, most of the blogs I follow, my co-conspirators in the fight against Christian Nationalism were reflecting on the third anniversary of the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. These blogs discussed how Christian Nationalism played a significant role in this attack, and argued, correctly, that Christian Nationalism is a threat to democracy and the liberty we cherish. I completely support the efforts of these bloggers because while all forms of earthly government fall short, I think the values outlined in our constitution, when we live up to them—especially our Founders’ commitment to religious liberty and the separation of church and state—are the best of all the imperfect systems of this world for ensuring the dignity of all people, including Christians. The fact that our government does not arrest or kill anyone because of their religious beliefs is a privilege we should not take for granted, but religious liberty should also include opposing legislation based on religious beliefs that are not shared by everyone. But I feel compelled to focus more on how Christian Nationalism is a threat to the credibility of Christianity itself. It troubles me that some of the most prominent voices speaking out against Christian Nationalism are atheist organizations like the Freedom from Religion Foundation, or people who identify themselves as former Christians. While they have good intentions, they speak as if the Christianity part of Christian Nationalism is the problem, when I believe it is the nationalism that is the problem. As I discussed when reflecting on Malcolm X, I think these people have tasted so much of the rotten fruit produced by Christian Nationalism that they are not aware, or have forgotten how sweet the true message of Christianity is.I was excited to find out that my church was going to start this year with a sermon series on the book of Daniel, as I have studied this book before and it has so much content relevant for our world today. But while I understand the importance of the church staying out of politics, I found myself frustrated that the pastor didn’t more directly address the implications of this message for our political climate, implications that evangelicals who listen to around 40 hours of partisan media for every one hour in church each week may miss. So with all due respect to my pastor, who I humbly acknowledge has more education and life experience than I do, I feel compelled to write my own reflections based on his sermons for the next few weeks on this blog.The summer after eighth grade, I had the privilege of traveling to Italy with a children’s choir I sang with. The highlight of this trip was the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sing a Saturday evening mass at Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Before the trip, we were strongly encouraged to learn some basic Italian. While perfection wasn’t expected, we were told that the Italian people appreciate when tourists make an effort to speak their language. The choir director also hired an etiquette coach to show us the slightly different European customs for using eating utensils, as making an effort to do as the Romans do (literally) also shows respect. Showing respect was not only the right thing to do. It was also important because due to George W. Bush’s foreign policy decisions, and the loud, arrogant, ethnocentric behavior of “ugly American” tourists before us, not all Europeans thought highly of Americans. We understood that we were unofficial ambassadors from America, and we wanted to represent America well. Despite this preparation, we all felt like fish out of water, and I am sure it was very obvious to the Italians that we were Americans as well. Sometimes, the implications of this were comical. For example, for some reason, whenever my mom who accompanied me tried to order two plates of food, trying to communicate through hand gestures that one was for her and one was for me, they would give her four plates. But if I recall, we shared the extra food with people at our table and given that we were suburban Americans not accustomed to so much walking on old cobblestone roads, the extra food did not go to waste. But one hot afternoon when we had time to visit the Trevi Fountain, we decided to treat ourselves to a scoop of gelato from a nearby stand. But the cup was filled to overflowing, and as Mom and I shared it, some of it spilled on the bench near the Trevi Fountain where we were sitting. Mom noticed that an Italian cop was pointing at us and giving us a dirty look, and terrified, Mom frantically cleaned up the spill and said we had to throw the rest of the gelato away. I was disappointed, but I completely understood her thought process. While we make every effort to be law-abiding citizens here in America, we would not be so fearful if a cop yelled at us for spilling ice cream on a monument in this country because we are U.S. citizens who understand our country’s laws, and our rights.But the Bible is clear that we are supposed to feel like fish out of water in our countries of earthly citizenship too, because we are citizens of heaven, and I think at the root of Christian Nationalism is a failure to appreciate this. In The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren says, “In God’s eyes, the greatest heroes of faith are not those who achieve prosperity, success and power in this life, but those who treat life as a temporary assignment and serve faithfully, expecting their promised reward in eternity” (Page 51).The most well-known story in chapter 1 of the book of Daniel is when Daniel, who was among the best and brightest of the nobility in Judah and was kidnapped and taken to Babylon for training to serve king Nebuchadnezzar, resolved that he was not going to defile himself by eating the royal food and wine offered to him from the king’s table. Instead, he asked the guard appointed to Daniel and his friends Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah to test them by giving them only vegetables and water for ten days, after which time he could compare their appearance with that of those who ate the royal food. Sure enough, at the end of this ten day trial period, Daniel and his friends looked healthier and better nourished than the young men who ate the royal food. I have seen this passage referenced in articles about healthy eating in a Christian context. You could think of the royal food in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace as the modern American diet—I imagine lots of red meat, maybe cheese and definitely decadent dessert options—and while being plump was once a sign of wealth and status even as recently as my grandparents’ generation, science has proven that a lower-calorie plant-based diet is much healthier. But that is not what this passage is really about. The Bible does not say that Daniel didn’t want to eat the royal food because he needed to lose weight, or because he feared the temptation of so much decadent food would cause him to gain the freshmen 15. The Bible says that he did not want to “defile himself” by eating the royal food (Daniel 1:8). By refusing to eat the royal food, Daniel was declaring to Nebuchadnezzar that his citizenship was not for sale.In Daniel’s day, Babylon was the superpower, wealthy, prosperous, even decadent. On the other hand, his homeland in the southern region of Israel, was once part of a powerful, prosperous empire, but due to the mismanagement of kings who disobeyed God, was now a backwater region where people barely got by in a subsistence economy a region that was weak and easy to conquer. Nebuchadnezzar was hoping that by wining and dining Daniel and his friends, he could shift their loyalty, so that when they returned to govern Judah on Nebuchadnezzar’s behalf, they would praise Babylonian culture and customs, and shift the loyalty of the rest of Judah’s people.The early church described in the book of Acts lived by Daniel’s example. They had no political power, and in fact faced brutal persecution, but they endured this without compromising their faith because they understood that their citizenship was in Heaven. When Constantine outlawed the persecution of Christians and gave them political power, the allure of this worldly peace and comfort is understandable. But before long, this newfound privilege corrupted Christians so that they forgot how it felt when they were persecuted, and used the sword to persecute others. In short, they became a friend of the world, and “anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God” James 4:4). And just as a former U.S. citizen who decides to join a terrorist organization intent on harming America is no longer fit to be an ambassador for the United States, Christians who allow themselves to be metaphorically wined and dined with access to political power to spread their faith through legislation rather than love, are no longer effective ambassadors for Christ who preached that in his kingdom, the meek shall inherit the earth, and the humble will be exalted. And this, in a nutshell is a large factor behind why the secular world does not think highly of Christians these days. Just as respectful Americans should be embarrassed by the bad reputation “ugly Americans” have given us abroad, true Christians should be embarrassed/heartbroken by the behavior of pastors who twist Scripture to champion Christian Nationalism, giving Christianity a bad reputation in secular society, and even leading astray kind, well-intentioned Christian friends and neighbors who are not as educated in Scripture and thus may not even realize they are selling their heavenly citizenship when they practically worship a candidate whose life is the antithesis of Christian virtue but who panders to them with promises of political power. So I implore you, when you travel abroad, don’t be an “ugly American.” But even more important, during our temporary stay on earth in our countries of earthly citizenship, we must make every effort not to be “ugly Christians” as the behavior of “ugly Christians” could have eternal consequences.That Reminds Me of a Song: In the spirit of keeping it Christmas forever, and given that I often think in song, I thought it would be fun to end each post with a song that came to mind while writing the post, because the wonderful thing about our Christian faith is that it has inspired so much beautiful music that can be savored any time of year. So for this post, I leave you with Carrie Underwood’s Temporary Home. The whole song is beautiful, as the characters, a little boy in foster care, and a single mother in a half-way house understand that their adversity is only temporary, and the culmination of the song, the old man in the hospital bed, is a poignant reminder that our lives here with the curse of sin and death are only temporary. This song brings a tear to my eye every time I hear it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

For some people, Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) strikes during the holiday season. Sometimes, this is due to the loss of a loved one, and at a time when everyone around them is in a festive mood, eagerly anticipating gathering with family, the absence of this loved one can feel more pronounced. The holiday season also comes at a time when the days are at their shortest and the weather is getting colder, and for some people, this absence of sunlight darkens their mood. While I have empathy for these people, I started noticing even around third or fourth grade that my gloomy mood would come over me after the holidays, sometime between December 26 and January 2. While I cannot see the Christmas lights, I can feel the joyful mood they ignite in everyone around me. I love the special music of Christmas, the smell of cookies baking, the happy bustle of shoppers and the sweet background music of the Salvation Army bells ringing outside many stores. I sing in a choir and I love how during the holiday season, people who don’t normally listen to choral music fill concert venues out of tradition, and people who don’t normally go to church are stirred to attend on Christmas Eve, filling the sanctuary with joyful noise, and at the end of every service, the warmth and cozy fragrance of candle smoke. After a month or so of such an intense spirit of joy, I have always found it difficult to transition back to ordinary life. That first trip back to a store on December 26 when all is silent except for a few people returning gifts or looking for bargains on Christmas decorations for next year, that first day back at school struggling through Math knowing there was nothing fun to look forward to for months always felt like a bucket of ice water to the face.This year, my SAD has been a little more intense than usual because on the morning of December 26, my maternal grandmother (Granny) passed away. But in general, my SAD has actually been less intense in adulthood than it was during childhood. A small part of this could be attributed to the fact that my life has actually been easier as an adult, especially post-pandemic, than it was as a child. Being able to work and take classes remotely so that I don’t have to venture out into the cold and snow and ice as often, and having paid my dues struggling through Math so that I can get a full night’s sleep and have so much more time and energy for things I enjoy, has vastly improved my January mood. But I have also noticed a correlation between an improved attitude toward January, and a more mature Christian faith.For most holidays, I agree with Jane Kamensky’s assessment that they are about what we aspire to be in an ever-changing now. But Christmas is different in that I think this holiday for Christians—and everyone else, though they don’t realize it—is about what we wish this world could be, and one day will be. I think this is why even people who don’t identify as Christian enjoy the nostalgic songs about families gathering together with no mention of any family drama, or songs yearning for peace on earth, good will toward men. It explains how during World War I, a group of German and British soldiers came to a beautiful Christmas truce where for one night, they put down their guns and sang carols together. (The above link is a PBS screen play that is behind a paywall but it is beautiful, and the music is awesome, well worth the cost of becoming a PBS passport member if you are at all interested.) But in this broken world, Christmas does not last forever. The soldiers were eventually forced to return to the status quo of war. Family gatherings do not always live up to the expectations of nostalgic songs, and in fact Christmas can exacerbate family dramas. The Christmas decorations must come down, and we must return to the realities of school or a stressful/boring job with not even a cookie for comfort in January because we ate too many in December. I wonder if on that first Christmas when the angels appeared to the shepherds in the field and they abandoned their sheep to come and worship Jesus, if after seeing this incredible miracle, they had a difficult time transitioning back to their mundane shepherding duties.It seems fitting to end this series with a song that expresses this sentiment, because the wonderful thing about music is that no matter how complicated an emotion you may be feeling, songs prove that others have felt the same way, and their talent setting emotions to music can be very comforting. I couldn’t decide on just one song to convey this emotion. There are three songs I have heard that each add a beautiful layer to this sentiment. Elvis Presley’s If Every Day Was Like Christmas sings like a lament. You can almost hear him crying after each verse that conveys the magic of Christmas when he sings the refrain, “why can’t every day be like Christmas? Why can’t that feeling go on endlessly? For if every day could be just like Christmas, what a wonderful world this would be.”When I was in high school, Dad brought home an Alan Jackson Christmas album from the library, and Mom and I both loved one song in particular, Let it be Christmas. The refrain of this song is actually where I found the inspiration for the title of this series: “Let every heart sing, let every bell ring. A story of hope and joy and peace.” As Christians, we understand the hope and joy and peace he is referring to, and he also subtly references the birth of Christ when he sings let it be Christmas “in what this day means and what we believe,” but it is not an explicitly religious song. Yet another phrase in the refrain beautifully captures the Christmas spirit that I think Jesus intended: “let anger and fear and hate disappear. Let there be love that lasts through the year.” If enjoyed with proper perspective, there is nothing wrong with enjoying our culture’s secular traditions, exchanging gifts with loved ones, putting up beautiful decorations. But as Christians, we know that Christmas is not just a day or even a season. It is the attitude of our hearts. From television interviews I have seen, I know that Alan Jackson believes in Christ, yet maybe he recognized how being too heavy-handed with Christian references can alienate people who may not be ready to commit their lives to Christ, or even people who want to believe in Christ but who are experiencing a season of doubt after being wounded by fellow Christians. This song expresses a longing for Christmas to last forever, but frames this sentiment with a mature perspective. This song implies that the country roads lined with green mistletoe, the city streets where a thousand lights glow cannot last all year, but the attitude of our hearts, an attitude where love overpowers anger and fear and hate every day of the year is the aspect of Christmas that really matters, the Christ of Christmas if you will, and if Christians emulate Christ, the spirit of Christmas can last all year.Perry Como’s I Wish It Could be Christmas Forever also focuses for the most part on the secular magic of Christmas, the sparkling lights, the candy canes and mistletoe, children singing carols we know. But the very last phrase of the refrain struck me. “If love and peace on earth could always stay, I know it could be Christmas every day.” I don’t know anything about Perry Como’s religious beliefs, but regardless, this song implies that we all long for love and peace on earth. But very few of us, given our fallen state, look to the right source for this love and peace. The secular world either believes peace is possible one day, but look to policies, or progress or education to achieve it, when none of these things address the root of the problem, our hearts. Or, they have given up on the possibility that there will ever be peace in their lives—forget about peace on earth—(or in Christian lingo, a lifting of the curse of sin,) and instead medicate the ache in their hearts with a season of unrealistic expectations, excessive spending, eating, drinking or decorating. Christian Nationalists believe that Christ will return and there will be peace on earth one day, but they confuse Christian love with Christian supremacy. Rather than emulating Christ, gently beckoning unbelievers toward him, showing we are Christians by our love, as my mom used to sing in Sunday school, they seek to force Christianity on unbelievers through legislation. Rather than advocating for an end to war, reflecting Christ, the Prince of Peace, they advocate for the American equivalent of Pax Romana, (Roman peace) an artificial peace achieved by projecting military strength, believing that our military strength is a sign of God’s favor. Rather than using the Christmas season as an opportunity to reflect Christ in a winsome way to people of other faiths, they declare a “war on Christmas” if there is a Menorah, but not a nativity scene on a courthouse lawn. I think all of these songs challenge us in a gentle way to be better. It is natural to be a little blue when all the Christmas festivities end, and there is still most of the long, cold winter ahead. But as Christians, we have an advantage over the secular world because we know that we don’t really need the secular traditions of Christmas to find joy. We know that Christ, not the store-bought Christmas lights, is the true light of the world, and that peace is not just an impossible dream to sing about, a nostalgic sentiment we manufacture for one day out of the year, or a privilege only reserved for “Christian nations” with a strong military, but something that will one day be a permanent reality for the whole world when Christ returns, the curse of sin is lifted and we enjoy eternal life and we don’t need to win culture wars to proclaim this good news. In fact, while I hope we never experience real persecution for our beliefs—churches being bombed, Christians being arrested, even executed—as the early church faced, and as millions of Christians face today in the global south, it is worth remembering that regions where Christians are persecuted are where Christianity often grows most rapidly because Christianity tested by the fires of persecution is often more genuine and true to the teaching of Christ. Let us not take our historically unprecedented freedom to worship for granted. What if, in 2024, we lived as though we truly believe what we profess to believe? What if our thoughts and attitudes, and our interactions with friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, the poor and marginalized in our society, those we disagree with politically, offered a foretaste of the truth that because Christ came into our world to dwell among us and save us from the curse of sin, and will one day return again, it really will be Christmas forever? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

My favorite speaker at the 2023 Evolving Faith Conference which I attended virtually in October was a Native American author and activist, Dr. Randy Woodley. He remarked that when the Puritans and Pilgrims came to America, they encountered a people who were more Christ-like than them, despite never officially hearing the name of Jesus. But because of the way Christian Nationalism—the merging of American and Christian identities—has distorted Christianity, European Christians, and eventually their descendants would not appreciate God’s incredible general revelation of himself to these indigenous people. Over the summer, I read The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich. It is the first book in a nine-book series that Erdrich, an Ojibwe woman, felt compelled to write as an answer to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series. I loved the Little House series as a child, but reading it as an adult, you do notice that it unfortunately cast Native Americans in a negative light, which was the prevailing attitude of white settlers in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s day. The Birchbark House poignantly illustrates Randy Woodley’s point. While indigenous people did not know the name of Jesus or have access to the Bible, they showed reverence for the Great Spirit that created the earth and provided for them, and while white settlers were exploiting the earth, they lived in harmony with it as Scripture calls all of us to do.Of course, Christian Nationalism is not a new Trump-era phenomenon, and in fact, you could argue that in Europe where each country had an official state religion—a particular denomination of Christianity that everyone was required to practice—Christian Nationalism was even more pronounced. Since 1492, European explorers have rationalized their exploitation of indigenous people with the belief that they were simultaneously fulfilling Jesus’s Great Commission, preaching the gospel to the ends of the earth. In this sense, the power that the Bible held was exciting. But Christian Nationalism is a case and point proving the wisdom of Jesus’s admonition that a man cannot serve two masters, because the Bible is terrifying in the power it gives to the oppressed. The true gospel would come into direct conflict with the unprecedented expansion and wealth of European empires, and eventually the United States, which would not have been possible without slavery and exploitation. Hence, white missionaries preaching the gospel to slaves talked a lot about Colossians 3:22 (“slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord”) and were careful to steer clear of God’s liberation of the Israelite slaves, and his retribution against their oppressors in Egypt. In their own literature, white people portrayed Jesus as a warrior, but literature given to indigenous people overseas portrayed Jesus as a docile, suffering servant.But in a course on the history of the expansion of Christianity from the time of the book of Acts to the present which I had the opportunity to take at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, I learned about one French Jesuit missionary who was beautifully progressive for his time. Father Jean De Brebeuf understood that you could not share the gospel of Christ in a winsome way without first learning the language, and understanding and appreciating the culture of the indigenous people. In a document outlining instructions to fellow missionaries to the Huron people, the first statement read: “You must have a sincere affection for the Huron—looking upon them as ransomed by the blood of the Son of God, and as our brethren with whom we are to pass the rest of our lives.” In a time when many of his contemporaries at best treated indigenous people like ignorant children who needed to be civilized by the superior white missionaries, and at worst debated whether indigenous people overseas were fully human, Father Jean De Brebeuff warmed my heart. The theme of the other instructions basically centered on being a courteous guest in their culture, for example eating what they offer you without complaint (fish that is often dirty, half-cooked and tasteless by French standards) assisting them with the fire at camp, and being careful not to bring sand or water into the canoe. It was so refreshing not to see words like “heathen” or “barbarian” in this document, words which were commonplace in many other primary source documents in Brebeuf’s day. But the coolest thing Jean De Brebeuf did in my view was compose a Christmas carol in the Huron language while recovering from a broken collarbone, a carol which he presented to them as a gift in 1642.In 2018, my choir sang this carol, ‘Twas in the Moon of Wintertime, and I am ashamed to confess that at the time, knowing nothing about the origins of this carol, and not bothering to research this, which I could have easily done, I wasn’t fond of it. I remember singing it with slight annoyance and an attitude of cultural superiority viewing it as a strange, almost sacrilegious retelling of the Christmas story. Now that I have been enlightened, I pray God will give me the opportunity to sing it again someday.There is some disagreement among scholars as to the most authentic English translation of Brebeuf’s carol as when this carol was first translated into English by Canadian choral master and poet Jesse Edgar Middleton, the last people who spoke the Wyandot language of the Huron people were dying. My choir sang Jesse Edgar Middleton’s translation, but you can hear another version of the carol which gives you an idea of how it would have sounded in the Huron language, with the last two verses in English. But despite this disagreement over the proper translation of this carol, what matters is Brebeuf’s beautiful motivation behind the composition of this carol. Set to the tune of a French song with lyrics in the Wyandot language that told the Christmas story using terminology familiar to the indigenous people—wandering hunters in place of shepherds, and chiefs in place of wisemen as examples—Brebeuf shares the gospel in a manner which melded his French culture with the culture of the indigenous people he served, respecting the beauty and collective wisdom of both.Unfortunately despite all of our moral progress, Jean De Brebeuf is ahead of many white theologians even today, who despite living in a pluralistic society where in theory the collective wisdom of all cultures should be appreciated, still view the perspectives of indigenous people, people of other faiths, and even the theology of African-American Christians as inferior. This carol should serve as a gentle rebuke, a reminder that all people are God’s image-bearers, and as such, God’s general revelation to people of all cultures can be found and should be cherished. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

Most likely, you have heard Handel’s Messiah—or at least parts of it—as choirs and symphonies all over the Western world perform it around Christmas or Easter. The Hallelujah Chorus is from Handel’s Messiah and is so thrilling that even people who aren’t into classical music love it.I have performed it three times with my choir, and I think I have seen it five times as an audience member, but it never gets old. I don’t think it ever will get old for me. In fact each time I see it or perform it, I love it all the more. My choir performed it again this past Sunday. My best friend in the choir is thirty years older than me and has lost count of how many times she has performed it. But as we walked off the stage together after Sunday’s performance, we were both thrilled anew by it, and wondered how there can possibly be people who don’t believe in God, as only God could inspire the composition of something so beautiful.But for those readers less enthusiastic about sitting through this two hour composition, maybe guys whose wives made them attend because culture is good for you, I get it. (If performed in its entirety, it is closer to three hours, but most choirs these days sing an abbreviated version because apparently people these days can sit for a three hour movie or sporting event, but not a beautiful classical work. Okay, I’m done ranting.) But even my full appreciation of this piece had to be acquired. For one thing, the piece is loaded with melismas—a musical term for one word stretched out over several notes—and this, combined with just the operatic style of singing can make it difficult to understand what the soloists are singing. But I found this awesome resource that gives the lyrics for each movement, and the Bible verses they are drawn from. I can also empathize with modern Americans not having the attention span to appreciate such a long composition, especially given that each movement is a repetition of one or two verses multiple times over. But if you listen closely, you will notice that Handel’s Messiah is a dramatization of the entire redemption story, from the prophecy foretelling the coming of the Messiah, to Christ’s redemption of humanity through his death on the cross, to Christ’s resurrection which destroys the power of death. Each movement consists of only a few words repeated multiple times, but behind each repetition is emotion. Behind the music, you can hear the comfort that the ancient Israelites must have felt when Isaiah foretold the coming of the Messiah in a period of warfare and spiritual darkness, the sorrow felt by Jesus when he is rejected, and the joy of singing, and knowing, that He shall reign forever and ever, and if we accept his sacrifice for our sins and do our best to follow Him, we will also be resurrected to dwell with him. In 1742 when this work was first performed, before there was television and movies with sophisticated special effects that dulled our minds and shortened our attention spans, this musical dramatization of the redemption story was their equivalent to a movie.For my part, I think, and feel closer to God in song than when I am just reading Scripture or praying on my own. I have tried, and had a terrible time cultivating the spiritual discipline of daily Scripture reading and prayer. But I love listening to Christian music while I work or write, especially artists like Marty Goetz, who draws many of his songs from the psalms, and sometimes, I sense God speaking to me while I listen to this music, even though I am not consciously devoting myself to prayer. So for me, Handel’s Messiah is not only a masterful composition of classical music. It is one long, beautiful, contemplative prayer set to music.So I hope all you readers might set aside time this season to appreciate Handel’s Messiah in its entirety. But if you are unable to, at least make a point of finding a recording of For Unto Us a Child is Born. The lyrics for this movement are drawn from Isaiah 9:6: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (NIV).  (Handel’s Messiah, and most choral works for that matter, use the King James Bible because the old English translations lend themselves more beautifully to singing). This verse is often read during advent at church, but George Frideric Handel brings out the joyful implications of this verse in a way that is difficult to fully appreciate when merely reading it. And I think part of the problem for the American church these days is that we—both conservative and liberal Christians—don’t fully believe or trust in the powerful implications of this verse. As Russel Moore observed in his book Losing Our Religion, “Some are panicked about rising secularism and what they fear will be hostility to the church, but act in ways that tie the witness of the church to forms of power that actually fuel secularization” (Page 24). This is a hallmark of Christian Nationalism, a fear-driven philosophy that in 1980 caused evangelicals to reject one of their own (Jimmy Carter) in favor of Ronald Reagan because they believed Christianity was in peril and needed a president who would project strength. In 2016, this same fear would lead 81 percent of evangelicals to support Donald Trump. But those of us who oppose Donald Trump and the powerful influence of Christian Nationalism that got him elected are also on some level operating from a place of fear that Christianity won’t survive the scandals, the hypocrisy, the loss of credibility that Christian Nationalism has caused. This song is a gentle, joyful reminder that we have nothing to fear. While we as Christians have a responsibility to champion social justice, which I believe entails electing leaders of good character, with a consistent prolife ethic, we can all find solace in knowing that no matter the outcome of the 2024 election, Jesus said that nothing, not even the gates of hell would prevail against his church (Matthew 16:13-20), and while earthly governments are necessary, even ordained by God in this current world to maintain order, all forms of earthly government are imperfect but only temporary. One day, the government will be on Christ’s shoulders. We will call him Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of (real) peace, not the fragile peace powerful countries attain by projecting military strength. And as this movement dramatizes so masterfully, this should bring us abundant Christmas joy every day of the year. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

Last Friday’s episode of Washington Week on PBS featured a discussion of evangelical leaders who continue to support Donald Trump. They showed a clip of Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, proclaiming that eight years ago, this country was in a death spiral, straying away from the truth of God’s word, and then came Donald Trump down that escalator to turn this country around. When Tim Alberta, a writer for The Atlantic asked him about the contradiction between Donald Trump’s behavior and the teachings of Jesus, Jeffress said we are not electing a Sunday school teacher. Christians in America are under siege, and we need the toughest, meanest SOB we can find to save it.As churches go, I feel fortunate that my home church is on the mild end of the Christian Nationalism continuum. There is not an American flag on the altar, and church leadership stays out of politics. They have never endorsed a candidate, or invited a political candidate to speak. But it troubled me when on the weekend of Veteran’s Day, a pastor invited all veterans and those currently serving in the military to stand. The pastor prayed over them and the church applauded them. After the service, they were invited to a special breakfast. It is not that I don’t respect those who have served in the military. My maternal grandfather served in World War II on the Pacific front. I just don’t think the church should be in the business of honoring them, as the church’s job is to point people toward Christ, the Prince of Peace.In his book Rethinking Life, Shane Claiborne, founder of Red Letter Christians lays out how the early church had a consistent prolife ethic, which meant that any Roman citizens whose occupations did not honor life, such as facilitators of gladiator games, had to find a new line of work once they were baptized. In the United States, and in the Roman Empire, the military served many roles that did not involve combat or killing. In the Roman empire for example, the military built roads, and in the United States, the Coast Guard rescues civilians who get into boating accidents. But it was understood in the early church that once a Roman soldier was baptized, they had to commit not to take human life, at home or abroad. But my church did not make any such distinction, choosing to honor all military service. In her book Jesus and John Wayne, Kristin Kobes Du Mez explains how at the turn of the 20th century, some felt that Christian men faced a masculinity crisis as the country was transitioning from an agrarian to an industrial economy, and the mythical west was disappearing. Unfortunately, use of the sword to spread Christianity can be traced back to Constantine, and the European explorers who “discovered” and colonized America believed their murder and exploitation of Native Americans was ordained by God. But Kristin Kobes Du Mez traces the modern evangelical militarism to Theodore Roosevelt who started the precedent of the United States displaying Christian masculinity on the “new frontier of empire” (Page 16). It troubled me to realize that even our church, staffed by wonderful pastors whose Bible teaching is so nourishing every week, was influenced by this unbiblical Christian Nationalism.In light of these examples of rampant Christian Nationalism, John Rutter’s Christmas Lullaby has brought a tear to my eye every Christmas season since I first sang it in choir in 2018, in the way it so beautifully reminds us, in its words and its soothing melody, that Jesus offers a better way. The song begins with the statement “clear in the darkness, a light shines in Bethlehem, evoking the literal darkness of nighttime when Jesus was born, but also the dark state of our world before Christ. I think the subtext behind the rest of the first verse is that despite studying Scripture and being intellectually aware that the Messiah would enter the world as a vulnerable baby born to a poor mother in a stable, seeing this mother and baby firsthand still took the wise men by surprise as it is so counterintuitive to worldly ideas for how we imagine a Messiah would enter the world. The humility and countercultural way of our Messiah is the theme of verse 2 when the men sing “Where are his courtiers, and who are his people? Why does he bear neither scepter nor crown?” and the women respond “shepherds his courtiers, the poor for his people, with peace as his scepter and love for his crown.”You almost cannot fault the people living in Jesus’s day for not being able to comprehend God’s redemptive plan. Our god is a god of progressive revelation, so despite meticulous study of Scripture foretelling the coming of Christ, even the most educated Jewish rabbis couldn’t fully comprehend God’s plan, not only Christ’s humble entrance into our world, but also the fact that he would allow himself to be crucified, the most shameful form of execution during the Roman empire, when they imagined their messiah would overthrow the Roman government and reign as an earthly king. But we have access to the full story. It should break our hearts that people in positions of power—politicians and pastors—do not seem to understand that God sent his son to bless the whole world, not just the United States of America, and that Christianity will endure no matter which political party is in power. Furthermore, they say they live by the Bible, yet choose the opposite path: the wealthy as their courtiers (attendants and advisors) and the people they serve, the sword to project strength around the world, and disdain for people of other nationalities, religious beliefs, or lifestyles. Our hearts should break for them, as they are relentlessly pursuing earthly treasure which is temporary and destined to fail, over heavenly treasure which will endure for eternity. And our hearts should break for the people these politicians and influential pastors have led astray, both those who have bought into these views that are the antithesis of Christ, and those who have been so wounded by these views that they no longer want to call themselves Christians. I pray that one adherent to the ugly views of Christian Nationalism might hear this lullaby and feel moved to repent and return to the true Jesus, or that they might accept Christ for the first time if they realize that all their lives, they have been Christian in heritage only. And I pray that people who have been wounded in the name of Christianity might hear this song and be comforted and moved to give Christianity another chance. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

I hope everyone reading this had a blessed Thanksgiving. I love the week after Thanksgiving, partly because our family enjoys eating turkey leftovers just as much as the Thanksgiving feast itself, and because after Thanksgiving, the rest of the family finally deems it socially acceptable to sing Christmas songs with me. Did I mention I love Christmas music?Now I will concede there are a lot of bad Christmas songs, or at least songs that are overplayed—Moriah Carrie’s All I Want for Christmas is you—and if it were up to me Santa Baby would be banned. But while in general I think Christmas should stay focused on Christ, I will be the first to admit the Christmas season wouldn’t be complete without hearing I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas, or the dark humor of Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. But my favorite songs are the sacred songs, especially the songs recorded by choirs because they capture the heavenly peace that is supposed to define this time of year. I love the standard carols for which everyone knows the words: Silent Night, Away in a Manger, Joy to the World. But for this series, I wanted to highlight some beautiful songs that some of you may not have heard that I believe really capture the true spirit that is supposed to define Christmas. In a subtle, beautiful way, they speak out against Christian Nationalism, and beckon us to live counterculturally.In light of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, traditions that commercialize the Christmas season, Christmas for Cowboys, sung by John Denver stands out for me. Some of you might find this a strange choice to kick this series off, especially because it is not technically a religious song. But I wanted to highlight this song because when I was a child and Mom would play the album with this song on it, it was probably my least favorite song on the album. As a child, I thought it was a sad song, and it felt so out of place alongside most of his other songs which were joyful. He had another sad song told from the viewpoint of a child whose father drank too much every Christmas, and I wasn’t fond of this song either, but it is a sad reality some people live with every Christmas, and as an adult, I appreciate the candor of songs like this.But Christmas for Cowboys isn’t really a sad song. In one sense, it is sad because the cowboys are away from their families on Christmas, driving cattle across the plains. Westerns can romanticize the life of the cowboy, but cowboys didn’t drive their cattle across the plains for fun: They made their living driving the cattle they raised across the plains and into the city where they were sold. I have heard it said that truck drivers are the modern equivalent to cowboys, and unfortunately, they often have to work on Christmas as well, in service of the almighty dollar. But if you listen to the words of Christmas for Cowboys carefully, you get the sense that the cowboy narrating this song enjoys his work: “Back in the cities, they have different ways. Football and eggnog and Christmas parades. I’ll take my blanket, I’ll take the reins…” In this verse, I get the sense that he thinks all the traditions of Christmas in the city are too much, that he enjoys the solitude of the wide open plains. You also get the beautiful impression he recognizes that  this solitude allows him to appreciate gifts from above, while the city folk are caught up in the commercialism of Christmas: “All of the good gifts given today, ours is the sky, and the wide open range.”From what I understand reading historic accounts of the cowboy culture, they were not always the most moral segment of society. When they would come to a town, some would drink too much at the tavern and get into fights, or alleviate their loneliness with a prostitute for the night. As a result, they were often looked down upon by “respectable” folks.Alone on the wide open plains, the cowboys also would not have been able to attend a formal church service on Christmas, and even if they made it to a town by Christmas, they likely would have felt uncomfortable walking into a church. But you get the sense that the cowboy in this song is far more in-tune with the spiritual than the city folks who go to formal church services. My favorite line of the whole song is: The wind sings a hymn as we bow down to pray.” What a beautiful analogy, as a gust of wind sounds far away, and then comes to a heavenly crescendo as it washes over you, much like the effect of a choir singing a hymn. And what a profound observation coming from a rough-living, unchurched cowboy, or at least a cowboy whose mama might have taken him to church as a child, but who hasn’t been in many years. I don’t know if there is a specific backstory that inspired the writing of this song. But regardless of whether this was the intention of the writer, or of John Denver’s decision to sing it, I love how this song implores us, in a nonjudgmental way, to use the occasion of Christmas to appreciate anew the simple gifts from above rather than getting swept up in our culture’s commercialization of Christmas, and to remember that Jesus often used, and still uses people we would least expect—the misfits of society—to speak truth to us. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

This really is the most wonderful time of the year. I don’t agree with all of the commercialism around this time of year, but nevertheless, I cannot help but smile at the cute Christmas commercials, and there is just a joyful spirit in the air as people anticipate cooking turkey, baking pies and spending time with family. I especially love Christmas music. I am one of the few people who is thrilled to turn on the radio November 1 and hear Christmas music, possibly because I sing in choir where we start rehearsing Christmas songs in October so I am just in the spirit. Speaking of which, after Thanksgiving, I am going to start a five-week series, that I think will be titled Let Every Heart Sing, where I am going to reflect on five of my favorite Christmas songs and how they capture the true meaning of Christmas. But first, I want to talk about Thanksgiving.I love Thanksgiving, which I think of as the lower-key cousin to Christmas. There are no demands as far as decorating or gifts, and our culture has not burdened it with weird sentimental expectations of perfection. Thanksgiving is simply about cooking and relaxing with family in a spirit of gratitude for our many blessings.Thanksgiving is not technically a religious holiday, but since we as Christians believe that all of our blessings come from God, and since the Bible commands us to express gratitude (Colossians 3:15-17), you could say it is a quasi-religious holiday. But given the mission of this blog, which is to rescue Christians from the corrupting influence of Christian nationalism, I feel obligated to serve up a small helping of painful truth about the white supremacist and Christian Nationalist origins of Thanksgiving.The story that we were all taught in school was that the tradition we now call Thanksgiving originated with the pilgrims, who came to America on the Mayflower in 1621 to escape religious persecution in England. The pilgrims were not prepared for the harsh climate in this new world. The seeds they brought from England failed, and many did not survive that first winter. But the friendly Wampanoag Indians taught the pilgrims how to survive in their new land. Those hearty pilgrims that survived that first winter had a celebratory feast, which we commemorate today on Thanksgiving. But what is left out of this story is that the years that followed that first Thanksgiving would be defined by a barbaric pattern of genocide to open up land for white settlement. In 1637, Massachusetts governor John Winthrop, proclaimed a “Thanksgiving” for the massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indians, and ultimately between 95 and 99 percent of indigenous people would be killed, with the rest forced to assimilate into the dominant white society, or left to die on reservations. For this reason, while most of the country is joyful on Thanksgiving, many indigenous people consider it a day of mourning. Every Thanksgiving since 1970, the United American Indians of New England and allies of the cause have gathered on Cole’s Hill above Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts to honor indigenous ancestors and Native resilience, and to protest the racism and oppression indigenous people worldwide still face today.Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin believes that a true sign of moral progress in this country would be the replacement of our Thanksgiving traditions with a national day of atonement and collective fasting, but acknowledges the impossibility of implementing such a radical change.Jane Kamensky, a Harvard history professor points out that holidays like Thanksgiving and Columbus Day have been less about who we were at a particular time in history, but a battle for who we aspire to be in an ever-changing present. Thanksgiving for example, was not observed annually until the late 17th century and was a strictly local commemoration until 1777, when the 2nd Continental Congress proclaimed a National Forefathers Day to celebrate the arrival of the first English settlers to the new world, for the political purpose of creating a shared origin story to unite the young nation. It would be reinvented again by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, who dedicated Thanksgiving to all the American people so they might “give thanks with one heart and one voice” which even then was more of an aspiration than the current reality as the Civil War was still raging. Jane Kamensky also insinuates that history is complex, and thus the temptation to simplify it with myths is a temptation that appeals to all cultures. “In place of one origin myth, the inventors of Indigenous People’s Day and the National Day of Mourning invoke another. One in which all Europeans were villains and all Natives victims. One in which indigenous peoples knew neither strife nor war until the treachery of Columbus and his cultural heirs taught them to hate and fear.” This is true. No culture in human history has a clean record, free of strife and bloodshed, but the truth that we are all sinners should not be read as justification for, or minimization of our own sins. I remember my Grandma, a devout Catholic, telling me as a child that we will all be held individually accountable for our sins. When we get to the gates of Heaven and say, “so-and-so did worse,” God might say, “I’ll get to him, but right now, I’m not interested in him. I’m interested in you.”Perhaps it is time to reinvent Thanksgiving again, especially given the resurgence of Christian Nationalism, fueled by politicians who seek to teach only the glorious parts of our history. While it is true that not all Europeans were villains, even in the 17th century, the literal and cultural genocide of native Americans is certainly not a “myth” in the fictional sense of the word. According to Billy Michael Honor, pastor of New Life Presbyterian Church in College Park, Georgia, this reinvention does not necessarily require us giving up our dearly held Thanksgiving traditions, but those of us who are privileged should expand our view of the holiday “so that it becomes an opportunity to both give praise to God for our blessings and to give service to those in need,” acknowledging that while we in our privilege identify with the Pilgrims, praising God for our material blessings, there are poor, oppressed and socially marginalized people in society who identify more closely with the social inequality and misery experienced by the native Americans of the 17th century. Perhaps when we gather around the table to pray before diving into our Thanksgiving dinner, we should thank God for all of our blessings, while also acknowledging the undeserved grace he has shown us, blessing us in spite of the egregious conduct of some of our forebearers, not because their occupation of this land was divinely ordained. We should confess that we are not a benevolent empire, just another of the many empires of human history where a few lived privileged lives while killing or exploiting others. And while few of us will attain the power necessary to fundamentally change the system, we should seek small, practical ways in which we can do our part to follow Christ by reaching out to the poor, oppressed and marginalized of society. This could mean standing in solidarity with indigenous people where you live if you hear about a protest to stop an oil pipeline or something that will harm sacred indigenous land, volunteering at a food pantry or homeless shelter, or donating generously to a toy drive or food pantry. In the words of a pastor at our church this past Sunday, the best way to show gratitude for our blessings (and I would add, make Christianity attractive to a hurting world again) is to combine Thanksgiving with Thanks-living. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

When I was a child, I was a very picky eater. It was a battle for my parents to get me to eat any fruits and vegetables. Gradually as I matured, more and more fruits and vegetables were at least palatable for me. (There are still a few things I cannot stand like razzberries and grapefruit, but I actually enjoy eating most fruits and vegetables now.) I love oranges now, but oranges were one of the later fruits to join my repertoire. I think Mom was surprised by how long it took me to be willing to eat oranges, but she could understand why. She said oranges are somewhat unpredictable. It is hard to know whether an orange is perfectly ripe and sweet until you actually bite into it. Oranges that are not quite ripe are a disappointment, but when you get a good one, “there is nothing more delicious! Your first exposure to oranges must have been a bad orange,” she surmised. I don’t remember a specific incident with a bad orange, but it is possible, and I also think I was repulsed by the extremely pungent smell of oranges. But sometime in my twenties, I promised my mom that if she sliced into an orange and it was delicious, I would give it a try. Now I know what she is talking about, have overcome my aversion to their strong smell, and will put up with the occasional disappointing orange because the delicious ones are worth it.For some reason, this memory came back to me when I reached the part of The Autobiography of Malcolm X when he converts to Islam. And then I remembered New Testament passages where humans are metaphorically likened to fruit trees. John the Baptist rebuked the pharisees and Sadducees who came to be baptized, warning them to “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance,” because “The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 3:8, 10). In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns us to watch out for false prophets, saying “By their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:16). Paul urged the Galatians, and by extension urges us to cultivate the Fruit of the Spirit so that they/we may inherit the kingdom of heaven (Galatians 5:22-23). There are many other passages that use this metaphor. This is just a sampling.Given what I am about to say next, and given what is going on in the world right now, I want to unequivocally take a stand and say there is no place in Christianity for Islamophobia. The overwhelming majority of the billions of Muslims worldwide are peaceful people. As one mother suffering in Gaza said in a plea for Israel not to forsake humanitarian aid and compassion for innocent civilians caught in the crossfire of their fight against Hamas, the world needs to remember that Palestinian mothers love their children just as dearly as Israeli mothers do. And as I discussed in my last post, the greatest asset God gave humanity is the collective wisdom of all cultures, and Saint Francis of Assisi who interacted with Muslims way back in the 11th century recognized that we Christians could learn from the Muslim commitment to spiritual disciplines, especially the commitment to prayer five times a day. But as we discussed in one session of a Systematic Theology course I took at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, there are fundamental differences between the beliefs of Christianity and Islam.Muslims believe that Jesus was an important prophet, that he was born of the Virgin Mary and healed people, but they maintain that God would never allow a prophet to die on a cross. They insist that God, being all-powerful, saved Jesus from death and took him back up to heaven. Muslims also believe that Jesus was the precursor to Muhammad, but that God’s final revelation to humanity came through Muhammad, not Christ. The Qur’an also categorically rejects the belief in a Triune God, which means that God could not descend into his own creation. Finally, and I think most tragically, Muslims believe that because Jesus never died, he did not pay the ultimate penalty for sin. Rejection of Christ’s death also means rejection of his resurrection, and thus Muslims cannot comprehend the biblical teaching about justification through faith alone, sanctification or grace. I am all in favor of mission outreach to Muslims, as long as it is done with pure motives. In other words, we should share the gospel of Christ with our Muslim friends and neighbors not because they need to become Christians for us to consider them full-fledged Americans, but because our hearts should break for our Muslim friends and neighbors who worship a god who is distant from humanity, whose love must be earned through external behavior, and who offers no hope of salvation or eternal life. But I fear that evangelicals right now are out of step, not giving enough attention to what I would argue is an even more heartbreaking reality that threatens our very credibility at present; the reality that Christians are leaving the church in droves and sometimes converting to other faiths like Malcolm X, but more often choosing no religion at all. Some young people are walking away from Christianity because they have adopted a scientific worldview, but while I have not done official research on this, I think there is enough anecdotal evidence to justify speculation on my part that the more common reason people are walking away from Christianity is because the resurgence of Christian Nationalism in recent years has produced so much rotten fruit in the American church that people who long for the genuine peace and love Christ offers cannot find enough sweet fruit in the American church to motivate them to stay the course, to persevere in their faith. And although Christian Nationalism is not limited to white people, I believe it is white Christian nationalism in particular that drew Malcolm X away from Christ.Two statements made by Malcolm X stood out to me. When reaching out to black Christians, whom Malcolm X hoped to convert to Islam, Malcolm X said, “The white man has taught us to shout and sing and pray until we die, to wait until death, for some dreamy heaven-in-the-hereafter, while this white man has his milk and honey in the streets paved with golden dollars right here on this earth!” (Page 240) If listeners didn’t believe him, Malcolm X encouraged them to take the New York subway into the white areas of town and observe the wealth and opulence of these neighborhoods compared to the ghettos where they lived. It should sober us white Christians to realize his words are as true today as they were in the 1960s. I must confess that not only am I privileged because I live in an affluent suburb of Milwaukee which, because of systemic racism, is predominantly white. I am privileged because as a blind person, even when we drive through poor, predominantly black neighborhoods, I cannot look out the window and am thus oblivious to the poverty of these areas. But my conscience was awakened when about five years ago, I read Matthew Desmond’s book Evicted, a work of immersion journalism in which Matthew Desmond lived alongside poor families in Milwaukee to document the systemic injustices of housing in America. I was aware that unscrupulous landlords took advantage of college students like my brothers, who lived in a couple pretty run-down apartments that were not up to code near the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. But I honestly didn’t fully appreciate the degree to which this injustice went far beyond college students, that families with children were forced to live in squalor, and under constant threat of eviction, just a few short miles from me. Christian ethics were beyond the scope of Matthew Desmond’s book, but other pastors have rightly pointed out that a truly consistent prolife ethic goes far beyond protection of the unborn. It also includes the right of all image-bearers of God, regardless of race, ethnicity, lifestyle or even bad decisions that may be a part of someone’s past, to live lives of dignity: fair wages, stable, affordable housing that is up to code, food security, quality education and healthcare. (And as a bonus, this commitment to dignity would likely reduce abortions.) I must confess these words expressing awareness of my white privilege feel somewhat hollow, as it is a system I was born into, that I am so deeply entrenched in that I have not yet figured out how God may be calling me to repent of it in a tangible way yet. But cliché as it may sound, the first step toward repentance is awareness of the problem. Malcolm X’s statement should serve as a sobering indictment of us Christians, not only because our inconsistent prolife ethic has produced so much rotten fruit in us that people like Malcolm X gave up on Christianity, but also because I cannot help wondering if at the end of our earthly lives, Abraham (or Jesus) might tell those of us who lived unrepentant lives of opulence while people lived in squalor just a ten minute drive away the same thing he told the rich man who ignored Lazarus, “remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony” (Luke 16:25). I pray we will recognize how short-sighted Christian nationalism and its obsession with political power and privilege for a select few is before it has eternal consequences.The other quote that stood out to me was when Malcolm X made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and sent a letter back to the United States that he asked be distributed to the press. In this letter, Malcolm X wrote, “During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug)—while praying to the same God with fellow Muslims whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the “white” Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana. We were truly all the same (brothers)—because their belief in one god had removed the “white” from their minds, the “white” from their behavior, and the “white” from their attitude” (Page 340). This quote should trouble all who want to be genuine followers of Christ because Malcolm X should have experienced this same sincerity with us. Our belief in one God through Christ should have removed the white from our behavior, minds and attitudes as well. The kingdom of God was never supposed to be limited to a dreamy heaven-in-the-hereafter. Christ called us to offer a foretaste of God’s kingdom now, and the most beautiful feature that is supposed to define this kingdom is that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28. Jesus and Paul frequently refer to fellow believers as brothers and sisters.When Malcolm X returned from his trip, having seen the goodness and sincerity that can be found among white people who haven’t been contaminated by Christian Nationalism and the ideology of whiteness—a social power construct that puts European descended people in the role of God on earth—he no longer ascribed to Elijah Muhammad’s teaching that white people are a devil race. But he still felt as though the best hope for lifting up black people was Islam, not Christianity. I still believe that the best hope for all humanity, especially those who have been oppressed, is Christianity, but Malcolm X’s story shows that we have not been good ambassadors for Christ. So before we preach the gospel to unreached people, we ought to first make sure we are leading by example, practicing true Christianity, not the counterfeit religion of Christian Nationalism. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

As promised, this week I want to reflect on The Autobiography of Malcolm X. This book was one of several books recommended by Scott Hall on his podcast White People Work, but I must confess I embarked on reading it with some hesitation. All that I knew about Malcolm X up to that point was that he was militant, condoning violence if necessary to improve the condition of Black Americans. Though the marginalization I have sometimes felt as a blind person is different in many important ways from the marginalization experienced by people of color, it is similar enough that I could empathize with the anger of people like Malcolm X. When I was in high school, I attended a convention of an advocacy organization for the blind, and was disheartened by the pride exhibited by some people there, refusing to accept help even though my dad who was with me could tell they were lost, or having difficulty carrying their lunch trays while navigating the unfamiliar environment with their canes or guide dogs. There was also a palpable anger, an unforgiving attitude exhibited by some of the speakers toward sighted people who make mistakes. I think that similar to Malcolm X, they believed this righteous anger held power that would hasten society’s frustratingly slow progress toward full inclusion of blind people in every sector of society. When I recounted this experience with my Vision Rehabilitation Teacher, she understood what I was getting at, and described them as militant. From this experience, I realized that even if the militancy isn’t of a violent nature, it has a way of scaring reasonable people away from what would otherwise be a worthy cause, and in so doing actually hindering society’s progress toward full inclusion. Given my disillusionment with the militancy of some blind people, I wasn’t sure I would be able to stomach the violent militancy of Malcolm X. But I am so glad I had an open mind and read this autobiography because in so doing, I learned that my understanding, and the media’s representation of Malcolm X was rather incomplete, and that Malcolm X’s conversion to Islam is a scathing indictment of Christianity as it is practiced in the West that we ought to take to heart. There is so much I want to unpack with these topics that to prevent my reflection from getting so long no one reads it, I am dividing it into two parts. In this post, I will focus on the media’s incomplete portrayal of Malcolm X, and in a few days, I will discuss what I think we need to learn from his indictment of Christianity.The beautiful thing about memoirs, I am coming to appreciate, is that they illustrate the point that I discussed last week, that beneath the surface of everyone’s ideology, everyone’s way of viewing the world, is an innocent little baby shaped, and all too often wounded by the world around them. Thus, when Malcolm X is in prison and learns about Elijah Muhammad’s teachings, especially his teaching that white people are a devil race, it is natural to find such views disturbing. But when you stop and think about how many white people betrayed him and his family, from the employers that fired his light-skinned mother as soon as they realized she was Black, forcing the family to get assistance from intrusive welfare people whom he believed caused his mother to have a mental breakdown that resulted in the loss of custody of her eight children and her lifelong commitment to a mental institution, to the white people who were nice to his face, but said demeaning things about Black people right in front of him as if he were a pet who couldn’t understand what they were saying, to his favorite teacher in eighth grade (a white man) who said he needed to have a more realistic goal when he told the teacher he wanted to become a lawyer, you can understand how the accumulation of so much discouragement at such an early age would explain his descent into a life of crime, and why he wouldn’t have a very favorable view of white people making him very receptive to these disturbing views. You can also understand his adoration of Elijah Muhammad who was like a father figure to him, which I think he longed for since his father was murdered when he was only six years old, and how when he is ultimately betrayed by this spiritual leader, a hypocrite equivalent to Jerry Falwell Jr., the grief at this betrayal cut even deeper for him. Malcolm X vehemently disagreed with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., calling him an educated elite, even an ”Uncle Tom,” but I imagine he would have agreed with Dr. King’s statement in a 1968 speech that “a riot is the language of the unheard.” The media has always portrayed Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. as complete binary opposites. Malcolm X advocates for violence, Martin Luther King Jr. argues for peace. But my impression after reading this memoir is that the truth is more nuanced. I still find that I agree more with Martin Luther King Jr.’s view that violence should be off the table as a means of fighting for civil rights because when you employ violence to fight against oppression, you scare people away from your worthy cause, and muddy the waters as the neutral observer sees both oppressors and oppressed as being at fault. Or to put it more succinctly, two wrongs don’t make a right. But when the evening news showed footage of peaceful protestors in the south being beaten, mauled by dogs, sprayed with fire hoses, the evidence for who was in the right and who was wrong was irrefutable, and many white people were so horrified by this footage that they were inspired to get involved with the civil rights movement.But Malcolm X never organized violent demonstrations, nor do I think he was even advocating for violence at all. He simply sought to call attention to the double standard toward violence exhibited by white people. All over the country, white children in girl scout troops, grammar school classes and YMCA programs were learning karate, and the mainstream white media thought nothing of it. But when black people became interested in karate (to defend themselves against the violence of white people) this evoked fear. In Malcolm X’s view, if white people can violently subjugate black people with impunity, then violence should not be completely off the table as a means for black people to fight for their rights when necessary.On one occasion, Malcolm X even discovered he had the power to start a race riot when he refused to speak at a street rally where he could tell the leaders who invited him were just using him, and to stop the riot as the angry teenagers respected him when he told them to disperse. In this incident, I saw a leader who did not champion violence, and in fact was even scared by the anger of these teenagers. But instead of reacting as white people and even some elite black people did (and still do) unequivocally condemning the violence and calling for “law and order”, Malcolm X understood, as someone who had been a hustler living in the ghetto himself, the anger and hopelessness beneath the surface of their behavior that could lead to such violence and the allure of this behavior for black teenagers who see their parents resign themselves to the white status quo and struggle to get by, while the violent hustlers flash money, dress sharply and have no fear of the white man. He advocated lifting up the black man by encouraging unity (especially at the ballot box where he believed the white man sought to divide black people into black democrats and black republicans by design, to dilute their vote and ensure preservation of the status quo), abstinence from tobacco and drugs which he believed the white man used to keep black people down, and separate, exclusively black communities where black-owned businesses could thrive and the black man would finally have equal access to economic opportunity. But until black people can truly thrive, white people should not be surprised if one day, the oppressed masses decide they have had enough, and these oppressed masses confined to ghettos all over the country explode in violence.Of course, like all humans, Malcolm X was complex and flawed. Some antisemitic comments, and comments that were demeaning toward women made me cringe and it goes without saying that his characterization of black people as a superior race and white people as a devil race is misguided as well. As Ta-nehisi Coates—who admired Malcolm X in his youth—would discover when he came to Howard University, any search for myth is futile because regardless of what race you are, the stories we want to tell ourselves do not match the truths of history (Between the World and Me Page 53). Our fallen state means that every civilization in human history has perpetrated evil. It is also important to remember that the terms “black” and “white” are not timeless categories but social constructs that only came about relatively recently in human history to justify European subjugation of African people. As a blind person, I can kind of understand where Malcolm X is coming from when he criticizes the concept of integration, which he viewed as something white people did either because they were forced to by law, or as an insincere token gesture that allowed them to feel good about themselves while he could tell in their heart of hearts, they still viewed black people as inferior. As a blind child, I remember a few occasions where I could tell peers were only including me in an activity because the teacher said they had to, or because they wanted to be nice but didn’t know how to tell me they would rather work with someone else. But I imagine a separate, exclusively black enclave would offer the same comfort and sense of empowerment as a school exclusively for the blind. The environment is designed specifically for you, and strong bonds of unity are forged instantly through our shared experience living with the same disability. I did not attend a school for the blind, but when I go to gatherings exclusively for the blind, it is so fun just to sit around a table tossing around braille jargon without having to preface everything with explanations, or letting  off a little steam about the annoying things sighted people say and do. But I recently listened to a speaker at the 2023 Evolving Faith Convention who said something compelling that is so relevant here, which is that God’s greatest asset to humanity is the collective wisdom of all cultures. In a spiritual formation course I took at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, we discussed how every culture falls short when it comes to living up to biblical principles, but our faith can be profoundly enriched by listening to and respecting the voices of other cultures. For example, cultures that are more collectivistic see things in bible passages that our individualistic mindset often causes us to overlook.If I had gone to a school exclusively for the blind, I would have missed out on perspective and a certain richness that learning alongside peers who could see afforded me. If the nationalistic visions of Malcolm X and his predecessor Marcus Garvey had come to fruition, they (and we) would have missed out on the flavor that living in community with people from diverse cultural backgrounds brings to society. Those who succumb to the allure of white Christian nationalism also miss out on the rich bounty of wisdom God intended for all Christians to draw from to be better followers of Christ in this world, and even more tragically, misrepresent Christ to such a reprehensible degree that people like Malcolm X look elsewhere for peace, hope and love. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

Hello readers. First I want to say I have not forgotten about you and this blog. I have just been consumed with work which was really busy in September, and another exciting personal project which I will talk about later. I also want to extend a warm welcome to two new subscribers who joined while I was away. I have no interest in metrics, in “going viral” as I feel these worldly goals have been a distraction to too many writers, as they censor their writing to appeal to the widest audience rather than writing from the heart or as the Holy Spirit leads. Nevertheless, it does warm my heart to realize my passion for confronting Christian nationalism is resonating with a few people, and thus to realize that I am not alone.This past Friday, I finished reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and had intended to share some insights I gleaned from the book relevant to this blog. But I am going to save that for next weekend as my conscience demands that the heartbreaking situation in Israel right now takes priority. First, I think it is important to acknowledge that I am speaking from a place of privilege. I do not personally know anyone living in Israel or Gaza. Thus I realize that everything I say is in a way merely intellectual, theoretical. One thing that is repeatedly emphasized in blogs that I follow whose mission is to deconstruct a faith influenced by white supremacy and colonization, is that while we should all feel safe sharing our views, those of us in positions of privilege must do so mindfully, with a spirit of humility, an awareness that those personally effected by a circumstance may see things very differently. I also want to state unequivocally that what Hamas did on October 7 was sheer evil. There is no excuse, no grievance that justifies committing the atrocities Hamas committed. In a few months, I will be an aunt as my sister is expecting a little girl. She and her husband haven’t even decided on her name yet, but even so, I already love her. So the thought that there are people in this world capable of brutally murdering babies has been especially haunting to me.But a few years ago (pre-pandemic) I attended a conference hosted by my church, where a Christian counselor spoke about empathy and compassion. One observation she made has stuck with me. She pointed out that even the most hardened criminal, the meanest, most difficult to love person, was once an innocent little baby. So what went wrong? We are all sinners of course, but what kind of hurt, brokenness, leads some down the path to committing evil? I don’t have a simple answer to this question, and neither did she. I am also not implying that Israel should let Hamas be. While I consider myself a pacifist, this situation has shown me there are times when unfortunately, negotiation is no longer possible. Israel has the right to defend itself and a duty to rescue the hostages if possible, and both objectives will require military force. That said, I think it is important that Israelis, and Christians keep three things in mind. First, it is my prayer that the entirety of this war, even when Israel successfully roots out Hamas fighters and destroys their military infrastructure, should be approached with a somber spirit, not a spirit of hawkish celebration. I know from personal experience, this can be difficult. When we had our 9/11, I was in sixth grade, and even though I was not personally effected by this tragedy, I felt the palpable sadness, followed by patriotism and then hawkishness in the air. When Toby Keith’s song Courtesy of the Red White and Blue came out in response to this spirit, I remember feeling a sense of hot vengeance coursing through my veins. If I were a few years older and didn’t have a disqualifying disability, I might have marched myself right to a military recruitment office singing this song, eager to play a role in going after those monsters who shattered our collective sense of safety. When the Navy Seals found and killed Bin Laden my junior year of college, I like many Americans was jubilant. How I would have loved to be in that stadium when the game was interrupted, and upon hearing the news, the whole stadium erupted in chants of USA! USA! But for families who lost loved ones, while Bin Laden’s death may have offered a small sense of closure, it wasn’t cause for jubilation. It didn’t change the fact that their loved ones were still never coming home. And now that I have a more mature understanding of the Christian faith, I am embarrassed by my past hawkishness. The Bible states that all people are created and cherished by God. In the same way that a loving parent grieves for a son or daughter who made terrible choices and must now live with the consequences, God grieves for even the most hardened criminals, and we should too. (The movie for The Shack is a poignant illustration of this.) I acknowledge that the reality of this fallen world is that for everyone’s safety, hardened Hamas fighters need to be eliminated from this world, just as Osama Bin Laden needed to be. But when the war is over, we should not celebrate their deaths by dancing in the streets as if winning the war was the equivalent of our team winning a football game.On a related note, one editorial I read this week pointed out that even if Israel kills every last Hamas fighter hiding out in Gaza, Hamas will not truly be eradicated until they figure out how to kill the ideology that motivates them. The editorial was short and didn’t get into details on how to do this, but I think this is where the observation of that Christian counselor could be of enormous value. Maybe Israel’s intelligence agencies are doing this already, but if not, when the war is over, they should try and talk to people who knew these Hamas fighters before hatred had hardened their hearts. Could oppression, poverty, a sense of hopelessness, the ignorance that comes from living in a world where you are never exposed to people of other cultures, have nurtured seeds of hate, just as these factors often nurture seeds of hate in the hearts of white supremacists here in America? Over the years, I have heard beautiful stories of camps created where Israeli and Palestinian youth spend time together, or perform in a band together, become lifelong friends, and realize that we are really all the same. We are all sacred, and all long for peace and security. I hope that after the war, even more resources are devoted to this kind of outreach. I am not so naïve as to think it will completely eliminate animosity behind which is thousands of years of complex history, but one of the hallmarks of our faith is to never give up hope, to do what we can to bring a foretaste of God’s kingdom to this world now.This brings me to my final point, which is strictly for Evangelicals. When Russia invaded Ukraine last year, I was in an apologetics class and was a little disturbed when one of my classmates was almost giddy with anticipation. Due to global inflation, and the fact that Putin had blocked the export of wheat from Ukraine, known as the “bread basket of Europe” and an essential supplier of food for the developing world, the price of bread had skyrocketed globally. “These are exciting times aren’t they?” this person declared, siting Revelation 6:6 which talks about a day when a liter of wheat will cost a full day’s wage, and wondered if we were in the end times. I am no longer in this class—due to my work schedule—but I have read the Left Behind Series, and have no doubt that there are people in my faith tradition, maybe even people in church today, who instead of being heartbroken at the suffering of Israelis and Palestinian civilians, are giddily studying prophecy, wondering if this war in the Holy Land means Christ’s return is imminent. Of course, I am looking forward to Christ’s return, but Jesus clearly teaches that it is not for us to know the hour of his return, and there have always been “wars and rumors of wars.” Sure, Christ could return tomorrow, or he could wait another thousand years. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to study at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, an institution committed to orthodoxy that takes a cautious approach to the interpretation of prophecy. Even so, I will confess it can be difficult to resist the temptation to speculate, even get a little giddy. One day in particular, a couple weeks before the Israel attack, Mom and I were watching the news which featured one story after another after another about an earthquake, record-breaking floods, and multiple raging wildfires, and Mom and I both wondered aloud and simultaneously, “maybe we are living in the end times.” But in all seriousness, especially in light of this war in Israel, I think we would do well to make sure we are behaving as mature Christian adults whenever Christ does return. In other words, if He were to return tomorrow, we should remember that he had no tolerance for hypocrisy. We would not want him to find us claiming we long for his return when our giddy indifference to the suffering of people, and a planet he commissioned us to love and cherish, reveals that our hearts are completely misaligned with his. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

Once or twice a year in the context of a sermon warning against pride or idolatry, a former pastor at my home church would pause his sermon and ask the congregation to repeat after him, “There is a god, and it is not me.” Then he would ask us to turn to the person sitting next to us and tell them, “there is a god, and it is not you.” This second part of the exercise always elicited some chuckling, as the pastor acknowledged it is satisfying every now and then to be given permission from the pastor to say that to a loved one, as all of us can be difficult to live with at times given our fallen state.In my previous post, I linked to the second episode of White People Work, a podcast I heard about through Shake the Dust, a podcast hosted by a black man and a blind white man that I listen to religiously, as their tagline “leaving colonized faith for the kingdom of God” is awesome, and so in line with my mission here. The host of White People Work, Scott Hall, is a white person who like me grew up as the privileged majority in an affluent neighborhood. He was aware of the reality that people of color lived in a different world from him, but this was something no one talked about. In college, he was originally on track for medical school, taking pre-med classes, but an elective course in African American studies altered the course of his life. Inspired by a speaker at a Christian conference, he launched this podcast to help white people understand themselves and “take responsibility for their presence in the world.” I highly recommend listening to every episode as they are all fantastic. I appreciate the way he, being a white person himself, approaches this touchy subject with compassion, humility—openly admitting when he has made mistakes—and empathy, and yet at the same time pulls no punches. But my favorite episode is episode 3. In this episode, he draws a distinction between being white—our skin complexion—which we cannot control, and the ideology of whiteness, which we can choose to oppose. As for the ideology of whiteness, he proposes a definition that stopped me in my tracks. At its root, the ideology of whiteness is “a social power construct that puts European descended people in the role of God on earth.” You heard that right. We as white people have a god complex.There is so much I could write about this, as this ideology has implications beyond racial superiority. But for the purpose of this blog, I will focus on the first harmful implication Scott Hall discusses related to this ideology, the tendency to put ourselves and our culture at the center of everything and everyone. This ideology is the driver behind our dark history. It explains our celebration of Christopher Columbus as a hero who “discovered” America even though native Americans had thriving civilizations in this land for thousands of years, our belief that our culture is superior to indigenous cultures, our rationalization for enslaving black people, and our continued unwillingness to acknowledge our unearned privilege compared to people of color. Not only that, but because our culture has been centered for so many centuries, we don’t think of it as a culture at all. White food, white music, white hair styles, the white way of speaking, and even sadly, white interpretations of theology and white worship preferences, are just normal. But most sobering of all, this god complex explains my own racism detailed in my previous post, especially my discomfort with white film makers and writers potentially being displaced by people of color. Even though in principal I find the ideology of white superiority abhorrent, the ideology of whiteness is so entrenched, like toxic water that is unavoidable, that it is uncomfortable to imagine a world in which white people forfeit their power and influence. But it struck me while reading Austin Channing Brown’s book I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, that being uncomfortable is what being a follower of Christ requires. And this discomfort is completely at odds with Christian Nationalism, which sadly explains why white evangelicals are especially uncomfortable discussing our dark history or acknowledging the unearned privilege they continue to enjoy today.The first of the ten commandments God gives the Israelites in Exodus 20:3 is “You shall have no other gods before me” and in Mark 8:34, Jesus teaches that “if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” In other words, we must imitate Christ through our own lives, and if you had to define Christ’s ministry in one word, I think that word would be reconciliation. But because of our god complex—our idolatry of ourselves—we are unable or unwilling to take this concept seriously. We commend ourselves for having a conference about racism, inviting a black pastor to preach once or twice a year, having a few people of color in the worship band or on the staff, (even if they are not in senior leadership positions that shape the direction of the church), so that we can feel good about ourselves without really changing the status quo. But in the words of Austin Channing Brown, “when white people stop short of reconciliation, it’s often because they are motivated by a deep need to believe in their own goodness, and for that goodness to be affirmed over and over and over again. These folks want a pat on the back simply for arriving at the conclusion that having people of color around is good. But reconciliation is not about white feelings. It’s about diverting power and attention to the oppressed, toward the powerless” (Page 171). She is not the first author of color from whom I have read similar sentiments, but now given my growing awareness of Christian Nationalism, which has motivated me to expose myself to other perspectives, she is the first author from whom I have read such sentiments without getting defensive. “It’s not as if I could control being born white” I used to think, “why does it seem as though these writers hate me, desire to penalize me, for the sins of past generations which are also beyond my control?” Now I am coming to realize that it’s not out of bitterness or resentment that these writers of color say things that make us as white people uncomfortable. In fact, this willingness to call us out is an act of love, that, similar to a parent’s discipline, makes us mad short-term, but is for our long-term, perhaps even eternal good. Essentially, these people of color are trying to say the same thing as my former pastor, “Hey white people, there is a god, and it’s not you!” If we want to live a truly Christian life now that isn’t content with cheap grace, and if we want a foretaste of God’s eternal kingdom, we would do well to listen. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

Hi, my name is Allison, and I am a racist. I read somewhere recently that the key to the success of 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous is that they start by requiring individuals to acknowledge they have a problem, because the road to healing cannot begin without this vulnerability. In my last post, I alluded to the fact that if you are a white American, it is virtually impossible not to drink some of the Kool-Aid of the counterfeit religion called Christian Nationalism. But if one of my high school English teachers had graded that essay, they would have called BS, as in “be specific.” Anyone can speak in generalizations, but what separates the sincere person which I want to be, from the counterfeits is the willingness to take risks, be vulnerable. Given that Christian Nationalism overlaps with white supremacy, our Christian faith cannot be separated from individual and systemic racism.My biggest fear when I started this blog is that I would come across as self-righteous, and it is so hard not to be when you hear stories like the curriculum released by the Florida Department of Education which will teach Florida students that “slaves developed skills which in some cases could be applied for their personal benefit,” which Eugene Robinson rightly calls “appallingly ahistorical” a flippant denial of the reality of chattel slavery as it was practiced in the United States. I want to believe that because I found this curriculum disgusting, because I was shocked by the brutal, senseless murder of George Floyd, because I am horrified whenever I read accounts of lynching, or see documentaries showing footage of vicious dogs and fire hoses being loosed on peaceful protesters during the Civil Rights Movement, that I am a nice white person. But in her memoir I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, Austin Channing Brown points out that “even the monsters—the Klan members, the faces in the lynch mob, the murderers who bombed churches—they all had friends and family members. Each one of them was connected to people who would testify that they had good hearts. They had families who loved them, friends who came over for dinner, churches where they made small talk with the pastor after the service. The monster has always been well dressed and well loved” (Page 104). In other words, these monsters thought of themselves as “nice white people” too. Moreover, the Bible is unequivocal that all sin separates us from God. For example, I am not off the hook, immune from the need to repent of sin just because I have never, and would never literally kill anyone because Matthew 5:22 states that we are subject to judgment if we fail to repent for angry thoughts toward a brother, the implication being that when we nurture angry thoughts, we have already committed murder in our hearts. Given this biblical teaching, Christians more than anyone ought to be able to extend this logic to racism, recognize that even unintentional racial bias defiles our hearts and dishonors God’s commandment that we love all people as all people are made in his image. And yet, I must confess I am a racist because in the words of Rob McCann, the CEO of Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington, “for me as a white person, to say I am not racist is like saying a fish is not wet.” Racism is akin to toxic water in which we are all swimming. And yes, even a blind person can be racist, and in my case, it is especially embarrassing because I know what it is like to be underestimated, to be avoided or denied opportunities because my disability makes people uncomfortable. Why would I perpetuate that on others, especially because being a person of color isn’t even a real disability at all. Whiteness is nothing more than "a superficial generalization of multiple cultures and nationalities based on complexion" and a social construct with no biblical support or scientific validity, invented centuries ago to justify the enslavement and exploitation of human beings, and continued today by a society unwilling to let go of their unearned power and privilege.I grew up in a majority-white, affluent school district, but due to open enrollment, a handful of black students from Milwaukee rode a special bus out to our district. In elementary school, I remember feeling bad for how these students must feel singled out because they were released ten minutes earlier than the rest of us to catch their bus, but in high school, their bus came later. By high school, I was the one who had to leave class a little earlier to catch my special bus. For some reason, my parents and teachers wanted me to ride the special-ed bus, even though I was not in a wheelchair and by high school no longer needed to bring my homework home in a suitcase (which the bus driver had to help me lift onto and off the bus) due to wonderful advances in technology. But on Wednesdays, I could stay in class until the final bell rang because I had piano lessons at 4:00, and we decided it made more sense for Mom to pick me up from school and take me straight to piano lessons than to take the bus all the way home, only to turn around and leave right away. But while I was waiting on the bench near the door for Mom to arrive, I could often hear black students being really loud, yelling, slamming doors. I could tell they were black by their dialect. It was the same dialect I heard when listening to people interviewed on our local news after a shooting in the city. Sometimes, I could tell they were laughing, just goofing around, but sometimes, I wasn’t sure if they were goofing around or fighting, and on these occasions I remember thinking, “come on Mom, hurry up and get here so I can get out before something happens.” I also remember wondering “who are these kids?” I wasn’t in Advanced Placement courses like my sister was when she was in high school. Maybe these black students were in those classes. But because of how loud and silly they were, and the fact that I didn’t recognize their voices in any of my classes, I presumed at the time that they must be in “lower level” classes. The sad thing is, I witnessed many academically gifted white peers act loud and silly too, and I never had these condescending or fearful thoughts about them. It wasn’t until my job at a Social Security disability law firm where I worked alongside several black women that I fully appreciated that failure to conform to white standards of “proper English” says absolutely nothing about a person’s intelligence or character. Around this time, I also remember learning that a friend from our church was black. I remember that this came up casually in conversation in the car after church one week, and I remember blurting out from the back seat, "Really? She's black?" as my mind finished the thought, "she doesn't sound black." The awareness of unconscious bias wasn't part of society's lexicon yet, but I instinctively knew this thought was racist, just as bad as the common racist refrains I have since read about black people having to contend with from white friends and colleagues: "You don't seem black to me", or "You're not like other black people."These days, I have noticed my racism rears its ugly head whenever I read articles like this letter sent to PBS arguing that the network gives too much priority to Ken Burns and not enough to documentaries produced by people of color, or when I read editorials from white authors who claim to have more difficulty getting their books published due to diversity initiatives at publishers who used to accept their books, and find that my heart takes the side of these white authors. On the one hand, I don't think it is sinful to point out that two wrongs don't make a right, to believe we can (and should) elevate the stories of people who have been underrepresented for too long without employing intentional reverse discrimination. But I love Ken Burns documentaries, and the fact that I had a visceral angry reaction when I heard about this letter and what I perceived as its implication that Ken Burns should be displaced was convicting as it made me realize that while I want to think of myself as a nice white person, my mental resistance to changing the status quo of white-dominated media might tell a different story. It is also not lost on me that although I have had to contend with some prejudice as a blind person, the fact that I am white has made my path a little easier in this society. Perhaps I fear that changing the status quo will make future attempts to advance in my career even more difficult, but I know that such a self-centered attitude is sinful and racist.Austin Channing Brown has no patience for white people who confess their racism to her as if she is a priest, and I completely understand her sentiment. She feels as though these confessions are motivated by white guilt, and that white people make these confessions in the hope that she will assuage said guilt, in essence shifting the burden from them to her. True repentance, Channing argues is about more than confession: it is about taking meaningful, tangible steps to turn away from this sin. In that spirit, I am making a conscious effort to diversify my media. I recently found a Substack newsletter called Black-eyed Stories, where a black woman analyzes news and culture from the Black perspective which often goes unrepresented in mainstream media. I have only been following this newsletter for a couple weeks, but already I have noticed that it has opened my mind. For example, when she discusses The Blindside, and how the movie portrayed the white family who adopted Michael Oher as heroes and his black mother as a terrible mother who was strung out on drugs and neglected her children, I was sobered because like most white people, I bought into this narrative, never stopping to reflect on the systemic racism that put this mother at a major disadvantage in society. Since reading this blog, my heart has softened to the idea that maybe it is time for people like Ken Burns to take a lower profile to people of color because this newsletter has helped me to better understand the harmful ramifications of a media landscape dominated by the white narrative.God does not expect perfection. In fact he knows we will never fully escape sin this side of heaven, which is why we are saved by grace. But I believe it is essential that all of us as Christians take to heart Paul’s warning not to rely on what a Bible commentary I read at Trinity called “cheap grace.” “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? (Romans 6:1-2)” After all, I wonder if we are all going to be so embarrassed by our racist attitudes in this life when in eternity, we realize that Paul’s words in Galatians 3:28 are true. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you (we) are all one in Christ Jesus.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

A couple years ago, there was a story in our local news about a single mother who did not have a lot of money but really wanted to take her children to a Packer game. She found tickets online for a really reasonable price, and paid the seller cash for them. But when she and her kids arrived at Lambeau Field, they could not get in because she had been scammed. The tickets were counterfeit.I like to do my daily walk on the treadmill around 10:00 at night. (Don’t judge me. I am a night owl who has no ambition in the morning but gets a second wind late at night.) Every Sunday evening at 11:00, channel 4, our local NBC station broadcasts a message from Joel Osteen. I am blessed to belong to a church committed to accurate biblical teaching, so I have known for a long time that Joel Osteen was a false teacher. I think one pastor even mentioned him by name when preaching on the topic of false teaching. But on a couple recent Sunday nights, I came upstairs from the treadmill and Joel Osteen was just coming on. Dad had been watching the news but had fallen asleep so the television was just on. The first time this happened, as I was rehydrating myself, I decided to send up a quick, silent prayer for protection from the Holy Spirit, but to just listen to what Joel Osteen was teaching. In so doing, I could see how people less fortunate than me, people who don’t belong to a church committed to accurate biblical teaching, perhaps people who are sad or lonely just flipping through channels, could be fooled by him. It is not that everything he says is untrue. For example, this first sermon I saw was titled “Your Place of Blessing.” He recounted the story of Hagar, Sarai’s servant in the book of Genesis, who ran away with her young son Ishmael because Sarai was mistreating her. But an angel appeared to her, comforted her but told her to return to Sarai. Joel Osteen used this story to illustrate that God may be calling us to stay in an unpleasant environment because it is his place of blessing for us. It is true that God may have a purpose for keeping us in an unpleasant situation. The problem is, Joel Osteen puts “me” at the center. How can God bless Me? What is God’s destiny for me? It’s all about me, me, me with a little bit of God and Scripture sprinkled in. What a stark contrast from the sermons at my church where God is at the center. But if you are lost and haven’t had the good fortune of receiving good biblical teaching, you may not realize that Joel Osteen’s version of the Christian gospel is counterfeit. It occurred to me after watching this sermon that at some point, a blog post warning about counterfeit religion was in order, especially because the overarching purpose of my blog is to show how Christian Nationalism is also counterfeit Christianity.Obviously the Packer ticket analogy is not a perfect analogy. For one thing, counterfeit religion is on a completely separate level of seriousness from counterfeit Packer tickets. For another, as Russel Moore discusses in his book Losing our Religion, the sad reality is that the most ardent Christian Nationalists knowingly and willfully buy into counterfeit religion because their lust for earthly power, and a commitment to the ideology of white supremacy has hardened their hearts to the point that Jesus himself is angrily rejected, accused of being liberal, and because identifying as Christian based on cultural heritage is a lot less costly—at least in the sense of our worldly comfort—than the heart transformation through faith which Jesus requires. In fact, these ardent Christian Nationalists have not only bought into this counterfeit religion: they sell it to vulnerable people for personal gain. Unfortunately, while we should pray for these sellers to have a change of heart, it may be that only God can reach these people. But so many of our friends, neighbors and loved ones, I believe more closely resemble the vulnerable mother. Christian Nationalism is so engrained in our culture and history that we don’t realize we are consuming counterfeit religion.The U.S. Secret Service, in addition to protecting the president, also investigates financial transactions involving counterfeit currency. But their advice for helping banks and businesses spot counterfeit currency does not list every example of counterfeit currency they have seen. This would be impractical and counterproductive. Instead, they focus on what genuine currency looks like, as being well-versed in what genuine currency looks like will make all the clever attempts of criminals to create counterfeit currency easier to recognize. A similar principal can be applied to religion, and our training in what real Christianity looks like occurs when we read the Bible.I do believe in the grace of Christ. Unlike the ticket checkers at the Packer game, Jesus will be able to sort out whose hearts have accepted Christ, even if they made mistakes, accidentally drank a little of the Kool-Aid sold by ardent Christian Nationalists. In fact, if you are a white American, it is virtually impossible not to inadvertently drink a little. I believe a vulnerable person whose heart is in the right place will not be denied salvation. But people in positions of power and influence have saturated media platforms with so much counterfeit religious teaching and teaching that is so slick and convincing to people who haven’t taken the time to really study the Bible, that they may not even realize they are consuming counterfeit religion, and by the time they do, they may be so intoxicated by the Kool-Aid that their hearts are hardened and they are no longer interested in studying the Bible or following the true teachings of Christ. I have even heard stories of people who at one time attended churches with good, biblically sound teaching, but were so enamored with Christian Nationalism that they left and shopped around for churches that aligned with this ideology. The sad thing is, this ideology will be proven worthless, both in this life when, whether they realize it or not, they are angry and bitter, never experiencing the peace that passes understanding, and in the next when they may not get to enjoy eternal life if their hearts are so hardened that they never truly accept Christ. In fact, in this brilliant essay written by a Black activist, Jonathan Walton, it doesn’t even deserve to be called Christian at all. Instead, he calls it White American Folk Religion (WAFR) “a race, class, gender-based hierarchy that hijacks the Christian label to sanction abuse, greed and violence, and then absolve leaders who live lives contrary to the teachings of Jesus and wield power in opposition to God’s plan for the world.”At the end of the story about the mother given counterfeit Packer tickets, the reporter gave advice to prevent this from happening to others. Only buy tickets from trusted sites where the legitimacy of each ticket is verified. Always use a credit card so that you have recourse if you are scammed. If a price is too good to be true, it probably is.Perhaps, similar advice should be applied to religious teaching. The Bible should be the final authority in all spiritual matters. Given that the Bible is similar to the U.S. Constitution in that it was written at a particular time of history and therefore could not explicitly address every situation that would come up in our modern culture like—stem-cell research for example—and since God intended for us to worship in community with others, we can consult other sources, but Scripture must always have the final word when determining spiritual truth. Prayer and a willingness to be still and listen to the Holy Spirit is the best insurance to guard our hearts against false teaching. In Luke 3:8, John the Baptist tells the crowds coming to be baptized, “”Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our Father.” For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.”” In other words, your cultural heritage or family lineage won’t save you, only a genuine commitment to turn away from sin and follow Christ. If a pastor’s teachings don’t align with this explicit truth from Scripture, if they are preaching a gospel that is too convenient to be true,—it always seems to line up perfectly with your political views,—it probably is. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

I will never forget the evening of November 11, 2016. I was still in shock that our country was capable of electing someone as amoral as Donald Trump as our president. Of course I knew that both political parties fall far short of Christ’s standards. I was eight years old when the Monica Lewinsky scandal dominated the news, and Mom actually told me she quit watching the news until 9/11, partly because she was so appalled and disillusioned by Clinton’s behavior and how the media was covering it, and partly because I had big ears and was asking questions that there was just no age-appropriate way to answer. But something felt different about Donald Trump. He wasn’t just amoral, but his rhetoric felt dangerous and he didn’t seem to have intelligent policy positions at all, just a platform based on hate. At first, I wondered if maybe these feelings were due to my youth and inexperience. I had never witnessed a campaign with rhetoric as hateful and scary as that of Donald Trump in my lifetime, but relatively speaking, I hadn’t been alive that long. But older adults I love and respect, adults old enough to remember Richard Nixon, confirmed there was something different, in the foreboding sense of the word, about Donald Trump.At the time, I was working full-time and wasn’t able to attend Bible study at the times our church offered, but I was disturbed to learn that many Christians supported Donald Trump because he promised to appoint conservative judges, and that this was causing division in Bible study groups. And then people I had known—or thought I had known—my whole life started parroting his hateful rhetoric. Fortunately, our church was and still is apolitical. The pastors do a wonderful job of sticking to the Bible and have never endorsed a political candidate. But the fact that pastors didn’t speak out boldly worried me. Electing someone as amoral as Donald Trump in exchange for conservative judges seemed like a very bad bargain to me, but yet so many Christians were supporting him. Was I the crazy one? And could the church survive such a blatant forfeiture of any credibility as a moral authority? In other words, as Daniel Dietrich so poignantly conveys in this song, how are young adults to reconcile the Jesus they were introduced to as children with the knowledge that their parents and Sunday school teachers now support Donald Trump?One evening in June 2015, my dad and I were taking my dog Gilbert for a walk when we saw a neighbor also out with her dog. We got to talking and she mentioned she was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and wanted to know if I would be interested in studying the Bible with her. Now, please don’t reflexively stop reading. I did not convert to this religion because although I wasn’t as theologically grounded as I am now, I soon recognized some of their beliefs just weren’t right. For example they do not believe in the Doctrine of the Trinity and as such, do not recognize Jesus as being one with God and the Holy Spirit. They believe that Jesus was the Son of God, but that he was the archangel Michael. They believe he was killed by the Roman government—though not crucified on the cross but impaled on a stake—but they do not believe in his bodily resurrection from the dead. Also, I don’t mean any disrespect to Catholics or Jehovah’s Witnesses, but both religions rely on a central governing body to interpret the Bible for them rather than reading it and interpreting it for themselves with the help of the Holy Spirit, and when this happens, both faiths fall prey to legalism, something Jesus repeatedly rebuked the Pharisees about. But if you are secure in your faith, you have nothing to fear from studying other religious views, and as I would discover, God can use people of other faiths to enlighten us. So every Saturday morning at 11:00, this neighbor and another friend and fellow Witness would come to our house and we would sit around the dining room table enjoying muffins or cookies and discussing the Bible. We worked our way slowly through their introductory book What Does the Bible Really Teach? And they were also genuinely fascinated by my assistive technology and showed me how to navigate the organizations website. That season was also a difficult time in my life as my job was causing me anxiety, and they were a wonderful source of biblical encouragement. Though they have their own Bible translation, the vast majority of Bible verses are rendered the same as in our mainstream Bible translations. It is the way the Watch Tower interprets some verses that is unorthodox. But I do have to say that the highly structured worship and Bible study routine given to them by the Watch Tower means that they put many of us Evangelicals—myself included—to shame with their familiarity with Scripture.By November 11, I had learned that they are taught to remain neutral when it comes to political affairs. They do not lobby, vote, serve on a jury or in the military or run for political office. Their loyalty is to God’s Kingdom alone, and by remaining neutral, they are able to speak freely to people of all political persuasions about the good news of God’s kingdom. Political neutrality also allows them to live out the truth that God’s kingdom is global. A Jehovah’s Witness living in the United States has no trouble forging a bond of unity with a Witness from Russia, even though there is conflict between the earthly governments of these countries. They make valid arguments, as Jesus did refuse to accept political office (John 6:15), and taught that his kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). I will say that I believe Jehovah’s Witnesses take this argument too far in the sense that the Bible is full of examples of prophets holding kings accountable for bad behavior, and Jesus commands us to advocate for the widow, the orphan, the poor and the refugee which I believe requires calling out elected leaders and institutions that oppress them, and voting against people whose entire platform is based on hate. I believe what Jesus means when he says we should be in the world but not of the world, is that we should not hunker down in our religious bubbles and just wait for the kingdom to come, but should offer society a foretaste of God’s kingdom by imitating Jesus and calling out people and institutions that oppress the marginalized in society. At the same time, I believe Jehovah’s Witnesses make a valid argument in that there is a slippery slope from speaking out against people and systems that oppress the marginalized, and succumbing to idolatry, putting all your hope in a person or political party when God’s kingdom is the only real hope for humanity as all earthly governments will one day meet their end.Usually I met with the Witnesses on Saturday mornings, but the week of November 11, 2016, my neighbor had a scheduling conflict, so rather than missing a week of Bible study, she invited me over to her house on Friday evening. She and her husband cooked a wonderful dinner of salmon and vegetables, and over dinner when they asked me how I was doing, I couldn’t help confiding in them how I couldn’t believe Donald Trump had been elected. “It still feels like it should be a bad dream that we will all wake up from,” I remember saying and then I had to ask, “I know you are neutral in political matters, but have you been watching the news?” To this question, she laughed, not a laugh of insensitivity to my concern, but the knowing laugh of someone who is at peace. She said they do follow the news, and even admitted that they have to remind one another that they are supposed to be neutral. But then she reminded me how this kind of chaos on earth is foretold in Scripture but that Christ promised he will return and put an end to this system of things when he establishes his kingdom on earth.Russel Moore, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today recently published a book reflecting on the turmoil facing the American evangelical movement today. In this book, Losing our Religion, he recounts Matthew 16:13-20 when Jesus takes his disciples to Caesarea Philippi and asks his disciples who they believe he is. When Peter correctly answers that Jesus is the son of God, Jesus says that flesh and blood did not reveal this to him but his father in heaven and then declares that Peter is the rock on which the church will be built. What Russel Moore found compelling about this passage is that in addition to this site belonging to the house of Herod, archeological evidence has also revealed that this is the site where for centuries, people worshipped the god Pan, a symbol of Pagan nature worship. So by bringing the apostles to this site, Jesus is opposing both Pagan worship, and the political forces that would crucify him, but in a way that is not frantic or frenzied. “He has the tranquility that comes from the confidence that his church will be built and that nothing—not even the gates of hell—could overturn that promise” (Page 25). That is what the Witnesses had that was so awesome, tranquility, and that’s what we as evangelicals are supposed to have too. Russel Moore also observes, “Some are panicked about rising secularism and what they fear will be hostility to the church, but act in ways that tie the witness of the church to forms of power that actually fuel secularization” (Page 24). Some—and I definitely have fallen into this group—are tempted to succumb to cynicism when people we thought we knew take positions we never imagined. But we are both operating from a place of fear, an observation I was humbled by. The first group fears that the collapse of the culture will lead to the collapse of the church, and people like me fear that the church will not survive the present scandals that pass for Christian “influence.” This observation made me realize we all, but I first and foremost, need to show empathy and grace toward one another and repent of self-righteous, judgmental attitudes, and in my case maybe even words I have written on my blogs. We both need to remember that our God is faithful and keeps his promises, and if Jesus told Peter that not even the gates of hell will prevail against his church, then we have absolutely nothing to fear from the collapse of American culture, or an authoritarian like Donald Trump.I don’t know what the future holds. Our democracy may not survive, and the church may take a different form in my lifetime than the church of my parents and grandparents. But I believe we will be okay, and whenever I am feeling discouraged, I thank God for bringing the Witnesses into my life to show me what tranquility looks like. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

In my first post to this blog, I quoted Martin Niemoller’s poem of regret at not speaking out when he was not effected by, and in fact even agreed with the persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazis. I argued that we must speak out against injustice, even when it does not directly impact us because those who thirst for power will eventually come for us. And actually, even if persecution will never effect us, Christians should speak out because it is the right thing to do. Whether Christian or not, any decent person would rush to the defense of a biological brother or sister being treated unjustly, but as Christians, we are taught that all followers of Christ whether they are Black, white, Asian or Hispanic, attend our church or live in the global south, are our brothers and sisters.The official definition of Christian Nationalism I quote on the about page of this blog focuses on the overlap of Christian Nationalism with white supremacy and racial subjugation, and therefore all who want to follow the true teachings of Christ should find Christian Nationalism abhorrent because it flagrantly violates Christ’s teaching that all followers of Christ are our brothers and sisters. Ableism is not addressed in this definition, though I don’t think this is intentional. Racial subjugation, is and should be in the spotlight right now as systemic racial injustice continues to make the news headlines, and people in positions of power are working tirelessly to sugarcoat our country’s history of racial oppression. When I first became passionate about confronting Christian Nationalism, I overlooked the overlap of Christian Nationalism and ableism too, perhaps as a coping mechanism.I am totally blind, the result of a brain tumor that destroyed my optic nerve when I was a baby. I was blessed to be born in 1990, the year the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted, so although I still experienced some adversity, my adversity pales in comparison to the adversity previous generations had to overcome. I would also be dishonest if I didn’t acknowledge that being white and growing up in an affluent suburb also made my path easier. And yet last summer when I read the book My Body is not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church, written by disability scholar Dr. Amy Kenny, it occurred to me that I have been wounded by Christian Nationalism.I have three older siblings, all of whom attended Catholic school through eighth grade, but because of my disability, I was told that Catholic school was out of the question for me. They simply did not have the resources to accommodate my special needs. I always accepted this reality without giving it any thought, until I read Dr. Amy Kenny’s book, where she details how religious leaders actively fought for and won exemption from having to comply with most aspects of the Americans with Disabilities Act. According to a 1992 article in Christianity Today, religious leaders were uncomfortable with the idea of government entanglement with religious institutions, and Amy Kenny also sites documents where religious leaders complained that the cost of renovating buildings to comply with accessibility requirements would be a burden for religious institutions. Dr. Amy Kenny’s disability came about when she was a teenager, and the teachers at her public high school refused to comply with the education provisions in the Americans with Disabilities Act. And yet as much as she was wounded by these public school teachers, wounds she experienced from ableism in the church were deeper. She could almost understand the unfair way she was treated by public school teachers because in secular society, “people have been taught to value product over personhood, profit over people, and cash as king above all else. Disabled people do not produce anything the capitalist market deems valuable, and therefore we are cast aside as drains on the system. It’s eugenicist, but that’s capitalism…But churches are meant to usher in new creation, where all people have dignity and value simply because we are image bearers of the Alpha and the Omega” (Page 50).I was blessed to receive an excellent public school education from a school district that was willing and able to provide all of the accommodations I needed. Sometimes, I experienced the adversity of not having class handouts in time, and my classroom aid would have to constantly remind these teachers that they needed to give her these handouts ahead of time so she could transcribe them into braille for me. But the overwhelming majority of these teachers were kindhearted people who were just disorganized sometimes and couldn’t plan ahead. With the possible exception of just one math teacher in middle school, I never got the impression they resented having to accommodate me. But I should have been at the Catholic school with my siblings.To be fair, my siblings envied me because my elementary school was more dynamic, offering more extracurricular opportunities, and their principle was a kind but serious nun. It was just not in her nature to sit on the roof for a day and throw candy down to us on the playground as a reward for meeting our school’s food drive donation goal, or participate in the holiday concert as the delivery man bringing another everlasting fruitcake. My parents also said if they could do life over, they would send all of us to public school. In previous places they had lived, the Catholic schools were better than the public schools, so when they moved to this area, they didn’t even look at the public schools until my older siblings were already established in a Catholic school. But I envied my siblings because I grew up in completely different social circles from them, and thus always felt alone and left out when I would go to their school events, and they would hang out with their friends while my parents chatted with other parents. I remember wondering what it would have been like to ride the school bus with them and see them in the hallway, to have religion class integrated into the regular school day rather than have to attend the weekly evening Catholic Formation class offered for public school kids when I was tired from a long school day, or to be able to talk about the same teachers.I am glad disability rights activists fought for legislation that is far from perfect, but does provide some recourse so that people with disabilities can have a fighting chance at realizing our nation’s ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, removing many barriers that used to prevent people with disabilities from accessing public transportation, going to a restaurant or movie theater, even getting an education or finding employment. But it should have been the other way around. If the American church were really serious about living according to Christ’s teaching, they should not even need the Americans with Disabilities Act to compel them to welcome those with disabilities. The recognition that these people are image bearers of God should have been written on their hearts, and they should have been ahead of their time, prioritizing access for people with disabilities, and resources to educate children with disabilities above all else when making financial decisions, with the secular world lagging behind.When it suits their agenda—when it comes to culture war issues—Christian Nationalism welcomes the power of the state to impose their beliefs on people who may disagree with them. But I believe when religious leaders resisted the involvement of the state at the time that the Americans with Disabilities Act was being drafted, Christian Nationalism was also at work, as some religious leaders disregarded Christ’s teachings about people with disabilities, implying that people with disabilities weren’t worth the financial costs, ultimately corrupting the gospel with eugenicist, capitalistic views.To be fair, the leader of the Catholic Formation program I attended was a wonderful person who adored me and even went out of her way to make sure I was included, which I will talk about more in future posts. The staff at this school had no part in, and most likely weren’t even fully aware of the history behind the exemption of religious institutions from the Americans with Disabilities Act. But the fact remains that the school my siblings attended was wittingly or not, complicit with a precedent that religious institutions did not have to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. I should have attended Catholic school with my siblings, and I suspect Christian Nationalism is the ideology behind why I couldn’t. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

In The Drama of Scripture, Michael Goheen and Craig Bartholomew don’t use the term “nationalism” when discussing Genesis 11, the story of the Tower of Babel, but I believe this is exactly what they are describing. God commanded them to spread out over the face of the whole earth, but “instead of a God-given unity and identity, they seek a false, autonomous collectivism and a reputation of their own devising” (page 51). Bartholomew and Goheen insightfully observe that while the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden was a rejection of God on the individual level, the Tower of Babel was humanity’s first rejection of God at the societal level. God condemns this first display of nationalism, confusing their languages and scattering them across the face of the earth himself. But even in our separate lands and languages, nationalism persists as we reject and devalue God, and people outside our particular tribe.But God loved humanity too much to give up on us, and in the following chapter, we learn of God’s grand plan to rescue us when he says to Abraham, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:2-3, TNIV). The Israelites wouldn’t fully understand the implications of this call, and in their sinful fallen state would even misinterpret this call as entitlement. Since they were God’s chosen people, they could live however they wanted and would be immune from judgment. God was grieved by this sin, but still had no intention of giving up on humanity, sending his only son Jesus, not to abolish the laws of the Old Testament but to fulfill them, teaching us how to follow after God through him, and willingly sacrificing himself on the cross to pay for the sins of all humanity, past, present and future.And yet despite witnessing many miracles during Jesus’s three year ministry, despite witnessing the sky grow dark and the veil of the temple being torn in two when Jesus surrendered his life, despite seeing and even touching the wounds of the resurrected Jesus, which you would think would be ample proof that Jesus was far more than a mere earthly mortal, and had a plan far grander than simply making Israel great again, nationalistic thinking persisted in the minds of the apostles when just before Jesus is taken up to Heaven, the apostles ask, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” to which Jesus responded, “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:6-8). For the first few centuries after Christ, the early church trusted in this beautiful promise, radically living out the teachings of Christ, even in the midst of brutal persecution. Tyrants thought they could stamp out Christianity, but in fact, the radical courage and steadfast commitment to the faith even when sentenced to prison, torture and death, only drew more people to Christianity.While on the one hand, it was a blessing that Constantine’s conversion to Christianity ended the worst persecution of Christians, this event unfortunately also marked the beginning of the pattern in history of merging Christianity with empire (Christian nationalism). For centuries, regions would be “Christianized” not by missionaries lovingly sharing the good news of the gospel, but with the coercion of the sword. As different theological interpretations caused division of the church into different denominations, a particular denomination would be established as the official religion of a country, depending on who was in power, and Christians would go to war over denominational disagreements.When our country’s founders separated church and state, this was radical, and some feared it would mean the end of Christianity. But in fact, when people were free to choose their religious practices, or have no religion at all, Christianity flourished. Yet even as religious liberty was codified in our Constitution, we did not extend this liberty to all on our soil, most notably enslaved Africans and native Americans, both of whom, in different ways were forcibly removed from their land and culture and had Christianity (a distorted version of it, we should note) cruelly imposed upon them. And still to this day, some do not want to honestly confront our country’s dark history, and continue to champion legislation that imposes their religious beliefs on people who may not share them. In short, they invoke God’s name, but have no desire to follow his command of love and mercy because I think they really just want to use God as justification for their power, and establish a false autonomous collectivism and reputation of their own devising.Maybe you could forgive the nationalism of the ancient Israelites because they did not have the full revelation of Christ. But we ought to know better. We have the full revelation of Christ, the Jesus who loves and cherishes people of all races and nations, and called us to spread the gospel not by the sword or legislative mandates, but with love, baptizing them and teaching them his commands, which I believe he intended to be done on the individual level, one friend, neighbor, coworker at a time.According to Mark Twain, history may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Some rhyme schemes in poetry are fun and memorable, like Dr. Seuss’s books, and some rhymes in culture make me smile too, like a story I saw recently about renewed interest in vinyl records among young people. But this rhyme of Christian nationalism has gotten old and tired, don’t you think? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

Welcome everyone. The About section of Substack doesn’t have a way to insert an audio voiceover, but I wanted to offer the option to listen to my introduction, so I am posting it separately as a podcast here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com

When I was in high school, Mom came across a poignant poem that she read to me. It is short, the language simple, but the message stops you in your tracks. Mom and I couldn’t remember who wrote it, but I found the poem again, and the history of its author on the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust website.“First they came for the CommunistsAnd I did not speak outBecause I was not a CommunistThen they came for the socialistsAnd I did not speak outBecause I was not a SocialistThen they came for the trade unionistsAnd I did not speak outBecause I was not a trade unionistThen they came for the JewsAnd I did not speak outBecause I was not a JewThen they came for meAnd there was no one leftTo speak out for me”This poem was written by Pastor Martin Niemoller, who was an antisemitic Nazi supporter, but had a change of heart when he was imprisoned in a concentration camp for speaking out against Nazi control of churches.Hitler is a case study in what can happen when people don’t speak out against Nationalism. He wanted to make Germany great again, and wrongly blamed Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I. As Christians, we are forbidden to hate anyone, as we know that all people are created in God’s image, but Christian hatred of Jews is particularly abhorrent in my view because we share much of our faith foundation with the Jewish people. Their sacred text, the Torah, is also the first five books of our Bible, and we will share the inheritance of God’s kingdom with them at the end of the age. And of course, Jesus was himself Jewish. Some antisemites blame Jews for killing Jesus, but we as Christians know that (A) Jesus himself says that his crucifixion had to happen in order that Scripture would be fulfilled; and (b) while Jesus was rejected by his own people who chanted “crucify him,” it was ultimately the Roman government who crucified him is the social unrest he was causing threatened their authority. But more importantly, as Christians, we know that the wages of sin is death, and in this sense, we all crucified him in the sense that we all have sinned and deserve eternal death, but Jesus took our place. Thus, antisemitism by a Christian pastor is especially ridiculous in my view.Nevertheless, Martin Niemoller at first aligned himself with the Nazis because he thought they were on his side. Little did he realize the Nazis thirst for power would not stop with the Jews. I think this is a profound lesson in the importance of speaking out against Christian Nationalism today.Last Sunday, the church I attend welcomed a new senior pastor, who used his first sermon to lay out his core values and vision for our church. It was an excellent sermon, but the statement that stood out most for me was his call that we be a church of engagement, rather than entitlement. There was a time in our history when Christianity was basically the only show in town. In many towns, the church was the tallest building. This is no longer the case, so rather than clinging tightly to an attitude of entitlement, we must engage with our pluralistic culture, which I interpreted as sharing the good news in a winsome way with one friend, neighbor, coworker at a time.It occurred to me that at the root of Christian nationalism is an attitude of entitlement. Rather than engaging in the slow but rewarding work of sharing the good news one soul at a time, Christian Nationalism seeks to impose Christianity onto the culture through legislation. I am all for upholding orthodox Bible teaching in our churches and our personal lives. But when we lobby for legislation to impose our views on a pluralistic culture who may not share our views, we perpetuate the decline in Christianity that we purport to lament by projecting to the world a self-righteous, judgmental God. But we also risk eventually hurting ourselves. The reason theocracies don’t thrive as nations, at least not for long, is because ultimately man’s lust for power overshadows the orthodox teachings of the faith. Often, factions with extremely radical interpretations of the faith assume power and impose legislation that persecutes not only those of other faiths, but also the mainstream adherents of the state religion. I have read that right now in Afghanistan, many fathers are heartbroken that their daughters can no longer go to school, and believe that this is not an accurate teaching of Islam. But at least for now, they have no choice but to comply with the Taliban’s mandates. I am not saying we are anywhere near this kind of persecution. What I am saying is that (a) we should never take our freedom for granted even if we are the majority religion; and (b) history has shown, and regimes like the Taliban continue to show that when we in our fallen sinful state attempt to establish a righteous government based on religion, we ultimately end up persecuting ourselves. And by the time we realize what we have done, it may be too late. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lostsheepofthechurch.com