How to Get Through the Next Four Years

 

by Russell Moore

November 13, 2024

“The nonstop news cycle will be crazy. You don’t have to be.”

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Bravo! to Russell Moore for some well-thought and convicting advice for all Christians in this country, and those affected by our country outside our country. We know how this song goes, but we also know how to better respond and behave in the years ahead. I anticipate a lot of change is coming, like in the 1960’s. History doesn’t always repeat, but it sure rhymes and that should bring peace to our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirit as we prepare to be better salt and light in this world which we are not to be of any longer.

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     “Someone walked up to me in an airport last week and said, “So, what do you think about the election?” I was in a less-than-ideal mood at the moment, for reasons that had nothing to do with the election, but I stopped myself from saying sarcastically, “What do you think I think about the election?”

     The last thing I wanted to talk about, after ten years of talking about him, was Donald Trump. Now the news cycle will be the Donald Trump Show all day, every day, for four more years.

The nonstop news cycle and drama won’t be some unforeseen circumstance. It’s what the American people voted for. The theory that people would want to “turn the page” on all that, offered by Vice President Kamala Harris, proved false. Turns out most people liked the drama just fine. So here we go.

      I have very little to say that I haven’t already said, very little to write that I haven’t already written, and there are very few people who think like I do. I can’t control that. But neither can you. As a matter of fact, there is very little any of us can do to control the next four years—with a news cycle that will be, like the last near-decade, all Trump, all the time.

     Just like during the last near-decade, those who support Trump and those who oppose him will continue to look at one another the way Adams and Jefferson did over the French Revolution: “How could you support (or not support) that?” You can control very little of that either.

 

And that’s surprisingly good news.

 

The passivity of Americans in their own civic order is always a problem. The word woke—before it became associated with identity politics—spoke to the sense of waking people from their slumber about injustice. The opposite of passivity, though, is often not responsibility or engagement. Sometimes it’s a kind of passivity that feels like “doing something.”

     Wherever someone falls on the political spectrum, that’s where “doomscrolling” comes into play. We feel we are informed by having a steady stream of drama in front of us, our emotions driven up or down by the news cycle.

    We’ve seen the end result of that. The constant flow of (real and fake) information spikes our adrenaline, activating our “lizard brains.” We throw our limbic systems into the sense of having to support or to oppose something—when, much of the time, there’s actually nothing we can do about it. And this works because many people like it.

     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.

This kind of political “drama” is related to actual political life the way that pornography is to intimacy. Porn gives the same physical sensation as sexual union. The nervous system responds the way it is meant to respond in the union of a husband and wife; it just does so by getting rid of the love, the connection, the other person. In other words, it gives the physical sense without what actually brings about the joy.

     Someone might think that porn use will kick-start their flagging passion, that it’s a temporary step toward intimacy. That person is left, though, feeling deader and lonelier than before. A news cycle can be like that too—ultimately leaving people not more informed and thoughtful but with worn-out attention spans and burned-out expectations.

     One of the things you owe your country is your attention. By that, I do not mean your constant focus. I mean, quite literally, your attention: your ability to think and to reflect apart from the roar of the mob.

     During the tumult of the 1960s—war, civil unrest, assassinations—Thomas Merton argued that his ability to speak to all of those things was not in spite of but because of his vocation as a Trappist monk, devoted to silence and solitude.

     “Someone has to try to keep his head clear of static and preserve the interior solitude and silence that are essential for independent thought,” Merton wrote. He continues, A monk loses his reason for existing if he simply submits to all the routines that govern the thinking of everybody else. He loses his reason for existing if he simply substitutes other routines of his own! He is obliged by his vocation to have his own mind if not to speak it. He has got to be a free man. Merton concludes by saying, “What did the radio say this evening? I don’t know.” 

     I believe in the priesthood of all believers and, in this way, I suppose, in the monkhood of all believers too. News and information are important in helping a free and attentive mind discern what’s happening and how to make sense of it. News and information as sources of a sense of personal “drama” or belonging, though, will fray your attention, scatter your thinking, and affix you to whatever mob it’s easiest to mimic. It’s hard to maintain sanity with a mind like that. It’s hard to love your country with a mind like that. It’s hard to love the Lord your God with a mind like that.

     The stakes are too high for us to see our country as a reality television show. You can’t opt out of the country, but you can opt out of the show. In some ways, you get there by subtraction. Don’t rely on social media for your news, for instance. Don’t fall into the trap of every-ten-minute hits of dopamine about how your side is losing something or winning something.

     But maybe an even more important factor is not subtraction but addition. 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 (Col. 3:3). We are crucified under Pontius Pilate. We are raised out of the grave. We are seated at the right hand of the Father.

     All of that is true, right now, for those who are joined by the Spirit to the life of Christ. And we are waiting a trump—not a Trump—to tell us when the action of our lives will really get interesting, in ways we cannot even imagine yet.

     Realize that this is true for you. You don’t need to be part of some make-believe drama. You don’t need to adopt some politician as a father figure. You have an actual Father who is making plans for you. And when you realize how temporary, how fleeting, and how pitiful much of what is counted as glory is in this moment, you can learn how to love it without placing on it the burden of making you happy or driving you crazy. We always come to hate our idols—whatever they are—because they never give us what we want.

     That means you will need the Bible—and more than just the devotional cherry-picking or doctrinal proof texts to which modern American Christianity is accustomed. You will need to immerse yourself in the stories there until you gradually start to sense they are your stories. You need to plunge into the poems and songs there until you find they are telling you the story of your own life too. 

     You need to spend enough time with the Jesus found in the pages of Scripture that he starts to surprise you again. You don’t have to understand what you’re reading all the time. Read it anyway. Let the Word do its work. Don’t immediately Google “How to understand Psalm 46” or “What does Colossians 2 mean?” Wrestle with it. Be baffled by it.

     And sooner or later you will start to hear, as though calling to you personally from those words: “Who do you say that I am?”

 

The news cycle will be crazy for the next four years. You don’t have to be.

 

https://www.christianitytoday.com/2024/11/next-four-years-donald-trump-russell-moore-election-2024/

 

 
 
 

How a book about evangelicals, Trump and militant masculinity became a surprise bestseller

"Jesus and John Wayne" by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

 By Sarah Pulliam Bailey

July 16, 2021

When historian Kristin Du Mez’s latest book, “Jesus and John Wayne,” came out in the summer of 2020, it received little attention from mainstream gatekeepers and reviewers.

But the book, which explores evangelical fondness for former president Donald Trump and strong masculine figures, has since sold more than 100,000 copies through word of mouth, podcasts and book clubs. When it came out in paperback last month, the book shot up to No. 4 among nonfiction paperbacks on the New York Times bestseller list.

As journalists and academics tried to explain how evangelicals could bring themselves to vote for Trump, Du Mez argued that evangelical support was not a shocking aberration from their views but a culmination of evangelicals’ long-standing embrace of militant masculinity, presenting the man as protector and warrior.

“In 2016, many observers were stunned at evangelicals’ apparent betrayal of their own values,” Du Mez wrote. “In reality, evangelicals did not cast their vote despite their beliefs, but because of them.”

The book also described a pattern of abuse and its coverup by several mainstream evangelical leaders, many of whom are still in leadership. Du Mez contended that evangelical leaders’ emphasis on militant masculinity created a culture where abuse was able to flourish and often kept secret, an argument that has both caught fire and created controversy.

Du Mez, who teaches at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Mich., wrote that mainstream evangelical leaders such as John Piper, James Dobson and John Eldredge, preached a “mutually reinforcing vision of Christian masculinity — of patriarchy and submission, sex and power.”

“The militant Christian masculinity they practiced and preached did indelibly shape both family and nation,” Du Mez wrote.

Piper, Dobson and Eldredge did not return requests for comment.

Bible teacher Beth Moore’s split with Southern Baptists has some women wondering whether to follow her

Russell Moore, who was the head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s policy arm until earlier this year, said in an email that everywhere he goes someone asks him about the book.

Moore, now a public theologian for Christianity Today magazine, said that many evangelicals are trying to understand recent developments like Trump’s rise and revelations of sexual abuse in evangelical spaces. Moore said that Du Mez has shown that “much of what has passed for evangelicalism over the past decades was more John Wayne than Jesus” and that some of the characters in her book who have been portrayed by some as fringe turned out not to be fringe at all.

“ ‘Jesus and John Wayne’ is not the whole picture, but it’s on target in enough places that we should take seriously the mirror put to our faces to reform ourselves by the gospel we believe,” Moore wrote in an email. “I don’t agree with this book on everything, by any means, but there are key aspects that are necessary for us to see, and that can help us make sense of some things.”

The book showed how masculine pop-culture figures like John Wayne could influence the evangelical imagination and shape the way people act and think, said Karen Swallow Prior, who teaches English at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

“Among my own group of friends and peers, this is the book that they have been talking about more than any other in recent years,” she said. “I can’t think of the last one that people talked about this much.”

In his review for the journal Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture earlier this year, Yale University historian Jon Butler called the book one of the most important on modern evangelicalism in the past four decades. A review for the Christian website Mere Orthodoxy said the book should be required reading for evangelicals. Du Mez’s book also inspired a four-part episode for the popular Holy Post podcast and was named book of the year last year by Englewood Review of Books.

The book also has its critics, including First Things magazine, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and other reviewers for Mere Orthodoxy.

“Having announced her thesis about militant Christian-nationalist, male-patriarchal supremacy, she mines American history for classic deplorables,” Daniel Harrell wrote for Christianity Today. “On the other hand are plenty of white evangelical men canceled out for political acts never committed but only assumed and whose patriotism gets distorted as nationalism simply because they’re white, Christian, and male. As a political force they barely register compared to Amazon, Facebook, and Hollywood.”

One of the more frequent criticisms she receives is from the subtitle of her book: “How white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation.” Du Mez said that she wanted to challenge White evangelicals to examine their core beliefs about Jesus’s teachings to “turn the other cheek,” love your neighbor and love your enemy.

“I wanted to make clear that I wasn’t going to woo evangelicals or cater to evangelicals,” she said. The Bible lists virtues like love, peace, kindness and gentleness that Du Mez argues would contradict the model of militant Christianity that leaders have held up.

Raised in a Dutch immigrant community in Sioux Center, Iowa, Du Mez’s mother was a Dutch immigrant and her father was a longtime Reformed theologian at Dordt University, where in 2016 Trump famously told a crowd he could shoot someone in the middle of New York’s Fifth Avenue and not lose supporters.

Du Mez said she began working on the topic around 2005 when she started teaching at Calvin, a Christian university rooted in the Reformed tradition of Protestantism. Du Mez was teaching a class on U.S. history and lecturing on President Theodore Roosevelt to show how American ideas about masculinity have changed over time through economics, foreign policy and race.

Two male students came up to her after class one day and suggested she read the book “Wild at Heart,” by Colorado-based author John Eldredge, which has sold more than 4 million copies. She bought a copy and found “a particularly militant conception of masculine Christianity that Roosevelt had been promoting.”

In the early years of America’s war with Iraq, Du Mez considered how Eldredge’s vision of masculinity promoted militaristic ideas about America as an empire. Du Mez said she also reviewed data that showed White evangelicals were more likely to condone the war in Iraq and the military’s use of torture.

“I was trying to tease out: Is this mainstream or is this fringe?” she said in an interview. “As a Christian scholar, I thought, is this what I should be doing? If this is fringe, should I hold this up as though it’s mainstream?”

Newly leaked letter details allegations that Southern Baptist leaders mishandled sex abuse claims

Du Mez set the topic aside for a few years but picked it up again in 2016 in the days after the “Access Hollywood” tapes came out — in which Trump is heard making vulgar comments about women — and many evangelical leaders came to Trump’s defense. That’s when she decided what she had been working on wasn’t fringe.

Du Mez is a longtime member of a Christian Reformed Church, part of a denomination under the umbrella group called the National Association of Evangelicals. She was influenced by cultural evangelicalism through popular Christian music and the “purity culture” movement that encouraged sexual abstinence before marriage. However, she wasn’t exposed to popular evangelical leaders like John Piper, Wayne Grudem or Jerry Falwell Sr. until adulthood.

Her book, published by a nonreligious publisher called Liveright, an imprint of W.W. Norton & Co., found its way into the evangelical world through powerful word-of-mouth networks. Du Mez’s editor Daniel Gerstle said “Jesus and John Wayne” was the publisher’s “surprise hit” of 2020, selling over 300 hardcover copies every week in its first months of publication. The first jump came in late December when the book began selling more than 900 copies a week. Popular Bible teacher Beth Moore, Gerstle noted, has tweeted about the book, describing it as the one she hopes evangelicals read in 2021.

While the book is almost entirely focused on White evangelicals, Du Mez said she has received feedback from a number of Black Christian leaders about it as well. John Onwuchekwa, a Black pastor in Atlanta who left the Southern Baptist Convention last summer, said he felt “vindicated” when he read the book because it seemed to affirm his experiences and connected dots for him.

“The book was refreshing because it wasn’t someone who [seemed] angry or vindictive,” Onwuchekwa said. “There was a courage, a boldness, a matter-of-factness.”

Other books about evangelicals, politics, gender and race that published in the past year include “The Making of Biblical Womanhood,” by Beth Allison Barr, “White Too Long,” by Robert P. Jones, “White Evangelical Racism,” by Anthea Butler, “American Blindspot,” by Gerardo Marti, “God’s Law and Order,” by Aaron Griffith and “Taking America Back for God,” by Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry.

Du Mez said that many “troubled” evangelicals who have read her book are going through a “religious reckoning” where they’re grappling with what they have been taught both culturally and theologically. However, she said she hasn’t seen much change by many evangelical institutions.

Evangelical leaders and institutions continue to promote their versions of masculinity. This weekend in Dallas, thousands of evangelical men are expected to gather for a conference called Promise Keepers that will include speakers who once sat on Trump’s evangelical advisory council. Attendees are promised “biblical and spiritual tools that will empower you to be the man Christ intended you to be.”

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/07/16/jesus-and-john-wayne-evangelicals-surprise-bestseller/

5 Things that Frustrate Gen Z Christians

SEPTEMBER 28, 2021

by Jacob Murrie

What should older Christians know about Generation Z in order to best disciple them and reach them with the gospel? To be sure, this is a big topic, and I’m just one member of this generation (born between 1997–2012)—which is not a monolith. But it might be helpful to share a few aspects of contemporary evangelical culture that generally bother my generation.

The goal is not to shame older Christians or suggest we young folks are enlightened. The goal is to offer some fodder for discussion that might lead the generations to better care for, think with, and serve alongside each other in a changing world.

To that end, here are five things that tend to frustrate young evangelicals.

1. When Partisan Politics Reshape Faith

In the past few years, we have grown increasingly weary of the meshing of politics and the evangelical faith we often see among older believers. This is not because we don’t value many of the same causes; it’s that often our parents and grandparents will question our Christian orthodoxy if we don’t align fully with their political affiliations. When we shift slightly to the right or the left, our faith is often assumed to be endangered.

It sometimes feels as if older generations want us to “pick a king,” 1 Samuel 8:6–8 style. But many in my generation do not wish to be identified as conservative or liberal, as much as they want to be identified as Christlike. Because of this, many of us joined the 35 percent of people under 30 in voting independent in the 2020 general election. This approach is sometimes considered “innocent” or “naive,” but for many Gen Z Christians it’s the most reasonable and biblical choice.

2. When Apologetics Outweighs Relationships

Let me be clear: Christian apologetics is important. It’s vital we know why we believe what we believe, and why those beliefs are reasonable. But many in Gen Z have seen apologetics weaponized against nonbelievers. I left my private Christian school ready to duke it out with the atheists of the world, assuming they would be hostile and seeking arguments with me. But instead I found young adults who at worst thought Christianity was weird, but more often were lonely and looking for meaningful relationships.

In many of my friendships with nonbelievers, apologetics became a valuable tool after a relational connection formed. I had thoughtful answers to tough questions, like “If God is good, why does he allow evil?” But instead of these questions being hurled at me by Professor Jeffery Radisson (God’s Not Dead), they were asked in vulnerability by hurting or inquisitive peers. Should we still be prepared to go toe to toe with Richard Dawkins if he wants to debate Christianity? Absolutely. What we know shouldn’t change, but perhaps the tone and timing of how we talk about it should.

3. When Christians Don’t Live What They Believe

We felt this acutely during the 2020 general election. We were faced with two presidential candidates who, whether in character or policy, reflected decidedly immoral and un-Christian values. For many of us, that was a dealbreaker. Yet many Christians looked the other way or found ways to defend their favored candidate. My generation is hyper-sensitive to hypocrisy, and we saw it all around us. We are also sensitive to theological hypocrisy and selectively applied doctrine.

Biblical sexual ethics are cited to oppose same-sex marriage, but ignored on other matters like divorce or cohabitation before marriage. The imago Dei is correctly invoked to advocate against the cultural system of abortion, but not to fight racism. We insist that sin can take structural forms and infect entire societies, but we’re selective about which systemic sin issues we want to call out. Many in Gen Z recognize that living faithfully requires applying Scripture consistently, even if it conflicts with your political alignment.

4. When Christians Are Known More for Judgment than Love

Judgment and love are both part of God’s character. Grace and repentance are both part of the gospel. Jesus responds to sinners in love, while also commanding us to “go and sin no more” (John 8:11). But today, many Christians are more defined by judgment than love. Of course, the culture around us has warped definitions of both. There are biblical commands that appear judgmental to our culture, but are truly loving. Challenging a brother or sister when they’re in sin may appear judgmental but ultimately results in life for them—which is loving.

Our secular culture’s distorted, small vision of love is actually an opportunity for us to more robustly live out biblical grace and love, even as we don’t compromise on truth and holiness. Accusations that Christianity is “too judgmental” should be expected to some degree—the Bible’s moral demands will always come across that way to some—but my generation’s hope is that a reputation of radical, Christlike love would also define our faith and attract unbelievers—as it did in the early centuries of Christianity in the Roman Empire.

5. When Christians Aren’t Serious Thinkers

At a time when careful, critical thinking is generally on the decline and intellectually lazy behavior is on the rise, Christians sadly have a reputation for being among the worst offenders. Evangelical Christians are particularly adept at avoiding expert advice they don’t like, all the while participating, knowingly or unknowingly, in misinformation campaigns.

You probably have a Christian aunt who regularly shares incredulous articles or conspiracy theories on social media, showing a reckless willingness to believe dubious information without bothering to check facts. This is just one byproduct of a larger trend we see that frustrates us: a distrust of academia and intellectual life generally.

This is frustrating not because academia is the ultimate truth, but because God is (Psalm 19:7). As believers in the God of truth, Christians should be the most intellectually vibrant. We have the resources to do that. While academicians are not infallible, they do have expertise, and that should matter to Christians.

By downplaying rigorous scholarship, credentials, and expertise, Christians have retreated from the forefront of culture-shaping disciplines, are playing catch up, or in some cases are actively resisting these culture-shaping arenas. With Scripture as our solid foundation, Christians ought to be the most intellectually curious thinkers and culture-makers in the world. We should value learning and education—not for our glory, but for God’s.

Source: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/things-frustrate-gen-z/

The Crisis of Evangelicalism

Original title: “Political Dealing: The Crisis of Evangelicalism”

Initial Publication April 20, 2018

 “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” (Phil 2:5–8)

 This was speech was given by Fuller Seminary President Dr. Mark Labberton at a private meeting of evangelical leaders held at Wheaton College in Chicago, Illinois, on April 16, 2018. The following has been edited from his notes for clarity and to give context to excerpts that have been disseminated elsewhere.

…

This gathering is not an occasion for celebration of evangelicalism, however. This gathering emerges instead from worry, sorrow, anger, and bewilderment—whether we are Democrats or Republicans.  Christians in both parties found the others’ candidate patently unacceptable, leading to fierce division. Many felt cornered without a genuine choice when the issues represented are complex and fear is justified. This is not the first or last time the body of Christ has gathered in lament.  When evangelical leaders like us gather, it is often with a spirit of optimistic hope, known for “pressing on” in the work of the gospel. For me, this is not a time of pressing on. I feel a personal urgency to stop, to pray, to listen, to confess, and to repent and want to call us to do the same.

Only the Spirit “who is in the world to convict us of sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:8) can bring us to clarity about the crisis we face.  As I have sought that conviction, here is what I have come to believe: The central crisis facing us is that the gospel of Jesus Christ has been betrayed and shamed by an evangelicalism that has violated its own moral and spiritual integrity.

This is not a crisis imposed from outside the household of faith, but from within.  The core of the crisis is not specifically about Trump, or Hillary, or Obama, or the electoral college, or Comey, or Mueller, or abortion, or LGBTQIA+ debates, or Supreme Court appointees. Instead the crisis is caused by the way a toxic evangelicalism has engaged with these issues in such a way as to turn the gospel into Good News that is fake. Now on public display is an indisputable collusion between prominent evangelicalism and many forms of insidious racist, misogynistic, materialistic, and political power. The wind and the rain and the floods have come, and, as Jesus said, they will reveal our foundation.  In this moment for evangelicalism, what the storms have exposed is a foundation not of solid rock but of sand.

This is not a crisis taking place at the level of language. This is not about who owns or defines the term “evangelical,” and whether one does—or does not—choose to identify as such.  It is legitimate and important to debate if and how the term “evangelical” can currently be used in the United States to mean anything more than white, theologically and politically conservative. But that is not itself the crisis. The crisis is not at the level of our lexicon, but of our lives and a failure to embody the gospel we preach.  We may debate whether the word “evangelical” can or should be redeemed. But what we must deal with is the current bankruptcy many associate with evangelical life.

This is not a crisis unfolding at the level of group allegiance, denomination, or affiliation.  The varied reality that is American evangelicalism is evidenced in this room.  We have no formal hierarchy, leadership, or structure and form no single organization, but are sorted and divided today as we have been—for better and worse—for much of our history.  Some might wish for a clearer distinction between those who call themselves fundamentalist and those who call themselves evangelical. We might look to varying traditions or geographies to explain our division. These distinctions matter but can easily devolve into scapegoating or blaming, diverting us from our vocation as witness to God’s love for a multifaceted world.

This is not a recent crisis but a historic one.  We face a haunting specter with a shadow that reaches back further than the 2016 election—a history that helps define the depth of the sorrow, fear, anger, anxiety, and injustice around us. Today’s egregious collusion between evangelicals and worldly power is problematic enough: more painful and revealing is that such collusion has been our historic habit. Today’s collusion bears astonishing—and tragic—continuity with the past.

Right alongside the rich history of gospel faithfulness that evangelicalism has affirmed, there lies a destructive complicity with dominant cultural and racial power. Despite deep gospel confidence and rhetoric, evangelicalism has been long-wedded to a devastating social self-interest that defends the dominant culture over and against that of the gospel’s command to love the “other” as ourselves.  We are not naïve in our doctrine of sin that prefers self over all, but we have failed to recognize our own guilt in it.

Our professed trust in Jesus has not led evangelicals to die to ourselves, but often to justify our own self-assertion—even when that means complicity in the suffering and death of others. The scandal associated today with the evangelical gospel is not the scandal of the Cross of Christ, crucified for the salvation of the world.  Rather it is the scandal of our own arrogance, unconfessed before the Cross, revealing a hypocritical superiority that we dare to associate with the God who died to save the weak and the lost.

In order to be concrete about this, let me choose what I believe to be the top four arenas in which this violation of spiritual and moral character has shown itself:

First is the issue of power. 

Our primary confession that “Jesus is Lord” is a statement about power.  “The gospel is the power of God unto salvation, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16).  This is our hope and confidence, and as those who seek to live in the kingdom of God, we profess that Jesus is Lord and all other power must be reframed in light of this reality. The Apostle Paul says it this way:  “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (Phil 2:5–8).

In much of the last century, American evangelicalism has had a complex relationship with power.  On one hand, it has felt itself marginalized and repudiated, defeated and silenced. On the other, it has often seemed to seek—even fawn over—worldly power, mimicking in the church forms of power evident in our culture. (I remember being at a conference where it was announced we should all be back after dinner for “an evening of star-studded worship.”) An evangelical dance with political power has been going on from the time of Billy Graham, through the Moral Majority and the religious right, to the Tea Party, and most recently with the white evangelical vote—the result being, as honorary Chairman of the Lausanne Movement Doug Birdsall has said, “When you Google ‘evangelical,’ you get Trump.”

This points to an evangelical crisis over so many issues of power: racial, political, economic, cultural, right against left, Republican against Democrat, rich against poor, white against black, men against women, and so on. But winning power was the goal of Judas, not Jesus. A Faustian pact between evangelicals and power—even when claimed on behalf of the kingdom—cannot be entered in the name of Jesus Christ without betraying the abdication of power inherent in the incarnation. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son . . . .” (John 3:16)

Abuse of power is central in the national debates of the moment.  Whether we think about US militarism, or mass incarceration, or the #MeToo movement (or mistreatment of women in general), or the police shootings of unarmed, young, black men, or the actions of ICE toward child and adult immigrants, or gun use and control, or tax policy—all this is about power.  The apparent evangelical alignment with the use of power that seeks dominance, control, supremacy, and victory over compassion and justice associates Jesus with the strategies of Caesar, not with the good news of the gospel.

Second is the issue of race.

 The Bible knows all people to be fully human, fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image, knit together in our mother’s womb. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, not just those who arrive as poor, hard-working immigrants fleeing violence or those wasting away in private prisons.  All are dead and in Christ made alive, and the evidence of the resurrection is that the peculiar body of God’s people, a new humanity of Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, are to be the evidence of a resurrected God. This is the glory of creation and new creation.

Those of us who are white evangelicals must acknowledge that our story is intertwined with, and often responsible for, much of the violence and oppression around racial injustice in our American story.  The stories of Native American, African American, Latino/a, or Asian peoples in the history of the United States cannot be told truthfully without naming the role of white evangelicals who testified to a God of redemption but whose theological, political, social, and economic choices contributed to suffering and injustice.  Stories of devastation are often absent from a happier white evangelical narrative of promised-land life, or buried in a sanitized story that claims that past injustice is not relevant for people of color today—despite the fact that nearly all people of color experience racism and its implications every day around the nation, including those in this room today.   

This unreckoned-with reality of white evangelical racism permeates American life, and its tinderbox was lit on fire by the rhetoric of our national life in recent years—whether in reference to Ferguson, or Charlottesville, or “shithole countries” deemed without value. White history narrates the story of America’s heroes, and white evangelical history views those “good guys” as the providence of a good and faithful God.  When some white evangelicals triumphantly pronounce that we now have “the best president the religious right ever had,” the crisis it underscores to millions of people of color is not an indictment of our President as much as it is an indictment of white evangelicalism and a racist gospel.

Third is the issue of nationalism.

One of Israel’s particular temptations was to suppose that because the God of Israel was great, the people of Israel must be great, too.  No wonder God needed to remind them, “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples . . .” (Deut 7:7).  In the greatness of the God of Israel we are reminded of a national life to be centered not in its own greatness, or as the right of its people, but fixed in gratitude and faithfulness and humility before God and, from the New Testament, in service to the God who gave his Son out of love for the world.

By dramatic contrast, nationalism gives pride of place to ourselves, to regional or national assertions of primacy and the quest for power and success, control and dominance, legitimizing violence and pressing for victory.  Nationalism reveals that we have mis-ordered worship. Religiously motivated nationalism simply turns God into our “godling,” a deity subject to our bidding.

In the complex world of global politics and economics, religion and militarism, markets and globalization, nationhood is part of the shifting landscape of human powers and forces.  In a Christian hierarchy of kingdom values, nationhood has a legitimate place, but not a central or a top-tier one—and never one that displaces the authority of God.

For white evangelicals to embrace a platform and advocacy that promotes, prioritizes, and defends America above all and over all is to embrace an idolatry that has only ever proven disastrous.  Respect for nationhood, including borders and immigration, the rule of law, both internally and among the field of nations, are surely legitimate and defensible values. However, identification with the use of demeaning rhetoric toward other nations, not least nations of color that are facing the challenges of poverty and war, is not only confusing but violating to the dignity, value, and truth of the gospel. It is, as well, violating to the people we otherwise claim to see, serve, join, and love—nations to which, ironically, American evangelicals annually send millions of dollars for mission and evangelism.  A legitimate debate about immigration laws and practices is surely necessary, as difficult as it may be. But that debate is distorted if it begins with nationalistic assumptions.

The current administration’s rhetoric may be odious, pejorative, and totalizing against our international neighbors—yet we, too, demonstrate a gospel of fake good news when we ignore any needs or concerns that threaten our self-interests.  In a pluralistic population, debates over such things as immigration policy are legitimate and bound to be contentious. But when it seems that white evangelicals endorse self-interest through political speech that is nationalistic and demeaning to others, our central commitments do not reflect Jesus Christ, but rather a cold, white heart.

The people of God are to follow an enemy-loving God, as exemplified by the life of Jesus.  This is part of the call to our new and peculiar life. This is not meant to dictate national foreign policy, but to hold the people of God to a more severe and demanding standard, calling on our conscience when it comes to foreign policy in relation to the citizens of foreign, militarized, even violent states who are equally loved by God.

Fourth is the issue of economics. 

It is very hard to read the Bible and ignore God’s heart for the poor and the vulnerable.  Built into the faithfulness to which Israel is called are boundaries on personal wealth, stewardship for the common good, and relief and provision for the poor, the alien, and the widow.  Long before free market capitalism had developed, the God of Israel, the God revealed in Jesus Christ, was shown to bend toward mercy, with justice for the poor. It was one of Israel’s most distinctive priorities and practices. 

The life of Jesus underscores these themes throughout his public ministry. The dangers of power and greed, stoked by the biases of money and wealth, distort our lives.  The faithfulness of Christians in our economic and social vision and practice are to be reflective of God who reorders all these to the purposes of the kingdom. The social practices of the church are to demonstrate the presence of God as light and salt in an otherwise dark and savorless world.

American evangelicals have often divided over the significance of life this side of eternity, sometimes understanding the eschaton in ways that marginalize the significance of economics or race.  Yet the gracious magnanimity of God’s heart should be visible by the same magnanimity and grace we taste at the shared table and that is demonstrated toward our neighbor.

When white evangelicals in prominent and wealthy places speak about what is fair and beneficial for society, but then pass laws and tax changes that create more national indebtedness and elevate the top 1% even higher—while cutting services and provisions for children, the disabled, and the poor that are castigated as disgusting “entitlements”—one has to ask how this is reconciled with being followers of Jesus.  The complexities of social support for the vulnerable in our society certainly can and should be debated, but when the instigators of change are serving elite interests and disregarding the 99%, it is very hard to recognize the influence of the gospel narrative on compassion, let alone justice.

Still Evangelical or Yet Evangelical?

Absorbing all this, I am forced to kneel in confession, with trust that “the One who has begun a good work in us will bring it to completion in the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6).  Though I would like to think all this has little to do with me or with my evangelical point of view, I know I am among the guilty. The condemnation of a gospel life poorly lived sticks to me closer than I can see or know. It has significant implications for what it means to be president of an esteemed evangelical theological seminary—one that is highly racially diverse and yet predominantly white-cultured (not least at the senior levels of leadership); that has 70 countries represented in its student body but is still too Western-oriented; that strongly affirms women in ministry and leadership yet falls short in empowering their voices.

What brings me hope is something recorded at the end of the gospel of Matthew.  Matthew 28 contains the great commission and clarion call of our evangelical identity, but often less noted is the sentence just before the commission itself. The text simply says, “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” It was to fewer than the full 12, and to these not-so-sure believer/doubters, that Jesus gave the Great Commission anyway.  From the start, he called believer/doubters to the task, so perhaps he can also still use American evangelicals as well. Rather than take a defensive posture, may we open ourselves to the repentant and hopeful posture that God will make us yet truly adherents to the “evangel” at the heart of our association. The evangelical mission is God’s from start to finish.

The Lord Jesus Christ gathers us here for real work.  May it be a work of grace that moves us to repentance, leading to personal and systemic change.  May it move us deeper into the life and heart of God.

Source: https://www.fuller.edu/posts/political-dealing-the-crisis-of-evangelicalism/

Move Over, Sex and Drugs. Ease Is the New Vice.

by Jen Pollock Michel
January 31, 2019

       According to recent research, teens are starting their sex lives a lot later. Despite shifting cultural norms and new sexual freedoms, our youngest and most virile are apparently having less sex—at least for now. Sociologists and social commentators debate whether the trend is temporary and whether it marks a healthy or unhealthy societal shift. But it’s possible that the so-called sex recession offers evidence of a wide, disturbing trend that has nothing to do with sex—one that is particularly endemic to our cultural moment. The trend bears witness to the ways that we’re increasingly finding embodied life “tiresome.” (In Japan, that’s the word many younger Japanese people to describe intercourse: mendokusai.)

      Our apparent fatigue with bodily living extends to other areas, as well. Two years ago, in response to declining cereal sales, market researchers went looking for answers to why younger people were opting out of the convenience food that had fed their parents and grandparents. According to The New York Times, researchers found the reason: Breakfast cereal—with the whole bother of bowl and spoon—involved far too much work. “Almost 40 percent of the millennials surveyed by Mintel for its 2015 report said cereal was an inconvenient breakfast choice because they had to clean up after eating it.”

The decline in sexual activity and cereal sales hardly seem correlated, but both seem to point to one of the most seductive promises of a technological age: that ours should be an unbothered life. As our lives (at least in the developed world) get easier, we are increasingly formed by the desire for ease. Of all the cautions we raise about technology—its distractions and temptations, its loneliness and superficiality—this promise of unencumbered living is perhaps the most insidious danger and also the one we talk the least about.

       As Christians, we are rightfully attuned to the hedonic temptations of material life: the sex, the drugs, the proverbial rock-and-roll. But reckless abandonment to the sensual pleasures of the body is not our only vice. So, too, is evasion of bodily life—which is, in one aspect, any attempt to squirm out of the tedium of being enfleshed, emplaced beings with obligations to love. It makes for a nagging question: Who do we become when we’re no longer willing to bother?

       The longing for ease is certainly not new, and we can trace the American home through the stages of swift industrialization. Between 1890 and 1920, the lives of American women (and men) changed dramatically with the introduction of electricity and running water. The promise of the new appliances they added to their homes, however, was not time-efficiency, as we might think. Instead, these appliances were called “labor-saving” devices, and they promised to spare the body of “bother.”
       Fast forward one hundred years to our current era of home automation: We have even greater capacities to spare ourselves bother, and efficiency and convenience are delivered with less and less effort. Alexa re-orders our toilet paper and turns on the music. From the comfort of my office cubicle, I control my sous vide, ensuring a precisely cooked roast upon my return home. If I’ve forgotten to turn down my home’s heat during my vacation, I connect to an app on my smartphone, ease delivered with a swipe of my thumb or the command of my voice. Let there be light. With the push of every button, my illusion grows—that exertion is the enemy of modern life.
       The modernizing of the American home seems innocuous enough and especially salutary when we consider the introduction of flushing toilets and refrigeration. But the late media theorist Marshall McLuhan, himself a Christian, would caution us against the uncritical embrace of technology, which acts like a prosthetic, removing the body from the labor equation. (According to The Atlantic, that seems to be exactly what we’ve done with sex, since many people now increasingly favor self-stimulation to intercourse.
       Here, then, is the quandary we’re left with: As we continue to reduce the physical burden it takes to move through the world, and the efforts of our lives are often only as effortful as staring our smartphones in the face (why bother with a home button?), how will we galvanize the real will for love of God and neighbor?
       I am increasingly conscious of the bother of physicality—increasingly conscious that there is no way to love others without it. My children have an unrelenting need for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I am, many days, irritated that I should have to feed them something other than Ramen, despite their happy clamor for it. At the end of a long day, my husband interrupts my well-laid plans for reading in bed with his puppy eyes of desire. Truth be told, marriage can find me tired and wishing to be left alone. My aging mother is growing forgetful, repeating tired stories over the phone when I’m under a deadline. She will expect we come again at Christmas. More recently, a member of the extended family has chosen to die, and attending the funeral—all seven of us—will cost us significantly in time and money. Secretly, I wish for a substitute to serve as our presence among the grieving.

     In theory, I want to love. In reality, I want it to tax me less. However, the arc of the Christian story tells me that these collective affronts are a betrayal, not just of neighbor but of God himself. God entered the bother of embodied life. As a boy, he was subject to the slow agony of growing up. As a man, he was harangued by crowds, touched by lepers, and kept awake on sleepless, hungry nights in prayer. On the night of his arrest, Jesus took up the bother of the basin and towel, washing the feet of his disciples, even those of his betrayer. He carried that bother all the way to his execution for the sake of love.

       As the Incarnation attests, the love of God, borne on his back as a weighty, wooden cross, was the corporal love of deed and truth (cf. 1 John 3:18, ESV). As Julie Canlis writes, “The Incarnation is the rule, not the exception. God enters into the world and engages with us on creation’s terms. He uses ordinary, created things to bless us, save us, minister to us. Our ordinary humanity is the place he has chosen to meet with us.”

       Following Christ, then, I am radically called to the bother of the material world with its attendant burdens and griefs. Love, in both its everyday gestures and grand flourishes, is the radical embrace of burden, not the rejection of it.

       I don’t know that I can fully recover from my entitlement to ease. I am not, after all, giving up my iPhone. But perhaps I can remember that love, patterned after God’s own self-giving, is bent on inconvenience and cost. Perhaps I can temper my expectations for the effortless life I think am owed. Perhaps I can remember when feeling especially put out by needing to show up in the world (and not by proxy), that I am supposed to love with my body.

As God did with his.

Jen Pollock Michel is the award-winning author of Teach Us to Want and Keeping Place. Her next book, Surprised By Paradox, is forthcoming this May. She lives with her husband and five children in Toronto. 

Source: https://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2019/january/technology-move-over-sex-drugs-ease-is-new-vice.html
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Easter Blessings | 2018

Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, "Sit here while I go over there and pray." He said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me. Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." ...

He went away a second time and prayed, "My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done."...

So...he went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.

Matthew 26:36,39,42,44

by Stanley Dalizu

     Palm Sunday has rushed by this week and many of us are reflecting on Jesus Christ's coming agony and excruciating crucifixion in payment for the sins of those who would place their trust in Him. Without these revealing passages, we may whisk away the magnitude of what Christ did, exchanging the thought of Christ's unfair and overwhelming advantage in obeying The Father.  The Creator, the King, the One who sustains and knows all things must have known how this would have all played out. He knows and understands beginning from end. He owns everything. He is all powerful. Yet, he chose to come down as a man and give himself a free ransom from the grip of evil and eternal death, in exchange for freedom and eternal life to all who would place total faith and trust in Him alone. It was nothing to him, right? I know of no better analogy than Alabama Crimson Tide Football. In terms of deciding an outcome of any given match-up against the Roll Tide, even the opponent knows the outcome. Or the courage of our fierce  Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen confronting the wickedness of Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy on that grisly D-Day - the largest seaborne operation in all military history.
    Quite often I fail to capture Christ's humanity. His deity and humanity are one of the greatest mysteries, but it sure makes a ton more sense in the adoption process. If Christ's prayer that night were any indicator, what He was preparing to do was an overwhelmingly big deal. And it's still the biggest deal in all of history. What he disclosed to his disciples revealed his vulnerability to how perplexing and anguishing his sufferings would be to him. He pleaded with the Father three times. This was clearly not from despair or distrust of His Father. As preached at our church last Sunday (not by me), "His humanity and divinity collided, and his divinity lead him to subject himself to the Father's will." The Gospels are emphatic that Christ agonized internally to the point of sweating blood (Luke 22:44). Certainly, the astonishing fact is that Jesus knew exactly what the outcome would be and He still accommodated himself to bear the iniquities which the Father had laid upon him. He never abandoned his humanness - or his Father's will.

    Beloved, all said, it is extremely uplifting to have your total support and encouragement in our comparatively small mission and trials. By His hour of suffering Jesus Christ had only betrayal and was denied the supports and comforts we get to enjoy on his behalf (Matthew 26:45-46; Luke 22:21;60-63). It is true that the many dear saints who have suffered much worse than any of us with the most terrible deaths and torments, still were without the same sorrows and consternations of Jesus Christ - some "called their prisons delectable orchards, and a bed of flames a bed of roses." The victory is in Jesus because He defeated death - He rose again! A short while ago we were able to sit in to hear the encouragement and exhortation of fellow and seasoned pastors to a new pastor being ordained. One of the great warnings taken from Joshua 1:6-11 was this: "True courage is the willingness to obey God's voice despite the cost and opposition, circumstances and emotions. God will ask you to take risks, but take courage and seize His assignments for you." Christ really did model for us how to live for Him, The Father, and the Holy Spirit, and truly there is no better way to live life. He hasn’t asked us to do anything He didn’t already do. May the power and grace of Jesus Christ richly dwell in your spirit, beloved.

Does God Balance Blessings with Hardships?

“Does God Balance Blessings with Hardships?”

As I sat there watching the TV, I shook my head. Of course, I don’t expect perfect theology from every TV show I watch, but this line in particular seemed to stick out. It was not a hopeful line.

God is good and only does what is good (Psalm 25:8; 119:68). That is because he is holy, righteous, and just (Exodus 15:11). We can trust that whatever he gives us is not a random balancing of the scales, or a rash response to something we’ve done. He is not an impersonal God who merely works to even out the blessings in our life. Rather, he is the God who gave up every blessing in heaven to take on human flesh and live in this fallen world so that he could endure the worst suffering on our behalf. And by his blood shed for us, he gives us the greatest blessing of all: eternity with him.

But not a week later, the shock did come. I heard an echo of the same sentiment, but this time it wasn’t coming from my TV screen, or from the mouth of a non-Christian friend. This time, it came from me. I was marveling over the blessings God had given me and how he answered longtime prayers in a big way. As I considered these blessings, my first thought was “I wonder what trial lies around the corner?”

When You Anticipate the Worst

It wasn’t exactly the same thinking as the character in that show, but it was similar nonetheless. I assumed that God needed to round out the blessings in my life with something hard, as though there were a limit to how many blessings he gives. As though there were a formula to how God works in my life. As though he were an impersonal God who gives out blessings and trials for no other reason than to keep the scales balanced.

I am an Eeyore by nature. I tend to see the dark side of things and assume the worst. I see the glass as half empty rather than half full. I tend to view God’s interactions with me as an angry father doling out punishment. And so it comes as no surprise that I would barely take the time to enjoy the gifts I’ve been given before I anticipate their being taken away.

But I don’t like living life that way. It sucks the joy right out of me. Not only that, but it’s wrong to think this way. It is inconsistent with who the Bible says God is, who we are to him, and how he works in our lives.

Perhaps you also tend to see the dark side of things. Maybe it is hard for you to enjoy the sweet sunshine today because you fear a storm will come tomorrow. When we find ourselves anticipating the worst, we need to remind ourselves of the truth. We need to transform our thinking through God’s word. Here are four ways the Bible describes how God relates to his children.

1. God Is Good

God is good and only does what is good (Psalm 25:8; 119:68). That is because he is holy, righteous, and just (Exodus 15:11). We can trust that whatever he gives us is not a random balancing of the scales, or a rash response to something we’ve done. He is not an impersonal God who merely works to even out the blessings in our life. Rather, he is the God who gave up every blessing in heaven to take on human flesh and live in this fallen world so that he could endure the worst suffering on our behalf. And by his blood shed for us, he gives us the greatest blessing of all: eternity with him.

2. God Gives Out of Grace

To those who trust in Jesus, everything God gives is an overflow of his grace, whether an answer to a prayer, a hard day, a dream come true, or a difficult trial. In each and every moment of our lives, God gives us whatever we need to make us more like his Son. In both the blessings and the trials, he is refining us and preparing us for eternity. There is a redemptive purpose behind every circumstance we encounter, and all is used for our good and his glory (Romans 5:3–5; 8:28–29; James 1:2–4; Titus 2:11–12).

3. God Is for Us

God is for us, not against us. He is for our good. He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), prepared good works for us to complete (Ephesians 2:10), saved us while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8, 10), brought us from death to life through the Spirit (Romans 8:10; Ephesians 2:4–5), and enables us to walk in obedience (Philippians 2:13) — all abundant evidence that he is for us. And nothing and no one can stop the good he has for us. “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:31–32).

4. God Is Not Out to Punish Us

We don’t have to walk on eggshells or anxiously await inevitable punishment. All God’s wrath was poured out on Christ at the cross. For those who are united to Christ by faith, there is no wrath left (2 Corinthians 5:21; Romans 5:9). In fact, for those who are in Christ, God loves us as much as he loves the Son (John 17:23).

We are children of God, and as our Father, God gives us just what we need (Matthew 6:25–33). Any hardship or difficulty that might come our way is the discipline of a loving Father to his children for the purpose of training us in righteousness (Hebrews 12:5–11).

The truth is, there is no two-sided scale that must be balanced. We can’t lump our circumstances into a pile of good things or bad things. Because we are in Christ, everything God gives us is ultimately good. So, whether a blessing or a hardship lies ahead in your future, both are a gift of God’s grace and will serve to transform you into the image of his Son. This means, rather than anticipating the worst, we can always anticipate good from our good God.

We are children of God, and as our Father, God gives us just what we need (Matthew 6:25–33). Any hardship or difficulty that might come our way is the discipline of a loving Father to his children for the purpose of training us in righteousness (Hebrews 12:5–11).

The truth is, there is no two-sided scale that must be balanced. We can’t lump our circumstances into a pile of good things or bad things. Because we are in Christ, everything God gives us is ultimately good. So, whether a blessing or a hardship lies ahead in your future, both are a gift of God’s grace and will serve to transform you into the image of his Son. This means, rather than anticipating the worst, we can always anticipate good from our good God.

Source: http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/does-god-balance-blessings-with-hardships?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedpress.me&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dg-articles