For Christ

I like Paul.

There are a few reasons for this. One reason, of course, is that he wrote about a third of the New Testament. That’s obviously nice and important. I like that he’s smart and a good thinker, even if he is hard to understand sometimes (2 Pe 3:16). I like how passionate he is and how that comes out in his letters. It means that, when I read his letters, I’m not just having someone tell me what to do, I’m also seeing how someone thinks and feels when they’re totally committed to Christ and to letting others know about him.

One reason I like Paul is that he’ll give totally ordinary advice for daily life - the sort of thing that moral teachers and philosophers and parents and self-help guides have been saying for thousands of years - but tie it to the grandest, most cosmic reasons and rationales possible.

Consider, for example, Philippians 2:6-11:

who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself
by taking on the form of a slave,
by looking like other men,
and by sharing in human nature.
He humbled himself
by becoming obedient to the point of death
—even death on a cross!
As a result God highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee will bow
—in heaven and on earth and under the earth—
and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord
to the glory of God the Father.

Embedded in the middle of Paul’s letter, it’s a beautiful hymn to Christ. It clearly states Jesus’ divinity, it movingly describes what he gave up in order to serve and save us, and it concludes with a ringing statement of his future glory. It’s one of my favorite passages of Scripture.

And the reason why Paul wrote this beautiful hymn? Going back a few verses to Phil. 2:3: “Instead of being motivated by selfish ambition or vanity, each of you should, in humility, be moved to treat one another as more important than yourself.” Phil 4:2 goes into a bit more detail: “I appeal to Euodia and to Syntyche to agree in the Lord.” In other words, Paul thought that people in church weren’t getting along well enough, and two people in particular were having enough trouble that Paul called them out by name, and so he told them to shape up.

There are lots of reasons that Paul could have given for why Euodia and Syntyche and the rest of the Philippians should stop arguing and avoid ambition and vanity. Arguments can increase levels of cortisol (the stress hormone). Humility had been recognized as a virtue at least since the days of Moses (Num 12:3), who was revered by any Jewish Christians in Paul’s audience, and was commended by Solomon (Prov 3:34), the wisest man who ever lived. Arguments, selfish ambition, and vanity all hurt group dynamics and cohesion and can impair organizational effectiveness. For the church in particular, they can interfere with its mission of reaching others for Christ. Paul could have given any of these perfectly valid reasons and arguments, but instead, he ties it with the biggest reason possible - the example of what Christ did for us - and he does so seemingly effortlessly and naturally.

Philippians 2 isn’t the only place where Paul does this. In Col 3:13, for example, he writes, “Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also forgive others.” There are numerous good reasons that Paul could have given for why we should forgive others. It’s necessary for healthy relationships; any human relationship is sure to have disagreements and failings, and so forgiveness is needed to move past those. It’s psychologically very healthy; numerous books and studies discuss this, and some studies even show that it can have physical benefits. Paul, of course, didn’t have access to these findings from modern psychology, but the ancients had some understanding of the importance of harmony, too (Ps 133, Prov 17:22). For Christians, forgiveness is even more important: Jesus says that our forgiving others is needed to receive God’s forgiveness (Mk 11:25, Mt 6:14). It’s not that our forgiveness is necessary to earn rightness with God, but a failure to extend grace to others suggests that we don’t understand grace well enough to receive it ourselves. Paul, however, doesn’t go into any of these reasons here - the restored relationships and psychological benefits and rightness with God. Instead, he simply says that the reason - and the standard - for our forgiving of others is that Christ has forgiven us. If Jesus has forgiven us the full magnitude of our every offense against God and human, in spite of all that it costs him (Paul implies), then how can we not forgive others of their limited, sometimes provoked wrongs against us?

Rom 14:2-4 is another example: “The one who eats everything must not despise the one who does not, and the one who abstains must not judge the one who eats everything, for God has accepted him. Who are you to pass judgment on another’s servant? Before his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.” This is a somewhat complex situation - probably worth a post on its own - but the short version is that there was a conflict between Christians who believed that their faith required certain moral practices (a restricted diet and observing particular holy days) while others understood that they had freedom in Christ to do or not do these things. As with forgiveness and the Philippian church’s disputes, there are several ways Paul could have addressed this. He could have insisted on unity, in spite of the differences, for the sake of good human relationships or organizational effectiveness or the health of the church. He could have tried to persuade one side or the other to change their views; after all, we can tell from Paul’s letters that he’s a formidable writer and can present a powerful argument when he wants. He could have pulled rank: as an apostle, he could have simply commanded one side or the other to give up their opinions and comply. (We can tell from Paul’s letters that he’s willing to do that, too, when the situation calls for it.) Instead, Paul once again appeals to how God treats us: God has judged us right with him, so it’s not on us to judge each other, and the awesome reality that we now live for Christ supersedes the details of what we eat and how we arrange our calendars.

Several years ago, Jon Acuff wrote about “the Jesus juke”:

At another airport I went to, a humongous bodybuilder spent his time in the terminal doing ferocious push ups right beside me. I tweeted about it… One [response] stuck out. It was different than the rest, but is something I am growing familiar with.

I call it the “Jesus Juke.”

Like a football player juking you at the last second and going a different direction, the Jesus Juke is when someone takes what is clearly a joke filled conversation and completely reverses direction into something serious and holy.

In this particular case, when I tweeted a joke about the guy doing pushups, someone tweeted me back, “Imagine If we were that dedicated in our faith, family, and finances?”

I was fine with that idea, I was, but it was a Jesus Juke. We went from, “Whoa, there’s a mountain of a man doing pushups next to the coffee shop at the airport,” to a serious statement about the lack of discipline we have in our faith and our family and our finances.

I don’t know how to spell it, but in my head I heard that sad trumpet sound of “whaaaa, waaaa.”

Acuff goes on to explain how these Jesus jukes tend to prompt shame (“You’re not as spiritual as I am, because you didn’t think to talk about Jesus here”) and are rarely helpful. And it could almost feel like that’s what Paul’s doing in these examples; whether he’s talking about group dynamics and personal relationships and diet and holidays and work, he keeps going all the way up to God and Jesus. But it doesn’t feel like a juke, a last-second athletic reversal, when Paul does it; it feels like Paul’s life is so saturated in Christ that it’s the most natural thing in the world for him to bring him up. It feels like Paul can’t help but think of what Christ did for him as the motivation for everything that he does, rather than being driven by interpersonal care or abstract ethics or concern for effectiveness.

I want that to be true of me, too.

And whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. - Col 3:17

"Forgive me, but it's hard to be a human"

Let’s talk about Congress.

No, not the story you’re probably thinking of. Although we’ll get to that later.

I read last week that the son of Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) committed suicide on December 31, 2020. On January 5, Raskin and his wife wrote a deeply moving obituary for their son:

[In school], his irrepressible love of freedom and strong libertarian impulses made him a skeptic of all institutional bureaucracy and a daring outspoken defender of all outcasts and kids in trouble. Once when third-grade Tommy and his father saw a boy returning to school after a weeklong suspension and his Dad casually remarked, ‘it looks like they let finally let him out of jail,’ Tommy replied, ‘no, you mean they finally let him back into jail.’…

He hated cliques and social snobbery, never had a negative word for anyone but tyrants and despots, and opposed all malicious gossip, stopping all such gossipers with a trademark Tommy line — ‘forgive me, but it’s hard to be a human.’…

Tommy Raskin had a perfect heart, a perfect soul, a riotously outrageous and relentless sense of humor, and a dazzling radiant mind. He began to be tortured later in his 20s by a blindingly painful and merciless ‘disease called depression,’ as Tabitha put it on Facebook over the weekend, a kind of relentless torture in the brain for him, and despite very fine doctors and a loving family and friendship network of hundreds who adored him beyond words and whom he adored too, the pain became overwhelming and unyielding and unbearable at last for our dear boy, this young man of surpassing promise to our broken world.

On the last hellish brutal day of that godawful miserable year of 2020, when hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of people all over the world died alone in bed in the darkness from an invisible killer disease ravaging their bodies and minds, we also lost our dear, dear, beloved son, Hannah and Tabitha’s beloved irreplaceable brother, a radiant light in this broken world.

Reading the newsletter where I first heard about this and the full obituary by the Raskins, I was struck by two things:

• Tommy Raskin worked to bring humor, joy, knowledge, and goodness into the lives of everyone around him.
• Tommy Raskin suffered greatly, and his death will bring more pain into the lives of those around him.

Last year was incredibly hard in many ways. It drove home the fact that we simply don’t know how much time or opportunity we’ll have to interact with others. Maybe we’ll have the countless hours over many decades that we expect, or maybe pandemic or violence or accident ends a life much sooner, or maybe life continues but lockdown or geography or changing circumstances makes the relationship impractical, or maybe a relationship that we took for granted decays or is torn apart. Why not take the opportunities we have to give others humor, joy, knowledge, or goodness?

And last year drove home the fact that we simply don’t know what pain others are going through. As we careen through life, scrambling to meet our obligations and check off items on our agendas and satisfy our wants and goals, we’re often oblivious to the nicks and dents we inflict on others who are similarly hurtling down their own paths, and we’re often oblivious to the opportunities we have and miss to make someone’s life better. Often these oversights and injuries are easily shrugged off, forgiven or forgotten, but how often do we unwittingly place a burden on people like the Raskin family who, because of the pain they’re going through, may not be able to handle one more thing?

This may seem trite, but it’s important. Please bear with me.

There are lots of sayings that I could quote right now. “Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.” “If you can’t find anything nice to say, don’t say it.” “If you can be anything, be kind.” And so on. These are, frankly, cliches. As such, I dislike quoting them. But calling a statement a cliche doesn’t mean it’s false; it’s merely lost its impact due to overuse because it’s true. Maybe it’s time to reclaim the impact.

Kindness is often equated with niceness - pleasantness, politeness, a kind of superficial avoidance of anything displeasing. It goes much deeper than that. After all, when Paul talks about God’s kindness in Rom. 2:4 and Tit. 3:4, he isn’t saying that God is pleasant or polite; he’s talking about God’s work throughout history to restore humanity’s relationship to him, culminating in sending Christ. And when Paul exhorts us to be kind in Gal. 5:22 and Col. 3:12-13, he links it with “bearing with one another and forgiving one another… just as the Lord has forgiven you; and to all these virtues add love.” The standard of how we treat others is how Christ himself treats us! “Practice random kindness,” indeed.

The events in the Capitol building last week are, I believe, the dark inverse of this. No one wakes up on a sunny day, feeling that all is well with their life and the world, and says, “I think I’d like to participate in a deadly riot today.” Instead, it grew out of many years of political partisanship and mutual hostility, and repeated choices to double down on grievance and anger instead of looking for common ground, and looking for the worst in your opponents instead of extending grace, and a willingness to listen to cynical or deluded or self-serving people who fan the flames of it all. Any single act may seem harmless, but - without minimizing the responsibility of everyone who directly participated in or instigated last Wednesday’s events - it all built up until chaos and destruction and death resulted.

It’s easy to think that small, day-to-day gestures have little impact. But, again, last year - and last week - show that’s not the case; the opportunities taken and missed, goodness such as Tommy Raskin’s life and pain such as his death, all ripple out and affect others far beyond what we can see. In fact, our actions toward others are the greatest impact we can have. As C.S. Lewis writes,

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. — The Weight of Glory

So practice kindness. Make others’ lives easier rather than harder. Remember that it’s hard to be a human.

Hug everyone in your household. Send an encouraging note to a coworker or fellow churchgoer. Give your parents, siblings, or adult children a phone call. Turn off your electronic device so you’ll have more time for others. Go to bed early so you’ll have the energy and patience to be kinder tomorrow. Complain less. (Most folks on Facebook and Twitter probably already know what things bother you; you probably don’t need to inform them.) If you’re struggling, let people know. (Kindness doesn’t mean being dishonest, and you give people an opportunity to be kind to you.) Respond to bad political news with lament and prayer instead of outrage and grievance. Forgive others, as Jesus forgave us. Do what you can to help those around you take a tiny step toward everlasting splendor.

If you or someone you know is struggling, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. Crisis counselors can also be reached by messaging the Crisis Text Line at 741741. — “Uphill” on Tommy Raskin)

Anonymous Disciples

Now on the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed, Jesus’ disciples said to him, “Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?” He sent two of his disciples and told them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. Wherever he enters, tell the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?”’ He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.” So the disciples left, went into the city, and found things just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.

— Mark 15:12-16

When I first heard this story as a kid, I assumed that Jesus used his Special Jesus Powers to arrange for the upper room. After all, there are lots of ways that an omnipotent Messiah could have pulled it off: he could have informed the man with a water jar of his needs in a dream or a vision or an audible voice from heaven. He could have sent an undercover angel to make arrangements with the man with a water jar. He could have sent an undercover angel to pose as a man with a water jar himself. He could have used his omniscience to identify someone whose Passover plans had fallen through and who therefore had a prepared but unused room.

Quite some time later, I realized there’s a simpler (humanly speaking) possibility: he could have privately talked with one of his followers and simply not told the others. (And there would be good reason to do so: by keeping his plans private, he could ensure uninterrupted time for his final meal with his disciples and friends before his arrest.)

We have this popular image of Jesus traveling with twelve men who later became the twelve apostles: Peter, Andrew, James, John, Phillip, Bartholomew (or Nathanael), Thomas, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas. A small enough group to memorize without much trouble; short enough to easily list off in a children’s Sunday school class. The full group of Jesus’ followers was much broader than that, though:

• When selecting a replacement for Judas, there were two candidates who met the qualification of having followed Jesus all the way from his baptism to his ascension (Acts 1:21-23); if two otherwise unknown people were present for Jesus’ whole three-year ministry, then it seems likely that several more were present for most or almost all of it.
• Besides the Twelve, Jesus sent seventy-two disciples out to spread the Good News of the Kingdom (Lk 10:1-20).
• Several women, including Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna, traveled with Jesus and financially supported him and the disciples (Lk 8:1-3).
• Five hundred disciples were gathered together at one of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances (1 Cor 15:6).
• Even those who weren’t at all part of the circle of disciples were included by Jesus: “John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him because no one who does a miracle in my name will be able soon afterward to say anything bad about me. For whoever is not against us is for us. For I tell you the truth, whoever gives you a cup of water because you bear Christ’s name will never lose his reward.” (Mk 9:38-41)

This pattern continues into the early church. Thanks to the prolific writings of Luke and Paul, we focus on the heroic missionary efforts of people like Peter, Barnabas, Paul, and Paul’s coworkers and students who he names in his letters. The early church’s missionary activity was much broader than that, though. Stephen Neil writes in A History of Christian Missions (p. 22):

Apart, however, from these special workers, the Church could count on the anonymous and unchronicled witness of all the faithful. Our first mention of this comes in Acts 8:4, where we are told that those who were scattered as a result of the persecution that followed on the death of Stephen went about preaching the word… But these were far from being the only volunteer missionaries. When Paul came to Rome, he was welcomed by believers; how they had got there we are not told… In later times great Churches were much set on claiming apostolic origin - to have an apostle as founder was a recognized certificate of respectability. But in point of fact few, if any, of the great Churches were really founded by apostles. Nothing is more notable than the anonymity of these early missionaries. In the second century there were three outstanding centres of Christian life in the Mediterranean - Antioch, Rome, and Alexandria. Of the foundation of the Church of Antioch we have just recorded all that is known; Luke does not turn aside to mention the name of a single one of those pioneers who laid the foundation. Peter and Paul may have organized the Church in Rome. They certainly did not found it. And of the foundation of the Church of Alexandria we know nothing for certain - neither when nor whence nor by whom.

We see a similar pattern in the Old Testament, too. 1 and 2 Kings devote six chapters to the life of Elijah, detailing one amazing miracle after another as he confronts idolatry and a wicked king, announces a famine, challenges 850 false prophets, calls down fire from heaven, then outraces - on foot! - the king’s chariot while a thunderstorm brews behind him. However, when all of those amazing, powerful, one-man-against-a-kingdom actions seem fruitless, Elijah is crushed: “I alone am left and now they want to take my life.” God encourages him: “I still have left in Israel 7,000 followers who have not bowed their knees to Baal or kissed the images of him.” (1 Ki 19:14,18)

Similarly, during the patriarchal age, we focus on the life of Abraham - and we should, since he received God’s calling and God’s promise to bless the world through him. However, even then, there were other believers in the Lord (because of stories passed down from Noah?). Job was most likely a rough contemporary of Abraham but was not a Hebrew. When Abraham left his home and traveled hundreds of miles to the promised land, he met Melchizedek, “the priest of the Most High God” (Gen 14:18), already living there.

So, what’s the point of these jaunts through history?

It can be easy to think that anyone who we can’t identify as part of our specific tribe or denomination or in-group must not be for us.

It can be easy to forget that giving someone a cup of cold water for Christ’s name may be as great a blessing as working a flashy miracle.

It can be easy to think that the people we hear about most are serving God best and forget about the countless anonymous faithful who also advance the Kingdom.

It can be easy to (consciously or unconsciously) exempt ourselves from the work of faithfully living out the Gospel just because we’re not popular or powerful.

It can be easy to think that things turning out right depends on solely on our individual efforts and forget that there are thousands and millions of fellow believers who have also not bowed their knees to idolatry.

God, thank you for the faithfulness of your people and your church - both the people we know about and those we don’t. We look forward to worshipping with them all in Heaven. Please help us, too, to faithfully serve wherever we are.

Advent 2020

“I’m not sure what to use for Christmas cards this year. It really hasn’t been a very good year.”

So my wife told me yesterday. I figure she’s right. After all, we’ve had an impeachment, near-war in Iran, murder hornets, a massive pandemic, the horrible death of George Floyd and the unrest and racial reckoning that followed, human rights violations in China, apocalyptic wildfires in Australia and California, enough hurricanes to exhaust the alphabet, and a bitterly divisive campaign season and election. After all of that, it seems a little… off to send a card like this:

Hmm. “Adventure” is certainly one way of describing 2020.

And Disney cartoons just aren’t doing much for me right now.

Even more neutral cards can feel off when many people (including my own family) aren’t able to enjoy all of the family-and-friends gatherings that they’re used to.

I definitely get where my wife is coming from.

Coincidentally, while reading the news yesterday, I saw a quote from a Washington Post opinion piece, “Prominent evangelicals are directing Trump’s sinking ship. That feeds doubts about religion,” by Michael Gerson. I should mention at this point that I don’t normally read The Washington Post. I have nothing in particular against it, but they have a perfectly reasonable policy of asking people to pay to read their articles, and I’m a cheapskate. And I’m consciously trying to cut back on my news media consumption, because I don’t think a steady diet of reading about whatever partisan conflict of the day is very good for my peace of mind. But the article piqued my interest, so I read it. I expected more punditry about the latest claims and counterclaims of Trump’s election loss, and that’s how the article started. Then it took a hard right turn, however:

For me, doubt is like staring into an abyss. The triumph of doubt involves a downward spiral of consequences. Without a transcendent moral order, ideas such as good and evil, noble and ignoble, are pegged in mid-air. Yes, it is possible to live honorably in revolt against a meaningless universe. But it is also possible to live dishonorably with the same justification. If raw matter is all that is, ideals such as justice are ultimately rootless…

If Christianity were judged entirely by the quality of Christians, it would be a tough sell — and I include myself in the judgment. Most of us are a jumble of resentments and fears. Most of us can be proud, cruel, foolish and self-deluding.

The best response is found in Advent. The most reassuring message of the season is that the existence of hope does not depend on us. It does not rely on our virtue or wisdom. It is a delivery from elsewhere. The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer — who knew something of the subject — compared Advent to a prison cell “in which one waits and hopes and does various unessential things… but is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside.”

The Advent narratives are filled with waiting people: Mary, Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna. They lived in patient expectation and were receptive to the Good News when it arrived. Their hope did not come as the result of a battle. It came like a seed planted in the ground. Like the sun rising in defiance of night. Like a child growing within his mother.

We are not the heroes of the story. Our contribution is to be watchful and open. But hope arrives in awesome humility. God is with us. Jesus is with us. This is everything.

So, while Christmas cards are reminding me of the darkness in the world, a political column in a secular newspaper is reminding me of the Light.

My whole life, I’ve treated the month of December as one extended Christmas celebration. There are Christmas lights and decorations and carols and Christmas albums and church pageants and topical sermons and workplace get-togethers and vacations to see family and more. And all of that’s great. Many churches, though, go farther: the season of Advent is formally set aside in their calendars in the four weeks to forty days before Christmas “as a time of expectant waiting and preparation for both the celebration of the Nativity of Christ at Christmas and the return of Christ at the Second Coming” (Wikipedia).

In the darkest month of the year, and in the darkness of 2020, we celebrate Jesus, who “shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1:5).

We remember that Jesus responded to the world’s darkness by entering into the world, by experiencing all of the pain and suffering that we do, by taking it upon himself, and by triumphing.

We remember God’s fulfillment of his promise to deliver his people by sending Jesus.

Like Mary, Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, and Anna, we wait for God to fulfill his promise and fully deliver us and make all things right.

And, like them, we can rest in the absolute confidence that he will do so.

Further reading: “What is Advent?”

Hope

Five Iron Frenzy was one of my favorite Christian bands in college and grad school. They were (or are - they got back together in 2011 after a nine-year hiatus) a Christian ska punk band, with an incredibly broad gamut of songs ranging from the absolutely ridiculous (“These Are Not My Pants (The Rock Opera)”) to passionate faith-based criticism of consumerism and racism to heartfelt worship. I hadn’t followed them in several years, so I was surprised and dismayed to hear last month that two of the band’s eight members had left the faith. As explained by Wikipedia:

In 1998, Scott Kerr chose to leave Five Iron Frenzy after renouncing his Christian faith. According to Kerr, he had begun experiencing doubts in high school which eventually came to a head during his time touring with Five Iron. In an attempt to reconcile his faith, Kerr fervently studied Christian apologetics - which he ultimately found “not persuasive and, at worst, intellectually disingenuous” - as well as works by David Hume and Bertrand Russell before deciding to leave Christianity. Though Kerr recalls the band accepting his revelation and decision to leave, [lead singer Reese] Roper remorsefully recalled souring the relationship between them by him “pushing Jesus on [Kerr] when he needed me to just be his friend”…

Andrew Verdecchio experienced a similar loss of faith during the early 2000s, following the death of his father and the events of the September 11 attacks. Verdecchio largely recalls the comments of conservative commentators Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell blaming the cause of the attacks on homosexuals for driving a wedge between himself and Christianity, leading him to seriously question his beliefs and role within a Christian band. Like Kerr, Verdecchio attempted to study apologetics “because I didn’t want to not believe it”, though said “the more I read these books and tried to convince myself, the less convinced I was”.

Last month was hard.

We had ongoing health challenges in my immediate family. My great-aunt passed away due to COVID. One of my son’s classmates committed suicide. I’ve had several setbacks at work. The ongoing pandemic is getting to me. The relentless division and hostility in our politics is really getting to me. I can go on Facebook and see friends who I loved and looked up to from Bible college now going through their own struggles and losses in faith, ministry, and marriage. November has been better, but I’m still dealing with family health issues and reading about skyrocketing numbers of COVID cases, a tense and bitterly contested election, and the death of someone who’s meant a lot to me. Reading about two of Five Iron Frenzy’s members leaving the faith felt like one more blow.

I need hope.

The Lord’s loyal kindness never ceases; his compassions never end. They are fresh every morning; your faithfulness is abundant!

— Lamentations 3:22-23, written upon the fall of Jerusalem and exile of the Israelites into Babylon

Hope is expectation of the good. It is linked with trust and yearning, and differentiated from fear… It is not a dream that offers comfort but may also be illusory. The life of the righteous is grounded in a hope that implies a future because its point of reference is God. To hope is to trust. It is demanded even in the good times. It is not our own projection but confidence in what God will do. God is our hope… Hope looks to him whom none can control. It is thus freed from anxiety… If God helps in present distress, he will finally put an end to all distress.

— article by R. Bultmann in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament

As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that as the last
he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God,

— Job 19:25-26, spoken after he loses his wealth, family, and health, and while he is convinced that God is treating him unjustly

I love how Kay Warren puts it in her book Choose Joy: Because Happiness Isn’t Enough. She says, Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be all right, and the determined choice to praise God in every situation. Hope is something that is birthed out of joy. If I truly believe that God is in control of the details of my life, if I really understand that ultimately everything is going to be all right, and if I choose to praise God in every situation, a space opens up in my soul that allows me to dream, to pray, to hope.

— Plumb, Need You Now

When the fig tree does not bud,
and there are no grapes on the vines;
when the olive trees do not produce
and the fields yield no crops;
when the sheep disappear from the pen
and there are no cattle in the stalls—
I will rejoice because of the Lord;
I will be happy because of the God who delivers me!
The Sovereign Lord is my source of strength.
He gives me the agility of a deer;
he enables me to negotiate the rugged terrain.

— Habakkuk 3:17-19

The brief glow [of the setting Sun] fell upon a huge sitting figure, still and solemn as the great stone kings of Argonath. The years had gnawed it, and violent hands had maimed it. Its head was gone, and in its place was set in mockery a round rough-hewn stone, rudely painted by savage hands in the likeness of a grinning face with one large red eye in the middle of its forehead. Upon its knees and mighty chair, and all about the pedestal, were idle scrawls mixed with the foul symbols that the maggot-folk of Mordor used.

Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king’s head: it was lying rolled away by the roadside. ‘Look, Sam!’ he cried, startled into speech. ‘Look! The king has got a crown again!’

The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the high stern forehead there was a coronal of silver and gold. A trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony hear yellow stonecrop gleamed.

‘They cannot conquer forever!’ said Frodo.

— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

For I consider that our present sufferings cannot even be compared to the coming glory that will be revealed to us. For the creation eagerly waits for the revelation of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility—not willingly but because of God who subjected it—in hope that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage of decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now. Not only this, but we ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we eagerly await our adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with endurance.

— Romans 8:18-25

— Taken in our neighborhood in March and April, during the lockdown

But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that the extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are experiencing trouble on every side, but are not crushed; we are perplexed, but not driven to despair; we are persecuted, but not abandoned; we are knocked down, but not destroyed, always carrying around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our body… Therefore we do not despair, but even if our physical body is wearing away, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary, light suffering is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.

— 2 Corinthians 4:7-10, 16-17

Three Takes on a Parable

One

[Jesus] also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Lk 18:9-14)

Usually, when I hear this story, I think, “Wow, I’m glad that I'm not like that Pharisee.”

In doing so, of course, I risk becoming like the Pharisee.

Two

Those of us who’ve been in the church long enough have heard this parable a lot and have (thankfully) to some extent internalized its message. As a result, it’s easy to overlook how revolutionary the Good News is compared to other world religions. Consider, for example, an adaptation of the story as told by Mack Stiles:

Two men went to the mosque to pray. One was a rich man, the other a poor man. The rich man went through his libations and prayers as he did five times a day. As he was praying, he began to have a sexual fantasy about the young wife who lived next door to his home. But he finished his prayers and went home. The poor man stood off at a distance. He came so infrequently to the mosque, that he couldn’t remember the positions for prayer or his libations. But he looked up to heaven, beat his breast, and said, “Forgive me, O Lord, for I’m a sinner.” Who went home justified?…

Mr Stiles says that every Muslim he has asked this question has answered “The rich man.”

Three

Those of us who’ve been in the church long enough have heard this parable a lot and have (sadly) to some extent become overfamiliar with its message. As a result, it’s easy to overlook how revolutionary it is in our own lives. Consider this attempt to update it for more contemporary American culture:

Two people went to church to pray. One was a church elder, and the other was a despised LGBT activist. The church elder stood by himself and prayed this prayer: “I thank you, God, that I am not like other people - cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I’m certainly not like that activist! I go to church three times a week, and I give you a tenth of my income.’ But the LGBT activist stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat the ground in sorrow, saying, ”O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner." I tell you, this activist, not the church elder, returned home justified before God. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

Can a Pro-Life Christian Vote Pro-Choice?

How can a Christian who believes in the sanctity of life and that life begins at conception vote for a pro-choice candidate? I’ve seen this question posed a few times - most recently on Facebook last week - and often seen it discussed in the past. The best expression I’ve seen of that viewpoint was in a 2004 article by J. Budziszewski, “Ballot Box Blues”:

“Just for purposes of argument,” she persisted, “suppose candidate X supported abortion, and candidate Y opposed abortion but supported a war that was unjust… So an unjust war would be a sanctity-of-life issue too, wouldn’t it?”

“It would,” I said, “and an unjust war certainly could be even worse than abortion. But let’s think a little further. To be even worse than abortion, just how bad would the unjust war have to be?… Do you happen to know how many innocent lives are lost each year through legalized abortion?”…

“Just through surgical abortions? We’re running at about 1.2 million a year,” she said. “More than 44 million babies have been killed since abortion was legalized.”…

“So to be worse than abortion,” I asked, “wouldn’t an unjust war have to kill even more than 1.2 million innocent people each year?”

1.2 million innocent lives a year is a lot - enough to supersede almost any other policy question. I found this logic irrefutable, so I’ve reliably voted Republican for almost my entire life.

And yet…

There’s a lot more to Christian faith and values than protecting unborn life. Let’s take a step back from the abortion question and think about what a truly “Christian” approach to politics would look like. Robert O’Callahan, a Christian New Zealander, gives a great description:

A truly Christian party’s key issues would include reminding the voting public that we all sinners against God, in need of repentance and forgiveness that comes through Jesus. The party would proclaim to voters “how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God” and warn against storing up treasures on earth instead of heaven. It would insist on policies that support “the least of these”. It would find a way to denounce universally popular sins such as greed, gluttony and heterosexual extra-marital sex, and advocate policies that reduce their harm, while visibly observing Paul’s dictum “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?” A Christian party would follow Jesus’ warning against “those who for a show make lengthy prayers” and downplay their own piety. It would put extraordinary emphasis on honouring the name of Christ by avoiding any sort of lies, corruption or scandal. Its members would show love for their enemies and not retaliate when attacked. If they fail in public, they would confess and repent in public.

That sounds pretty difficult, but it’s what Jesus deserves from any party that claims his name.

Whew. That’s a lot. In tact, I’d go further than O’Callahan; I’d say it sounds just about impossible for a mainstream political party to reliably act like this. Certainly neither the Republican nor Democratic parties do. So maybe that’s too much to ask. Let’s set a lower goal; what would it look like for a political party to reflect Christian values?

For me, that would probably include some combination of the following: Opposition to abortion and assisted suicide (because of the sanctity of human life). A genuine care and concern for the poor (even if there’s plenty of room for debate about what concrete policies best help the poor). Care for the environment (we’re stewards of God’s creation). Opposition to racism (we’re all made in the image of God), including a willingness to wrestle with the legacy of slavery and institutionalized discrimination. Fiscal responsibility (including a willingness to pay a fair share in taxes). Support for the family. Support for families. A commitment to humility and truth-seeking that’s willing to engage with expert advice and outside consensus. A skepticism toward big government and a willingness to limit its power (because we’re fallen, and power corrupts). A skepticism toward big corporations and a willingness to regulate them (because we’re fallen, and power corrupts them, too). Vigorous defense of religious freedom and freedom of conscience for all faiths (I don’t want Christianity protected just because it’s currently mainstream). A skepticism toward violence and instruments of violence (because we have a Second Amendment and wars can be just, but violence and instruments of violence are symptoms of the fall and end human lives and aren’t something to celebrate).

There’s room for disagreement here; I’m sure that some Christians would express some of these values differently or may add or remove some. But hopefully this is at least broadly recognizable as a list of Christian political positions. Of these positions, protecting 1.2 million innocent lives a year should surely go at or near the top of the list. The problem is that this list doesn’t line up with the Republican or Democratic parties; each party does some things well and others less well.

To be more direct - the Republican party isn’t just the evangelical Christian party. (If it was, it would look more like O’Callahan’s ideal.) It’s a coalition of evangelical Christians, other social conservatives, big business types, libertarians, whites who are still irritated about the civil rights movement, and Buchanan- and Bannon-style nationalists. (And, of course, there’s some overlap between these groups, and plenty of folks can fall into more than one group.) Most of these groups aren’t automatically bad, but they can have views and positions that go against the spirit of Christ - turning into social conservative moralism and big-business mammon and libertarian self-centeredness and white-grievance-fueled racism and arrogant ethnocentrism. And some of those views and positions show up in the Republican party. And so I’m left feeling like, if I’m going to vote to protect 1.2 million innocent lives a year, I have to accept all of the rest that comes along with it. In fact, I sometimes even feel like my vote is held hostage - as long as the Republican party is pro-life, it can do whatever it wants for anyone else in the coalition, secure in the knowledge that evangelical Christians will never abandon it.

I don’t like feeling that way. But, to protect 1.2 million innocent lives a year, I can suck it up and deal with it. Right?

And yet…

• The number of abortions has steadily declined for the last forty years. In 2017 (the most recent year I could find statistics for), the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute estimates that there were 862,000 abortions.
• Pro-life and pro-choice advocates both act like overturning Roe v. Wade is the end game. In reality, though, that just returns the question to individual states. A 2019 study in the Contraception journal suggests that overturning Roe v. Wade would result in a net decline of 13%.
• It’s not clear that overturning Roe v. Wade is even possible. It was decided in 1973, when six of the nine Supreme Court justices were Republican nominees. Each election, it seems, we’re told that this time the next Republican president will be able to appoint enough justices to make a difference. Since 1973, though, Republican presidents have appointed twelve justices to Democratic presidents’ four. It seems that the Court is extremely reluctant to overturn precedent, regardless of what presidential candidates might imply and what evangelical voters might wish.
• The pro-life movement has made steady progress in chipping away at abortions in the state and local levels without overturning Roe v. Wade. Over the past decade, hundreds of new abortion restrictions have passed, and dozens of abortion clinics have closed (1, 2).
• One risk with this incremental progress is that the Supreme Court could issue rulings striking down some or all of these restrictions. Now that conservatives have a 6-3 majority in the Supreme Court, that seems unlikely.
• Our goal isn’t to outlaw abortion; it’s to end abortion. This requires a moral and spiritual effort to convince people of the value of life. Here, too, we’re apparently doing pretty well; public opinion seems fairly stable for decades, despite a significantly more liberal culture in other respects. On the other hand, the fact that public opinion isn’t significantly improving shows we have a long way to go - and the kind of compromises we may make to win on the political and legal front may hurt our efforts on the moral and spiritual front.
• There’s plenty of evidence that declining abortion rates correlate with economic aid and contraceptive access. So ending abortion ought to be part of a broader discussion of how to help the poor and how to provide health care and contraceptive access. Current Democrats may do better than Republicans here.

So we went from “we have to vote pro-life nationally to save 1.2 million lives a year” to “there’s an outside chance that voting pro-life nationally could save 112,060 lives a year” (13% of the current declining rates) to “we’re continuing to make pro-life progress regardless of what happens nationally (and maybe the ‘pro-choice’ Democrats have some helpful ideas, too).” And saving 112,060 lives a year is huge, and I don’t want to downplay or become numb to the horror of abortion, but I’m also increasingly weary of feeling like I have to compromise numerous other values and positions for the sake of a cause that we’re making real headway on regardless.

Because, after all, ending abortion is only part of upholding life. To pick just one example: according to Wikipedia, African Americans’ average life expectancy is 3.6 years shorter than white Americans. How do I weigh 862,000 unborn lives lost to abortion against 45 million African American lives shortened due to racial and economic inequalities? I don’t know. Shouldn’t we be talking about lives lost to racism and poverty as passionately as we talk about lives lost to abortion? Probably. There aren’t easy answers, but I at least no longer think that it’s automatically correct to vote for the party that says they’re “pro-life.”

For a Christian, being pro-life should go deeper still: no matter how good we do at preserving life in the face of abortion and poverty and violence and COVID, everyone dies. In Luke 13:1-5:

Now there were some present on that occasion who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. He answered them, “Do you think these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered these things? No, I tell you! But unless you repent, you will all perish as well! Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower in Siloam fell on them, do you think they were worse offenders than all the others who live in Jerusalem? No, I tell you! But unless you repent you will all perish as well!”

Jesus’ listeners wanted to tie each of those deaths to human action and consequences (in that case, the idea that bad events were the direct result of God’s judgment on sin). Jesus challenged them to reorient their perspective: people die regardless, and what’s more important is getting right with God, lest we die eternally. As it relates to politics - being truly pro-life has to mean that we support candidates and policies that make it easier to follow Christ, who alone can offer permanent life, rather than tempting or corrupting people into sin, and that we avoid compromising our beliefs and our witness for the sake of anti-abortion laws. John Piper makes this point brilliantly in “Policies, Persons, and Paths to Ruin”; I’m not sure how much I can add to what he wrote.

Because there’s another, deeper risk to evangelicals’ blanket support for Republicans as the “pro-life” party- not only does it weaken our impact within the party (by limiting our ability to advocate for broader Christian views, because the coalition knows it has our vote regardless), but by so closely identifying with a secular party, we risk getting sucked into secular partisanship, and we risk mistaking Republican party positions for Christian positions, and we risk becoming viewed by the outside world as just another political interest group. These are tragic, potentially eternal consequences, and I believe they’ve happened and continue to happen.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I still passionately believe that abortion is wrong. I know that there’s still a strong case for supporting anti-abortion policies and candidates. I just can’t let it solely decide my vote anymore.

Further resources:

• “What About Abortion? Should this one issue determine how Christians vote?” - a video from Phil Vischer (of “Veggie Tales” fame) and Skye Jethani, and the source for some of the information here
• “Electing Republicans has not reversed Roe v. Wade. It’s time to change our strategy.” - a Catholic writer makes a similar argument
• “Four reasons a Democratic administration would mean more abortions” - another Catholic writer presents the counterargument