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Praying With Anger – Part 1

 

 

“Most of our troubles are due to our passionate desire for and attachment to things that we misapprehend as enduring entities.”

Attachment is the emotional dependence we put in situations, objects, or people. Strong attachments come in many forms—including overindulgence in or pursuit of food and drink, sex, power, control, fame, even principles or ideas—and can manifest in potentially harmful ways.

In our desire to control the external, we may lose control over the internal. The more we want to control things, others, or situations, the angrier we may become when things don’t turn out the way we expected.

Anger is the defeat of expectations. Handling anger properly is a critical life skill for Christians. Anger can cripple communication between two people, rip apart families, and relationships in churches. God’s Word not only teaches how to deal with anger but also how to overcome sinful anger.

Anger can become sinful when it is motivated by pride (James 1:20), when it is unproductive and thus distorts God’s purposes (1 Corinthians 10:31), or when anger is allowed to linger (Ephesians 4:26-27).

One obvious sign that anger has turned to sin is when, instead of attacking the problem at hand, we attack the “perceived” wrongdoer. Ephesians 4:15-19 says we are to speak the truth in love and use our words to build others up, not allow rotten or destructive words to pour from our lips. Unfortunately, this poisonous speech is a common characteristic of fallen man (Romans 3:13-14).

The reason there is a war among us is because there is a war inside us. Our desires for what we define as our pleasures, comforts, and rights have been placed above everything else.

Did we forget, when we suffer for righteousness sake we are blessed. We demonstrate who God is to a watching world when we think about others above ourselves and serving rather than being served. I can hear you saying, yea but “they” are trying to take our freedoms. “They” are trying to control us. “They” are . . . but those aren’t my words, 1 Peter 3:14 tells us, “But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled.”

Instead of holding onto anger, pray for the person who angers you. The key is to convert your anger into love for others because of the grace of God. This is one key where we can change our feelings towards another by doing a loving deed.

It’s the influence of the church that will ensures our witness is effective. Remember, people listen to what we do, not what we say. Let’s not give people reason to stop listening.

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We Believe, Help Our Unbelief

 

This prayer is for everyone whose been calling on the name of the Lord for a fresh touch in their homes, and in their cities. The Bible says, before you call I’ll answer. And while you are speaking I’ll yet hear:

 

Lord, We don’t have much to give, but we want to give you all we have. Jesus, you are the reason we live, still we need your grace and mercy, even as we stop to pray. God we were made by You, we were made for You. And we will only be satisfied in You. We welcome you with open hearts. We cry out to you because you are our hope.

 

In this time of America’s brokenness, we ask for a wave of new anointing, a wave of Your glory, for You to send a fresh wind. We are at our Red Sea, but we know you can part the waters and dry the land. So, shake the generations, tear down the walls, heal the broken hearted, bring restoration by the power of your name. Holy Spirit bring us in.

 

Lord we run to You, no one else will do. You said we would face trouble, pain, and tears but to be of good cheer. You said, there are some lessons we must learn, and the test and trials are only to make us strong. Yet you promised to never leave us alone. So, help us to understand you’re not just the God who saves us. You’re also the God who sustains us.

 

Deliver us from looking other places to find satisfaction. Bring us to a place of true love, one to another. We are open to you because we are your beloved.

 

Now unto Him, who is able to keep us from falling, who is able to do exceedingly and abundantly above all that we ask or think. Be merciful to those who doubt. Lord, we believe, help our unbelief.

 

In Jesus name we pray. Amen

 

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#neverforget

 

I received a response from a reader of the last newsletter, who we will call “John”, that confirmed my comments about the psychology of victimization:

 

“David, what is the mission you have been called to…to get back at a few thousand worthless dead white men who wrongfully hurt generations of slaves and near slaves…or to further the Message of Christ? Doing both is incompatible with the latter and is promoting hate, division, and tribalism.”

 

Victim blaming comes in many forms and is often subtler and more unconscious than the perpetrator recognizes. As a general rule, Americans have a hard time believing that bad things happen to good people. People tend to default to victim-blaming thoughts and behaviors as a defense mechanism.

 

There’s just a strong need to believe that we all deserve our outcomes and consequences irrespective of the inputs. This desire to see the world as just and fair may be even stronger among Americans, raised in a culture that promotes the American Dream and the idea that we all control our destinies.

 

Holding victims responsible for their misfortune is partially a way to avoid admitting that something just as unthinkable could happen to you—even if you do everything “right.”

 

The Bible tells us, “[God] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45).

 

Blaming the victim is an unfortunate instinct among some conservative evangelicals. A recent poll showed that Christians are more than twice as likely to blame people’s challenges on a lack of effort than on difficulties beyond their control.
  • Franklin Graham blamed Hurricane Katrina on “orgies” in New Orleans.
  • James Dobson blamed the Sandy Hook school shooting on the nation’s tolerance of gay marriage and abortion.

 

The hashtag “neverforget” was used all last week as we remembered the 20th anniversary of 9/11. A horrific event where America lost 3,000 lives. We remember and never forget in hopes that the past actions will inform choices of future actions. We remember because the lives lost were someone’s wife, husband, brother, sister, mother, and father. In other words our family, friends, our loved ones.

 

In “John’s” comments, there is an assumption that bad actors against People of Color are a thing of the past. And we should forget the past and move on. He and others fail to see that what is and has been experienced is deep and personal to People of Color as history is repeating itself.  At the center of most actions against People of Color today are, again, White individuals who publicly profess to being Christians.

 

When sharing this story with a friend, she asked the question, “Why are we simultaneously encouraged to ‘move on from the past when it comes to other great American tragedies, like the genocidal erasure of Indigenous peoples, or the horrific violence against Black people from chattel slavery through Jim Crow?” She followed with, “Selective memory, in this case, is easy to explain on one level. Tragedies we externalize and blame outsiders allow us to keep this country’s historical violence against people of color at arm’s length. It also allows us to maintain a narrative of American exceptionalism and American innocence.”

 

If “John” had taken the time to first get to know me, rather than responding from a position of assumed privilege, he would have learned that I, as a person with long-term, loving relationships with many White friends and family would never promote hate and division.

 

In my writing, I reference issues with passages that compel God’s people to confront their uncomfortable realities of sin and brokenness in our world. My entire platform is about unity in the body of Christ. My heart’s desires are those of God’s heart, to treat everyone with dignity and live out Scripture as an example to a watching world.

 

It is painful and exhausting to always make conversations about the uncomfortable treatment you have experienced, as a person of color, feel comfortable and not offend anyone.

 

History is informative to the potential of future actions.  If we sanitize or ignore history, we are bound to repeat it. And we don’t have to go back to slavery. Let’s start at 1944; the compounding effect of the GI Bill will be inclusive of every living person. The financial crisis has never ended in black neighborhoods. Generations of families have been torn apart because someone looked a certain way. Communities became redlined and the path for highways connecting suburbs to cities. And schools needed to be created to protect the little White girls from the “overly sexual” Black boy.

 

What that timeframe showed us were patterns of behaviors repeated from slavery’s view of people of color. Today, we continue to see the patterns of behavior that continue that mentality.

 

Patterns of behavior identify our sinful nature and true beliefs. Some want to select sins they feel don’t challenge them and forget Romans 1:29-31 sins. The need to control people, the belief of superiority, assuming we are better than others, deciding who belongs in our neighborhood, and supporting false narratives about a group of people (lying) fall into the Scripture’s list.

 

We tend to think like the Disciples who wanted to prioritize the commandments. Scripture teaches us that when Jesus heard them prioritizing, He instructed them to focus on loving God and loving their neighbor as themself. Everything else would take care of itself.

 

When we love the people and hate the sin, love, grace, and mercy are at the forefront of everything we do or say. It’s not a political agenda but can sometimes be seen as political when biblical truths are antithetical to one’s political views and self-interest.

 

I speak to people’s actions through the lens of Scripture. It’s because I love you that I lift up areas that the enemy has convinced you are “ok” or “not that bad.” I want us to get our truth back.

 

I will summarize the original comments with the words of David Leong, “Christian memory dares to imagine a place where swords are turned into plowshares, and the lion and the lamb dwell together in peace. Christians long for a time when people no longer study war, and the most vulnerable among us are more than an afterthought in our rearview mirror. To realize this vision in the present will require us to reimagine our selective memories and recover a sense of collective history. If we can face who we have been and who we have become, we may begin to see our past and ourselves in a new light.”

 

Rest in the promises of the scriptures and know that God is in control. Whatever uncertainty lies ahead, can all fall at the feet of Jesus.
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Victimhood

Politics, COVID, or democracy all lead to narcissism and feelings of victimhood. Even well-off people fall prey to this disease. We want to believe things are not our fault and the other is the cause of us losing something. Every age has a notion of this being the worst time ever.

The reality is that we are all susceptible to greed, rich and poor alike. Greed arises from man’s fallen nature. But greed is not just financial. This fallen nature impels man to satisfy his desires with the least possible expenditure of effort, which often requires his satisfaction at the expense of others.

Biblical commentator John Ritenbaugh describes greed as a “ruthless self-seeking and an arrogant assumption that others and things exist for one’s own benefit. An accursed love of having, which will pursue its own interests with complete disregard for the rights of others, and even for the considerations of common humanity.”

Author Tom Nichols offers a counterintuitive description, “we are losing because we won. We are suffering because we are successful. We are unhappy because we have what we want.“

The Bible defines it as self-interest at the expense of others and provides us several examples: Satan was expelled from Heaven for wanting to be God. Adam and Eve wanted the knowledge of God. And Cain wanted the love Abel received.

In Romans 1:18b, we see that we are very capable of suppressing what we know to be true:

“Men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”

All this led to Jesus coming to demonstrate how to put others first and simply “love God and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Some say the Bible does not condemn the pursuit of self-interest. They point to Scriptures like Philippians 2:4, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” And Matt 6:20, “But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven . . .”

“There is a place for legitimate self-interest, to which the bible periodically appeals, only it must be balanced by a compassionate concern for the interest of others.”

Sadly, many of us in the Christian community have missed the point. We establish rapport exclusively to satisfy our emotional and material needs. We commoditize relationships to further our careers, families, bank accounts, and material possessions and essentially build mutually exclusive affiliations. We use those affiliations to limit who we engage.

American Christians
portraying Christianity
as self-centered individualism
must explain how this integrates with
God’s commandment to love your neighbor.

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A Crisis in Christian Integrity

 

Could you do the right thing if called upon to respond? Stand up to family or friends if you saw them doing something wrong? Risk alienating your friends and family to do what is right when everyone else was being rewarded for going along with the crowd? Would your inner moral compass work if True North suddenly disappeared and the very ground beneath your feet underwent a seismic shift?

 

Some say they understand the fear that grips Christians who refuse to speak out against the divisive madness transpiring in this country, but when we are followers of Christ, our integrity and faith will cause us to stand against division. Will the impulses of violence, racism and intolerance be too strong for our faith to contain? Or will we commit to becoming God’s Revelation 7:9-17 vision – a vibrant, forward-looking multiracial family.

 

We can have different ideas about how the country should deal with its many challenges but not how we view and treat people. We can lose any moral high ground or spiritual authority with a generation through hypocrisy, inconsistency, incredibly selective mercy, and thinly veiled supremacy.

 

These tendencies bring us all dangerously close to those who were “confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else,” leading one of them to pray, in public, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—extortioners, unjust, adulterers robbers, evildoers, adulterers” (Luke 18:11).

 

You cannot devise your own morals to fit your situation. We’ve been told by popular theologians for some years that “the situation determines morals.” Now we are reaping the bitter fruits of practicing that kind of ethics. If God is, then what God says must be “absolute”—man must have moral boundaries.

 

The Bible tells us that with what judgment we judge, we shall be judged. So we must avoid hypocritical and self-righteous glee at the evil that is being done.

 

Let us hope that by God’s grace, we may turn the corner. Let’s hope we realize that the crisis in Christian integrity is the most serious we can face.

 

Discern the will of God and use wisdom in your words and actions.  

 

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Christian Division, Real or Racial Motivated?

 

 

Americans are asking, is the country too broke to move forward in closing its divide? The country is at a critical juncture which presents a prime opportunity for the Church to help communities discern the country’s most divisive issue head-on, so every Christian can ”sing from the same hymnal.”

 

My children, we should love people not only with words and talk,
but by our actions and true caring.”
1 John 3:18 (NCV)

 

Today, so much emphasis is placed on self-interest that we can be blinded to the dangers and cost of getting our way. The perilous pursuit of self-interest, I believe, lies at the root of many of our problems in the Church, in culture, and in politics. We want to shape the world to our ends. Here’s a perfect example. Recently, I heard a pastor on the radio say, “you only need to love people by telling them the about gospel. Anything else is a false prophet.” That belief is just outright antithetical to the Bibles teaching.

 

Charles Taylor, in Sources Of The Self: the making of modern identity wrote, “We’re saved through the self-giving of Christ then we hear Christ saying: take up your cross and follow me, lose yourself to find yourself, don’t live for yourself anymore, but live for God and your neighbor. That’s a problem for most.

 

What we need in our society, which is producing self-actualizes, self-asserters, is millions of people who’ve been shaped by the self-giving of Jesus Christ, who say: I’m a Christian because of Jesus’ self-giving, and we’re able to say therefore I live for God and for my neighbor, not necessarily for myself because I’ve got everything, I need in him.”

 

If racial division is a shallow political wedge issue to you, you probably won’t read further. If this is just another way to ignore the “Imago Dei” to satisfy your need to be better than someone else, then you probably won’t read further. But if, as a Christian, you want to understand, “how do we move forward,” you will continue reading.

 

The history of this country has become extremely controversial. Understanding our history can help us make current choices that are considerate of every human being. Finding where things went wrong or right helps to reimagine how things could go right in the future.

 

On the one hand, we believe Americans have the highest moral ideals. On the other hand, modern culture shows us that all moral value is socially constructed and subjective. It becomes easy to bandwagon divisive ideas that support your interest.

 

One such idea is CRT, which has attracted the ire of conservatives, who critique the theory as anti-white and anti-American. But while many Republican legislators are trying to ban the teaching of CRT in public schools, they struggle to give even the broadest definition when asked actually to define CRT. When public school administrators are asked if they are teaching CRT, their answer is “no, we are not.”

 

So what is it? CRT was developed in the 1970s and 1980s by legal scholars, attempting to explain why even after civil rights legislation was passed, racial inequalities continue to persist in the ’60s and beyond.

 

Not everything that critiques racism or thinks critically about racialization is critical race theory. And for those beginning to think biblically about racial identity and how race interacts with faith and theology, the list below offers some helpful places to start. These resources are NOT a part of CRT. They unpack a history that, at the time of their publication and before the historical revision process began, everyone agreed.

 

All are bound to make you consider the complexities of categorizing people by their race and how the consequences of those categorizations continue to manifest themselves in politics, media, health care, education, economics, and our churches.

 

If all this sounds complicated and abstract, I’d agree. But simple answers to the complex questions of how we form a more just society will not be sufficient in imagining new ways for humans to live into God’s beloved community.

 

After, you have read these resources, you can know for yourself the differences. Thinking critically about how beliefs about differences in pigmentation affect how you interact and treat people is normal history.

 

1. Race: A Theological Account. By J. Kameron Carter (Oxford University Press, 2008).

 

“Race: A Theological Account is an initial installment in filling this significant lacuna in modern knowledge about how the discourse of theology aided and abetted the process by which ‘man’ came to be viewed as a modern, racial being,” writes Carter in the prologue.

 

2. The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. By Willie James Jennings (Yale University Press, 2011).
“Indeed, it is as though Christianity, wherever it went in the modern colonies, inverted its sense of hospitality,” writes Jennings. “It claimed to be the host, the owner of the spaces it entered, and demanded native peoples enter its cultural logics, its ways of being in the world, and its conceptualities.”

 

3. Redeeming Mulatto: A Theology of Race and Christian Hybridity. By Brian Bantum (Baylor University Press, 2016).
“The interracial or mulatto/a body is the site that unveils race as a tragic illusion,” writes Bantum. “The tragic, so often accounted to mulatto/a peoples as a bodily inferiority or a profound loneliness, is instead seen as the necessity of negotiation within multiple worlds that refuse them or which they themselves refuse.”

 

4. Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being. By M. Shawn Copeland (Fortress Press, 2009).
“Since the radical and expedient subjugation of a people to demonized difference in the fifteenth century, all human bodies have been caught up in a near totalizing web of body commerce, body exchange, body value,” writes Copeland in the introduction. “Taking the black woman’s body as the starting point for theological anthropology allows us to interrogate the impact of that demonization in history, religion, culture, and society.”

 

5. Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God. By Kelly Brown Douglas (Orbis, 2015).
“Stand Your Ground law signals a social-cultural climate that makes the destruction and death of black bodies inevitable and even permissible,” writes Douglas in the introduction. “It is this very climate that also sustains the Prison Industrial Complex, which thrives on black male bodies. Most disturbing, this stand-your-ground climate seems only to have intensified as it continues to take young black lives such as those of Renisha McBride, Jonathan Ferrell, and Jordan Davis.”

 

SOURCE OF BOOKS: Josiah R. Daniels, assistant opinion editor at sojo.net.

 

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Utilizing God’s Wisdom

Keep my soul, and deliver me;
Let me not be ashamed,
for I put my trust in You.
Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, 
For I wait for You.
Psalms 25:20-21 (NKJV)

 

Culture and politics have conspired to arrest integrity, honesty, and concern for the wellbeing of the other. God requires us to obey Him, not man.  The story of Esther, Joseph, Daniel, and the Book of Acts demonstrates self-interest is never to the exclusion of loving my brother, sister, or neighbor as myself.

 

The presence we are to have in the culture
 is not manifesting as the Creator designed it to be.

 

If ever two powerful forces were needed to preserve us in these times of God’s exposing humankind, they are integrity and honesty. The psalmist asks for these to protect him step by step.

 

Honesty makes us learn God’s requirements and strive to fulfill them. Integrity—being what we say we are—keeps us from claiming to be honest while living as if we do not know God. Honesty says, “This is the Shepherd’s way,” and integrity says, “I will walk consistently in it.”

 

How do we walk honestly and consistently? By knowing what God instructs us to do or not to do.

 

“These six things the LORD hates,
Yes, seven are an abomination to Him:
a proud look, a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that are swift in running to evil,
a false witness who speaks lies,
and one who sows discord among brethren.”
Proverbs 6:16-19 (NKJV)

 

These seven detestable sins provide a profound glimpse into the sinfulness of man. Those sins are in a unique manner provoking to God and are hurtful to the comfort of human life. These things which God hates; we must hate in ourselves; it is easy to hate them in others. Let us shun all such practices, watch and pray against them, and avoid, with marked disapproval, all who are guilty of them, whatever may be their rank.

 

The Churches influence sits at the center of the cultural conversation.The current debate – is America controlled by the sensibilities of the few, or MSNBC, or Fox News? And where does that leave politicians, or the media, in the struggle for power in America? Pew Research results point toward a political competition that now revolves less around individual policy disputes than the larger question of whether America’s direction will be set by the predominantly White and Christian voters who have historically wielded the most power or by an emerging America defined by both religious and racial diversity.

 

The consequences are actions of self-interest at the expense of the Gospel witness. Grace, mercy, forgiveness, gentleness, kindness, and the Fruits of the Spirit move to the background.

 

The “American Identity” concept continues to weaken, or maybe clarifies, the Christian witness to a watching world. The churches’ support or silence to the divisive madness has an enormous influence on the actions of people. The Church must demonstrate lived morality and Biblical principles as a way of life because the role of lived faith is the only way to effectively live out the Great Commission.

 

Culturally, gender roles and the rise of People Of Color have pushed the affluent to believe they are being “put upon”; even though their wealth continues to multiply. The less affluent view it as a “loss of status,” believing they must be viewed better than others to have self-worth. Politicians frame it as if you are “being attacked,” and they need to protect you. Evangelicals view it as needing to use force and laws to help God “do what He does”; as if trusting God’s plan is not good enough.

 

The results the world sees are:

 

  • masking voter suppression as the need for election security;
  • elevating the Works of the Flesh over the Fruits of the Spirit;
  • individual freedom of choice implemented as a desire to control the choices and actions of others;
  • denying historical events that can help create a better future;
  • promoting conspiracies that put peoples lives at risk;
  • protecting the unborn is more important than nurturing the born;
  • labeling people through the use of derogatory and divisive language;
  • providing religious cover for moral squalor;
  • and support of “all men are created equal,” except people of color.

 

When people see believers lives in conflict with each other, they assume we have nothing to add to the moral conversation. Whoever claims to be in him must walk and live as Jesus did. Those are not my words; they are Jesus’ words in First John.

 

We are to take God’s wisdom and apply it to human issues; that’s how we show we know how to utilize God’s wisdom.
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No Hashtags or Slogans . . .

 

 

In the Bible God told us how to represent Him. And how we demonstrate who He is to a watching world. Yet, the deaths and devastation caused by the pandemic has not softened the hearts of some. The cultural clashes across the country have not softened the hearts of others. The stain on the Church for its divisive actions has not softened hearts.

We know only God can change a heart so let me ask you – Why is it that some hearts have been changed and others remain hardened? The theologian Charles Spurgeon said, “the same sun that melts the wax, hardens the clay.”

We don’t get a pass that lets us abdicate our responsibility for a changed heart. God gives us free will to respond or not. Let’s not be a prisoner of the political drama in the Statehouses and the Capital. We should refuse to let these events limit the importance of Biblical relationships.

It’s important to understand that the nature of Biblical relationships is not arbitrary.  God has designed them to work in a certain way, and humans only flourish when we experience relationships the way God intended.

Our friends and associates can have a profound influence on us, often in very subtle ways. If we insist on friendships with those who mock what God considers important, we might sin by becoming indifferent to God’s will. This attitude is the same as ridiculing God.

Happy are those who don’t listen to the wicked,
who don’t go where sinners go,
who don’t do what evil people do.
They love the LORD’s teachings,
and they think about those teachings day and night.
They are strong, like a tree planted by a river.
The tree produces fruit in season,
and its leaves don’t die.
Everything they do will succeed.
But wicked people are not like that.
They are like chaff that the wind blows away.
So the wicked will not escape God’s punishment.
Sinners will not worship with God’s people.
This is because the LORD takes care of his people,
but the wicked will be destroyed. Psalms 1:1-6

Psalms extolls the joys of obeying God and refusing to listen to those who discredit or ridicule Him. We must have contact with unbelievers if we are to witness to them, but we must not join in or imitate their sinful behavior. Neither are we to join in or imitate believers who exhibit sinful behavior. The more we allow those who ridicule God to affect our thoughts and attitudes, the more we separate ourselves from our source of nourishment. God is ridiculed through patterns of behavior that are contrary to God’s Word.

When Scripture says, “In all they do, they prosper,” it does not mean immunity to failure or difficulties. Nor is it a guarantee of health, wealth, and happiness. What the Bible means by prosperity is this: When we apply God’s wisdom, the fruit (results or by-products) we bear will be good and receive God’s approval. Just as a tree soaks up water and bears luscious fruit, we also are to soak up God’s Word, producing actions and attitudes that honor God. To achieve anything worthwhile, we must have God’s Word in our hearts.

“Chaff” is the outer shell (or husk) that must be removed to get at the valuable kernels of grain inside. After the plants were cut, they were crushed, and then the pieces were thrown into the air. Chaff is very light and is carried away by even the slightest wind, while the good grain falls back to the earth. Chaff is a symbol of a faithless life that drifts along without direction or giving in to the self-interest that is not of God. Good grain is a symbol of a faithful life that God can use. Unlike grain, however, we can choose the path we will take.

We are driven by what our hearts love most. Hence, the way to a person’s heart is to capture their imaginations (minds), move their emotions (affections), and challenge their actions (wills). While we can play a role in shaping people’s hearts, ultimately, such transformation requires the miraculous work of a sovereign God. And the acceptance by that person.

Sadly, sometimes churches or denominations distinguish too sharply between these features, pitting them against one another in problematic ways. For example, one church values the mind, while another highlights the power of emotions, one community concentrates on stimulating the will to action, another emphasizes emotional self-control. One denomination emphasizes material prosperity, while the other acts as though only souls matter. But we should never pretend that only one aspect of the human person is important. On the contrary, the Bible assumes that all aspects of the human being are essential and deeply integrated, and so should we.

The heart is at the center of personhood and drives behaviors. Your heart drives your response to others and is at the center of God’s commandment:

“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your might.
Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart” Deuteronomy 6:5-6 (NRSV)

Do you create a narrative about people that belittles them so that you don’t feel obligated to help them? Do you create a story in which your possessions indicate your moral superiority when, in fact, both their story and yours are far more complicated?

What will be key to both is love. And central to this love is discovering the biblical truth that God first loved us, well before we loved Him or deserved His love.

Jesus taught that loving God with all of ourselves is the first and greatest commandment (Mt 22:37-39). This command, combined with the command to love your neighbor (Lev 19:18), encompasses all the other Old Testament laws.

Intimacy in Christ is the relational design to reveal the fullness of His heart in you. Happiness, comfort, prosperity, freewill individualism – these counterfeit forms of intimacy are confusing us to the truth of God’s design. We are called to drop our nets, die daily, take up our cross, crucify our fleshly desires and imitate Jesus’ love.

Is this a place where God is knocking on the door of some closed place in your heart?

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Is God “Woke”?

In Exodus 3, it says God is deeply concerned about the cries of our sisters and brothers. As Christians, we are to interrupt injustice, not lead the fight for it. Maybe God was too “woke” and didn’t understand our need to satisfy self-interest through injustice, poverty, persecution, and legislated discrimination. Maybe, His Word didn’t take into consideration that someday we would have to live out the Imago Dei – “all are created in the image of God.“ Could God really expect us to treat everyone with dignity, honor, and respect?

 

Let’s face it, focusing on others before ourselves, treating all people as equal, and trusting that the Word will transform hearts requires us to give up our controlling spirit. We all have an idea of what following Jesus should look like and who should be included. But if we’re honest with ourselves, our views are often influenced by our cultural values, politics, background, and what’s currently going on in the world around us. Maybe God was too woke to understand where we are today. How could He ask us to love our enemies!

 

Woke is a term that refers to awareness of issues that concern social justice. Originating in the 1940’s as “being aware of the truth behind things ‘the man’ doesn’t want you to know”. Today, in culture and politics, the most prominent uses of “woke” are as a pejorative. However, despite todays vagueness, you now see evangelicals, conservative activists and Republican politicians constantly using the term. That’s because that vagueness is a feature, not a bug. Casting a really wide range of ideas and policies as too woke and anyone who is critical of them as being canceled by out-of-control liberals is becoming an important strategy and tool.

 

Some Christian leaders are using a blanket rejection to dismiss the realities of racism, implementing attempts to dictate the belief systems, definitions, authoritative binding, academic and ecclesiastical decisions regarding how race is to be communicated in the local church, school, and community.

 

Ed Stetzer, a Southern Baptist and the executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, says that churches have become increasingly politicized. “What’s happened is that people are now sorting themselves into churches that align more with their political ideology than their theology,” he said. “They want the sermons they hear on Sundays to align with what they hear on cable news all week.”

 

The controversy within the Southern Baptist Conference shines a light on the generational and ideological divides churches across the country are facing today. According to Ian Lovett of the WSJ, “one faction argues the SBC should step back from its role in electoral politics to broaden its reach and reverse a 15-year decline in membership. Another faction says the denomination has been drifting to the left, and the way to retain and attract members is to recommit to its conservative roots and stay politically engaged. Each side accuses the other of straying from the SBC’s core mission.”

 

 

Churches across America have come to provide further evidence of this political divide. Like the SBC, factions are not focused on what Jesus is focused on – love of neighbor, mercy, kindness, and grace. Instead, focusing on demands of political loyalty, disputes about racism, assigning the most negative labeling possible to those considered the enemy, and determining who is and isn’t “conservative enough.”

 

“It’s like someone is bleeding out on the floor,
and these guys are fighting over
how many pints of blood a person can lose.”

 

SBC seminary presidents organized a letter last year denouncing one of their major points of division, critical race theory—an academic set of assertions about structural racism across society that has been a flashpoint in the denomination. They and other conservatives acknowledge historic patterns of racism but don’t want it taught to their kids, talked about, or resolved. But they also say racism can have “structural forms.” Efforts to address the central issue being lifted up are met with gaslighting, denial, minimization, and ostracization.

 

Ve Lu of Nonprofit AF summarizes it this way, “So many of us are in denial. Not always denial like refusing to acknowledge what exists. More so, the subtle denial that we ourselves, who are Good People fighting for a just and equitable world, could further supremacy. After all, we weren’t involved in the acts of genocide at Kamloops or Tulsa, we tell ourselves. This is what makes white supremacy so potent. It is often subtle. It happens in ways we often don’t think about.”

 

The cognitive dissonance some guard elicits very negative responses to any attempt to discuss this subject. Breaking through the initial discomfort and rejection of this new information causes people’s defenses to go up, and they disengage. It’s not easy to swallow the realization that you are the transgressors of micro-aggressions on a micro-scale and that you have been unwitting participants in oppression on an aggregate/macro scale.

 

Church, we look disingenuous to the watching world. Our witness is being weakened as we are acting like the world. We are to be “in this world, but not of this world.” In John 17, Jesus asked the Father to

 

“sanctify them in the truth; your Word is truth.
As you sent me into the world,
so I have sent them into the world.
And for their sake, I consecrate myself,
that they also may be sanctified in truth.” 

 

Jesus’s assumption in John 17 is that those who have embraced him and identified with him are sent into the world on a mission for gospel advance through disciple-making. His Word will go forth, and if you choose to represent Him your way instead of His, possibly it won’t happen through you.

 

Let’s determine to live as God desires—“to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.”

 

Maybe God was and is “woke”, and sent His son to live out “wokeness.”
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We Can’t Heal, If We Can’t Hear

Uncertainty abounds all over the global village, from the Israel-Palestinian conflict to the Russian autocratic policies across Europe, to the economic wrestling with China, to the hijacking in Belorussia, to the struggling survival of the Sudan. We are confronted every day with tremendous uncertainty.

 

But it is not just distant uncertainty; it is the uncertainty that has captured our land. Geographic uncertainty as rural areas are feeling neglected, disrespected, and misunderstood. The death, isolation, and job challenges caused by the pandemic. A spike in mass shootings across the country. Unruly behavior from biting on airplanes, to spitting, throwing water bottles and popcorn at NBA Playoff games to storming PGA golf fairways. Challenges to our democracy and electoral processes. Calls from a former Presidential Advisor for a military coup. Increased institutional warfare leading to an “all in on outrage” as a strategy in Congress.

 

Uncertainty that has transformed how we view people. Increased racial tension with a spike in antisemitic incidents across the country and growing Asian hate crimes. Increased police scrutiny relative to violence against people of color. An uprising of political actions to hide the violent history against Native Americans and Blacks. Dehumanization makes it easier to see people as a “temptation”; someone to eliminate or consider as not worthy of equal rights or privileges.

 

We are subject to painful reflections about the hateful, subconscious beliefs with which some continue to drape our existence. To make it worse, as Jeremiah said in Chapter 12, “we have planted and haven’t seen a harvest.” We’ve been planting since 1619. Through the various military exploits of this nation, we’ve been planting. Through the transforming revolts of each era, we’ve been planting. Through the modification of constitutional legislation and amendments, we’ve been planting. Through marches and protests, we’ve been planting. Yet, we are still not saved.

 

And in our individual lives, we all have our own stories of struggle. How are you going to meet your financial challenges? How are you going to respond to the doctor’s diagnosis about you or a family member? Feelings of uncertainty about your job or job opportunities. Will you be able to avoid the foreclosure pending on your house? Or even the foreclosure already in process; will you be able to redirect it. And when the foreclosure evicts you, where will you live. How will you make your way? We are in some difficult times.

 

What will become of this nation as two sharply contrasting visions clash on the political horizon. The topography of their outcomes will set the direction for this nation. I asked myself, what should the Churches response be? It became apparent to me our response does not need to be complicated. Some people are looking for some theological mystery to be unraveled. As the songwriter says, “Gotta keep it real simple, get right back to ground zero. When it all comes down to this: Love God and love people.” Another songwriter adds, “What if we came down from our towers and walked a mile in someone else’s shoes. If the church wants to see a change in the world out there, it’s got to start right here.”

 

In the words of the honorable Bishop Arthur M. Brazier, “We can’t just be satisfied functioning within the physical and philosophical walls of the church building.  We have to apply Christian principles to the solutions of the great social problems of our time. Our faith calls us to see civic and political responsibilities through the eyes of faith and to bring our moral convictions to public life.  As believers we are called to be a community of conscience within the larger society and to test public life by the values of scripture.”

 

The church should serve as a moral conscience to society and should seek to respond to our social, economic and political as well as spiritual needs. Faith and Justice need to become as one flesh in service of God and social transformation. Our individual activities in this regard, can be a calling only if it is viewed as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interest.  I believe we are to articulate and live out these views in ways that are theologically faithful, exegetically careful and personally sustainable.

 

Pastor Rick Warren in The Purpose Driven Life opens with, “It’s not about you. The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment.” Too often decisions are based on self-interest and justified by that belief.

 

But, as with most subjects in the 21st-century U.S., opinion soon polarizes along partisan lines. This country is becoming devoid of places where differences are valued. Even in our churches, the ideological divide has become more locational than denominational as people are more likely to live and worship among people who share their worldviews and to spend free time with them. The ability to hear each other is muted by the echo chambers of political and racial speak.

 

 

When did hate become so ordinary in the church? Love, empathy, forgiveness, mercy, and compassion is disappearing. We begin to grasp divisive rhetoric and use labels as shortcuts to conversational hearing. Labeling closes minds to hearing or learning. It ignores the nuances and details of situations, then creates misinformation.

 

Some are raising objections to any attempt to “fill in the blanks” of American history. Any conversation that challenges an interpretation of America’s national identity neglects the trauma inflicted in creating that identity. National identity is divided along critical axis of class, faith, or race. Creating the foundation of the threefold objection – one, that this country belongs to a unique set of people. Two, the church supported slavery’s legacy. And three, slavery’s legacy still shapes American life today—an argument that is less radical than it may appear at first glance:

 

  • The QAnon theory is more popular today among evangelicals than people of other religions, according to a study by the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
  • States are implementing educational laws that teaching history in schools “may not define American history as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.”
  • The Texas Governor is threatening to withhold lawmakers pay if they don’t come back into session and vote for the Restrictive Voting Bill.
  • “We birthed a nation from nothing. There was nothing here in America before white colonizers arrived, and Native people haven’t contributed much to American culture.”
  • Backlash on the 1619 Project, which outlines the theft of labor and land, because it centers its voice on the history of Black people instead of telling a story of a glorious longstanding idea of the past – men who founded a country then built it into a Christian nation.
  • Thirty per cent of Republicans endorsed the idea that the country is so far “off track that American patriot’s may have to resort to violence” against their political opponents.
  • Senator Ron Johnson has sent letters to acting U.S. Capitol Police chief casting doubt that Officer Brian Sicknick’s death was related to the attack on the Capitol.
  • Pastor’s teaching Critical Race Theory as anti-biblical because it addresses the effect of racial bias and erosion of advances made by Blacks in the ’90s instead of only assigning individual responsibility to their outcomes.
  • The Black body is always guilty of something; therefore, whatever the police do to them is self-caused and justified.
  • Blue Lives Matter, except when conservatives attack them.
  • The Black Lives Matter Movement is a Marxist hate group and not a quest for equality, justice and humanity.
  • Biden’s presidency is illegitimate because the votes from people of color, who voted in record numbers, should not be counted.
  • Asians in America were responsible for COVID and the attacks on them are understood.
  • Native Americans were savages and their extermination by the cowboys was heroic.
  • The January 6 insurrection was a “tour of people” who are, understandably, not happy with the country’s direction.
  • Christianity and America is God’s gift to White people.

 

So many people live in a state of misinformation. What they are invested in banning is simply a complete and accurate accounting of American history! Claiming all discussions reflect “a displacement of historical understanding by ideology.” How do you heal the nation if facts are distorted and no one is listening to each other?

 

“The only problem that can’t be solved 
is the one we pretend doesn’t exist.”

 

We can’t depend on the political landscape to heal our nation.  And let’s avoid any false moral equivalency between the two parties. Historically, one side defining good for its purposes and assigning evil to the opposition has led to further social violence. Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) shouldn’t have engaged in antisemitic rhetoric. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) shouldn’t have urged anti-racism protesters to be “more confrontational.” As reported by the Washington Post, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a star of the right, was observed accosting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) as she was exiting the House chamber. Taylor later made negative comments connecting mask, Jews, and the Holocaust.

 

And yet Greene isn’t really that much of an outlier in the House Republican caucus alongside the likes of Reps. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Louie Gohmert (Tex.), Lauren Boebert (Colo.), and other Freedom Caucus members who want a White’s only party.

 

“As believers we are called to be a community of conscience within the larger society and to test public life by the values of scripture.”