That’s right, while everyone else is looking to the sun, others are thinking about The Son. (You might want to put on your tin foil hat for this one.)

It all began with an image that points to southern Illinois as the spot where the next eclipse is going to intersect with the path of the 2017 North American eclipse.

From this image, two theories have been birthed. First off, there’s this idea that these eclipses are seven years apart, and if you know anything about biblical symbolism, you know seven is a holy number that symbolizes completeness. Secondly, when you map out these eclipse paths, they resemble a cross.

So, naturally, some Christians are seeing this as a major sign. But before we all start building underground bunkers, let’s hit the brakes and look at this logically.

First off, solar eclipses aren’t exactly rare sightings. According to NASA, there has been an average of 2.5 eclipses every year for the past 1,000 years. They happen when the moon photobombs the sun passes between the Earth and the sun and blots out all or some of the sun’s light. They only seem rare because they affect a narrow strip of land that falls in the shadow of the moon.

And the whole eclipse path-crossing thing? Not as extraordinary as it sounds. Maps of other eclipses show that overlapping happens frequently.

Now, some might argue that the 2017 and 2024 North American eclipses are special because of that seven-year gap. And that would be interesting — if they were actually seven years apart. The actual gap between those two events is six and a half years, or precisely 2,422 days if you’re counting.

This new theory isn’t a complete surprise, as religious theories have often been intertwined with astronomical events. In December 2020, for example, many Christians believed the planetary alignment of Jupiter and Saturn signaled the return of the “Star of Bethlehem.” Televangelist John Hagee has spent the last decade trying to convince everyone that “blood moons” are signs of the impending apocalypse. One of the most tragic examples in recent history is the religious cult of Heaven’s Gate, where members believed there was a spacecraft hidden in the tail of the Hale-Bopp Comet and they only way to access the ship was through a ritualized, mass suicide.

So, maybe let’s not jump to conclusions just yet.

I welcome discussions like these because they provide an opportunity to place a subject front and center that often only lurks in the shadows of Christendom. Yes, Black/white relations and racial reconciliation across any racial barrier needs to be a “front and center” subject—I say that in light of the emphasis God Himself places on His body living, acting, moving, communing and serving in oneness and unity in His Word.

What Does Unity Really Mean?

God does His best work in the midst of unity. In fact, so essential is the issue of oneness in the Church that we are told to be on guard against those who try to destroy it (Romans 16:17). God has intentionally reconciled racially divided groups into one new man (Ephesians 2:14-15), uniting them into a new body (Ephesians 2:16), in order that the Church can function as one (Ephesians 2:13). When the Church functions as one, we boldly brag on God to a world in desperate need of experiencing Him.

But how do we as a Church function as one? We don’t. He does—both in us and through us.

When we got saved, we were baptized into the body of Christ. No matter our race, gender, or class, when each of us came to faith in Jesus, we entered into a new family. We didn’t create God’s family. We became a part of it.

Far too often, we try to force unity when authentic unity cannot be mandated or manufactured. Instead, God says we are to “preserve the unity of the Spirit” (Ephesians 4:3). The Holy Spirit has created our unity. It is our job to preserve it.

The reason we haven’t solved the racial divide in America after hundreds of years is because people apart from God are trying to invent unity, while people who belong to God are not living out the unity we already possess. The result of both of these situations has been, and will continue to be, disastrous for our nation. Let alone disastrous for the witness of Christ to our nation.

So what does this have to do with Black History Month? Everything.

Unity Through Working Together

I read an eye-opening paragraph in a popular book the other day that will help explain my answer. It highlighted the reality that we still don’t get it about race. It said, “I know many of my white friends and colleagues, both past and present, have at times grown irritated by the Black community’s incessant blabbering about race and racism and racial reconciliation. They don’t understand what’s left for them to do or say. ‘We have African-Americans and other people of color on our staff. We listen to Tony Evans’s broadcast every day. We even send our youth group into the city to do urban ministry. Can we get on with it already? Haven’t we done enough?’”

To be fair, we have come lightyears away from slavery, Jim Crow laws, and other overt displays of racial hatred. But tolerance is still a far cry from reconciliation. The mere fact that we remain relationally separated most of the time, only coming together for an event or cross-cultural seminar, shows how far we need to go. The proof of this is that we do not have a collective restoring effect in our society. We have limited the degree to which God’s presence will flow in us and through us because if what we call unity is not transforming individuals, churches and communities, then it is simply sociology with a little Jesus sprinkled on top.

Unity can be defined in its most basic of terms as oneness of purpose. It means working together toward a common goal. Unity is not achieved through seminars, but rather through service—together. Unity is not uniformity either. Just like God is made up of three distinct persons—each unique and diverse—unity does not negate individuality. Unity embraces diversity to create a stronger whole.

My son Jonathan used to play in the NFL as a fullback. Imagine if he had showed up at practice one day and started playing like the quarterback, or the center, or even the wide receiver—he’d be kicked off the team before practice was even over. Jonathan was a fullback, and if he did’t play like a fullback then the team would be worse off because of it.

A football team is 11 unique players working together to reach the same goal. The body of Christ is no different. We are each gifted with certain strengths and skills, but unless we intentionally (and with race in America, we must be intentional) bring these together under the overarching purpose of God, we will continue to run in circles on the field and never cross the goal line together. We’ll have programs, without power.

Know Who Your Teammates Really Are

If Jonathan didn’t know what the quarterback did, or could do, that would also be a problem. A successful football team is made up of players who not only know who they are, but who also know who everyone else is.

Growing up in urban America during the Civil Rights Era in a Christian context of racism, segregation and an incomplete historical education didn’t give me an opportunity to know who I really was. In my all-Black classrooms, I learned about white culture and white history. I read about Paul Revere and his midnight ride. But what my teachers failed to mention was that on the night of Paul Revere’s ride, another man—a Black man named Wentworth Cheswell—also rode on behalf of our nation’s security. He rode north with the same exact message.

Reading my Scofield Bible each week at church, I was reminded that we as Blacks were under a curse of slavery. After all, it wrongly referenced it in the notes in my Bible. What I didn’t learn was the rich heritage of people of color in the Bible, and even that there were Black men and women in the lineage of Jesus Christ.

Without an authentic self-awareness, African-Americans often struggle as we seek to play on the same team toward the same goal in the body of Christ. But my white brothers and sisters also need to be aware of who we are, and who God has created and positioned us to be at this critical time in our world.

Black History Month gives us an opportunity to familiarize ourselves with our own past in such a way that will enable us to embrace our diversity to its fullest, putting unity to use for good. When we do that—when we knowledgeably serve side by side—there will be no stopping what we can do in the name of Jesus Christ.

Recently, however, a number of prominent Christian theologians and ethicists from both traditions have developed what is often called a third approach: just peacemaking. This approach starts by combining key arguments from both pacifists and just-war Christians with some basic historical facts. Pacifists have claimed they have an alternative to war. If so, they ought to demonstrate that claim in active peacemaking rather than withdraw to some peaceful countryside.

Just-war Christians have insisted they dare never go to war unless fighting is a last resort. That means that all reasonable nonlethal alternatives must first be tried. Over the centuries, however, we have discovered many highly successful ways to resolve conflicts nonviolently. Settling disagreements between gentlemen with a duel (swords or pistols) used to be common. Many died. Today we settle the same disputes nonviolently through the courts. Improving international diplomacy and multilateral negotiations and structures has also reduced armed conflict.

Some of the most striking examples of nonviolent conflict resolution have come in the growing adoption of the techniques of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Gandhi’s nonviolent campaign to end colonial rule successfully defeated the British Empire. (It took a little longer than the Algerians’ violent revolution against French colonialism, but a million Algerians were killed [1 in 10], whereas only 8,000 [about 1 in 400,000!] Indians died.) Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent civil rights movement changed American history. Hundreds of thousands of nonviolent Filipino marchers overthrew President Marcos’s decades-long dictatorship in 1986. Solidarity’s nonviolent tactics resisted the Soviet Empire and eventually helped win Poland’s freedom. In the 1980s, hundreds of nonviolent, short-term teams organized by Witness for Peace helped to defeat Ronald Reagan’s attempt to overthrow the Nicaraguan government by funding an armed rebellion by the “contras.”

In the last two decades, Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT; originally founded by Mennonites, Quakers, and people from the Church of the Brethren) has grown into a small but effective organization using the tactics of nonviolent direct action to intervene in areas of conflict on several continents. Especially important, perhaps, has been its presence in Hebron in the West Bank. In Hebron, a small Jewish settlement protected by Israeli soldiers exists in the midst of an overwhelmingly Palestinian city. Hatred and mistrust are everywhere. Violence and killing are frequent. For more than ten years small groups from Christian Peacemaker Teams have lived in Hebron seeking to understand and befriend both Israelis and Palestinians. CPT personnel intervene in hostile confrontations to prevent violence, seek to stop the illegal demolition of houses, and accompany young children traveling to school through dangerous neighborhoods. Recently, Jonathan Kuttab, a prominent Palestinian Christian committed to nonviolence, has called for one thousand Christian Peacemaker Teams to locate all around the West Bank. Kuttab believes those teams could dramatically reduce conflict in the West Bank.

This brief sketch of strikingly successful, twentieth-century nonviolent campaigns to oppose injustice and reduce killing demonstrates an important fact: nonviolence frequently works! Even without much preparation and training, even without a large investment of money and personnel, nonviolent direct action has frequently been highly effective. One wonders what might be accomplished if all parts of the Christian church (in cooperation with all others who are interested) would get serious about investing resources, time, money, and people to explore what more could be done nonviolently to end injustice and prevent war.

One wonders what might have happened if very prominent Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim leaders had led a few thousand of their peaceful, praying followers into Bosnia or Kosovo before the ethnic cleansing began. Their message to all would have been: “We come in the name of God. We will stay to pray and stand between warring parties until the killing ends.” Might that have been more successful than soldiers and bombs? We could do the same in other unjust, violent situations waiting to explode. Cardinals, archbishops, patriarchs, and others could lead hundreds of followers into the West Bank. Archbishop Tutu could lead hundreds to Zimbabwe demanding an end to injustice and calling for democracy. The list of potential areas for intervention is long.

Top Christian leaders from both the just-war and pacifist traditions must decide that now is the time to vastly expand groups like Christian Peacemaker Teams. We need thousands of praying, peaceful team members to travel and deploy in dozens of dangerous situations. Pacifists need not abandon their belief that killing is always wrong. Just-war proponents can continue to insist that killing is sometimes necessary. But both traditions demand that they vigorously do as much as possible in nonviolent ways. After decades when nonviolence has often enjoyed stunning success even without much preparation, we must now invest tens of millions of dollars in the first serious effort in human history to explore how much can be done to reduce injustice and war through the techniques of nonviolent direct action.

This article is excerpted from Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement, Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, ©2012.

Used by permission. All rights to this material are reserved. Material is not to be reproduced, scanned, copied, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission from Baker Publishing Group.

A war is declared. Retail stores, websites and even coffee chains become the subject of boycotts, viral video campaigns and, yes, even “naughty lists,” for failing adequately to promote a Christian holiday. Some people perceive this as not simply an oversight on behalf of retailers, but an act of war.

The problem is, only one side is interested in fighting it. And a one-sided fight isn’t a war. It’s an attack.

Two Different Holidays

In the Christian tradition, Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. It’s the day we remember that the heavenly King wasn’t born into opulence in a mighty castle, but in an old barn to a mother, who just months before, was an unwed pregnant teen.

It’s the culmination of Advent—a tradition in which we remind ourselves what it’s like to wait on something. Contrary to our on-demand culture, Advent is a season when Christians reflect on coming promises. It’s a reminder that earthly wealth looks different than heavenly value. It’s about God coming to man.

In the modern cultural tradition, however, Christmas has become about consumption. This season kicks off not with the Advent calendar, but with a holiday (Black Friday) dedicated to shopping.

In the consumer tradition, it’s about sales, marketing and acquiring more stuff. They may share spots on the calendar, but these aren’t really the same holidays at all.

The Actual War

“The War on Christmas” is predicated on the idea that mainstream, American culture (in this case, American consumer culture) should mirror Christian values. But the reality is these values are in conflict with each other, regardless of whether we receive a catalog in the mail says “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays.”

Many “War on Christmas” advocates demand that retailers use the term “Christmas” in their marketing and sales material. The argument is that by keeping the term “Christ” associated with the event (even if it’s in the form of selling discounted tires), then we are somehow honoring His name and properly reflecting on His birth.

But Christ never wanted a brand. He didn’t ask us to use His name to sell stuff. He didn’t even ask us to celebrate His birthday.

The Christmas story isn’t about elevating the idea of Jesus to a place where it is seen on the cover of catalogs and the front of coffee mugs. No, the Christmas story is about God lowering—the theological term is “divine condescension”—Himself to our level and becoming a person who is relatable and knowable. It wasn’t about making Him a cultural icon; it was about Him becoming an individual we can have a relationship with.

What Christians celebrate at Christmas time and what culture celebrates are increasingly two different things. So why should they be called by the same name?

Giving gifts to the people we love is fun. And many of the traditions we associate with the Christmas are pretty harmless. But conflating our cultural idea of Christmas with the Bible’s story of Jesus’ birth becomes problematic if we forget what Jesus was really all about.

Christ Out of Christmas

There is a real danger that one day we will have taken “the Christ out of Christmas.” But that won’t happen when people stop saying “Merry Christmas” in favor of “Happy Holidays” or “Season’s Greetings.”

Christ is “taken out of” Christmas when we forget what His birth—and His life—were all about.

It was about caring for the poor. Giving things away instead of trying to accumulate more. It was about loving our neighbors (even ones who don’t believe like we do and aren’t comfortable recognizing another religion’s holiday) as ourselves.

It was about going to other people’s level, instead of expecting them to come to ours.

There is a real war on Christmas. But it won’t play out in advertising, marketing materials or on fast-food marquees. The real war on Christmas happens in each of us when we try to reconcile the values of a consumer-driven culture with the birth of a Savior who wants us to let go of the things of this world.

And that’s the war we must keep on fighting.

20 years ago, I was sitting in my first grade classroom, probably coloring a picture, when my principal announced the school day had been cut short. My teacher didn’t say why, and I was too young to think to ask. All I cared about was going home, watching cartoons and eating chicken nuggets for lunch. 

I wasn’t aware that the rest of America was watching in shock and horror as terrorists attacked New York City and Washington D.C. I didn’t notice the weeks and months after as Americans tried to resume their lives while carrying an immense amount of fear on their shoulders. It took a few years before I began to understand why we took a moment of silence during school each morning. It would take 10 years, during my junior year of high school, before I first learned about the American response to the attacks, like the passing of the Patriot Act, launching the War on Terror and the rise of Islamophobia. 

Since 2011, more than 10 million people have visited the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York to commemorate the lives lost and sacrifices made on that day. I visited the memorial in 2017 and was moved by the vast amount of names written at Ground Zero. I walked around the square, trying to recall what the buildings looked like in photos I’d seen. I witnessed older men and women weeping over the names of loved ones they lost to these attacks. Names they haven’t forgotten in 20 years. It was moving to see, particularly because it was one of the first times I was finally able to feel the emotional weight of the attacks. 

My life, from what I can reflect on, was not ultimately changed from the 9/11 attacks. I continued going to school, living life in the suburbs of Dallas, not constantly thinking of terrorism happening in the world. Some people my age may remember the attacks if they were directly affected or lost people they knew, but most Americans younger than their mid-twenties probably feel the same as me. Their perception of 9/11 was formed by history lessons, Hollywood movies, country music and the occasional social media meme. They may have had family members and friends who are older who recall what that day meant for them. But we all sit quietly listening to their stories, unable to add our own experiences because we don’t have them. 

Young millennials and Gen Z know about 9/11, but our understanding of it is similar to the way older millennials and Gen X feel about D-Day. We all know the importance of the day, we know the facts, we’ve read the personal accounts from it. But to many of us, it’s not a day we can emotionally re-live. There will be a day when people will no longer reflect on 9/11 in the same way they do now. People will inevitably forget or misremember, as the importance of events often fades with the people who experience them.

For many people my age and younger, 9/11 is an important day in a list of other memorable moments of American history. It should be remembered, but there are other dates that deserve just as much recognition. One Gen Zer explained to USA Today that “Gen Z would rather leave stuff like that in the past and focus on today’s problems.”

I don’t remember what I felt on the day of the terrorist attacks. But I do remember the heartbreak and fear over the lives lost in the Sandy Hook shooting, the Aurora movie theater shooting, the Orlando Pulse shooting, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. I remember the need I felt rising in me to do something about the victims of climate disasters like Hurricane Katrina and California’s wildfires. 

I am 26 years old now, with a list of facts floating around in my head about the 9/11 attacks. I also have the stories of Muslim friends who grew up in America and faced verbal and sometimes physical attacks. I have the knowledge of what 20 years of war has been like for Afghan refugees. I understand the weight of 9/11 — I promise I do. But it’s not easy to distinguish the importance of 9/11 from other historical, life-altering events I learned about in my history classes. It’s even harder to grasp the emotional weight when I’ve lived through other events that have actually stuck with me.

Though neither of these pieces mention the other author by name, it’s hard not to see the two in conversation with each other.

Mohler’s argument boils down to “the end justifies the means.” He doesn’t pretend to like Trump, and says that the President’s “divisive comments and sub-presidential behavior are an embarrassment …Constantly.” But he also argues that “character” can’t be reduced to simple personality and principle, but also policy goals.

“If I am electing a neighbor, it would be Biden hands down,” Mohler says. “But I am not voting for who will be my neighbor, I am voting for who will be President of the United States.”

And in that calculus, Trump’s deliverables on things like abortion and religious liberty outweigh in apparent unneighborliness. “President Trump has gone far beyond what would have been politically necessary to secure his base,” Mohler says. “He has staked his place in history and has defied the accommodationist temptation and has given pro-life Americans more than any other president.”

It’s a well-documented flip from Mohler’s public position in 2016, when he called Trump “the great evangelical embarrassment.” Mohler addresses this flip in his piece.

I didn’t vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Repulsed by his character and unable to see him as a conservative, I voted for neither major party candidate. I made a symbolic vote. I had to hope that Hillary Clinton would not be elected president, but it seemed almost determined. As we know now, it was not. Having argued loudly for the resignation of President Bill Clinton on national television many times over in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky affair, I felt that I could not vote for Donald Trump without hypocrisy. I even went so far as to say that if I voted for Donald Trump I would have to apologize to Bill Clinton.

Well, I am voting for Donald Trump in 2020 and I make no apology to Bill Clinton. I do apologize, but my apology is for making a dumb statement that did not stand the test of time.

Mohler allows that some Christians may not be able to stomach a vote for Trump, a “predicament” he says he understands. But he says voting for Trump’s Democratic challenger Joe Biden is “beyond my moral imagination,” although he allows that Black Christians “regularly and predictably” vote for Democrats.

With my Black brothers and sisters, I make my best case for how I see the issues. They have every right to do the same. We each have a vote. Both of us will answer to God for that vote. We earnestly seek to persuade the other. We will likely vote differently in the end. We remain brothers and sisters in Christ.

On Monday, Amy Coney Barrett was sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice, delivering a hefty conservative tilt to the nation’s highest court. For many evangelicals, this amounts to Trump fulfilling his end of a bargain they made in 2016.

In his own piece, Piper wrote that conservative policy wins like this just don’t outweigh the existential cost to the nation. Piper argued that whatever gains may be made on the anti-abortion front, the evangelical capitulation to Trump was not pro-life. “When a leader models self-absorbed, self-exalting boastfulness, he models the most deadly behavior in the world,” Piper wrote. “He points his nation to destruction.”

You can read Mohler’s full piece here.

In his new book American Awakening: Eight Principals to Restore the Soul of America, Kingston aims to remind Americans of who they really are. While his political bid was unsuccessful, the lessons he learned and experiences he had helped reshape his idea of what America can become. And now, he wants to share those lessons with the rest of us. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Your book released into a whole new world than the one you wrote it in. How do you think it’s going to land given the general state of things?

It speaks exactly into the darkness of the day. The Corona darkness, which is over top of the prior spiritual malaise darkness. The racial reckoning. A lot of the book is about race and recognizing who we are and how we’re supposed to be together as people. Each layer of this has actually fused into the message of the book that I was actually writing, not knowing that this was going to be happening. 

A recent poll said Americans have never been less proud of their country. Are you proud to be an American right now?

As Americans right now, we’ve forgotten who we are. That’s why everything seems so wrong.  As I discuss in the book, 244 years ago we breathed into existence the most amazing project in governance in human history. The idea that all are created equal was mind-blowing. It had never been argued before in governance documents. But 244 years ago, the idea wasn’t even worth the paper it was written on. It didn’t apply to Native Americans. It didn’t apply to, of course, to Black Americans. It didn’t apply to women. And on and on.

We deserve to be proud of the fact that we exist in something that really matters and is worth fighting for. But at the same time, we’re always yearning and aspiring to it. As Martin Luther King said famously, it was a promissory note that has yet to be paid on.

My heroes — Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King — they all believed in this country because they believed that it had the promise and the possibility of fulfillment. I know how sad and disappointed people are right now in where we are. I get it. I feel it. But the basic premise that we’re all children of God, that we’re made to be together, that’s who we are as Christians.

You write this book from your own perspective, which is Christian — but you wrote this for a broad audience of all Americans, regardless of religious beliefs. How do you navigate that balance?

I’m going to talk about Christian ethics that I want somebody else to do. I’m talking about things like “all are created equal.” Christians have violated that principle massively in many eras and epochs over time — famously through our relationship and race relationship which has continued on generation over generation, where we’re not actually acting congruently with our deepest principles. But our deepest principles are: love God, love your neighbor as yourself because that other person is a child of God. That is exactly equivalent to being equal citizens of the Republic. Those concepts, they’re almost synonymous. They’re not really different except in the finest shadings.

As Christians, we’re not saying, “I want that person over there to follow my thinking on sexuality.” That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a deep respect for pluralism, a deep respect for where people are coming from, be it atheist or agnostic. Whatever category they want to put themselves in, hey, they’re my neighbor. They’re equal citizens in the republic. Our form of Christian visionary leadership can more robustly inform the way that the Republic ought to go forward.

We are the best equipped to lead people out of that. And that’s what I’m trying to call people to.

What separates your vision for the country from the other ideas that are being floated right now, whether it be MAGA, moderate conservatism, general centrism, neoliberalism or progressivism? 

I think what we’re finding is the cycle of not respecting one another is not understanding that each one of us has got purpose and meaning. I’ve got purpose and meaning. The MAGA hat-wearing person’s got purpose and meaning and significance. They’re a child of God. A far leftist, in their ideology, is a child of God. They’re all just ideas of how we get on together at the core.

My leadership suggestion for anybody out there, frankly, is it comes down to our understanding of who we are. We are called to respect the spectrum of ideas and then find the compromise in all of that which leads us collectively to human flourishing and thriving in the best way possible.

Some of the ideas out there are really bad ideas. But there’s some gem of truth in a lot of them. And what’s bad about them is not the ideas, in a lot of regards. It’s a spirit animating them, which is zero-sum. It’s “My side’s got to win. Your side’s got to lose.” It doesn’t work that way.

I mean Martin Luther King famously, when he was assassinated, his ideas were sufficiently provocative at the time that he enjoyed only 30 some odd percent favorability in public opinion polls in 1968. What is so abundantly clear to us now about what he was taking us forward in was a compromise view of where the public square would work, but it stepped on a lot of toes and it required some puts and takes from a lot of people. He didn’t see the promised land. I mean, not that any of us are going to exactly see the promised land, but he didn’t see the fulfillment of it.

Do you have anything in the way of kind of a pep talk for America?

God’s got this. Heaven is a place where all of these things are set to right. The American project, if your people lean into it and own their spot in it, they’re going to find God’s sustenance and provision in every day. Even though things are going to get tough out there, your listeners, your readers are going to be important components of taking us to where we need to go. I don’t think that’s a three-month project. I don’t think it’s a year project. I’m not even sure it’s a five-year project at this point.

But I see great things on the horizon for America in the next 10 years if we can actually own this stuff. And if people can say, “Look, you know what? God put me on the planet with purpose and meaning to lean into this and be a transformative agent in this time.” We’re going to get some place together.

2020 could be the beginning of the biggest bounce back ever. We can see something really great happen. We’ve been masking over a whole bunch of stuff. Let’s get to work, folks. 

This content is created in partnership with American Awakening. Check out the American Awakening Podcast, now playing on the RELEVANT Podcast Network. And for more, check out John’s book American Awakening: Eight Principles to Restore The Soul of America.

In times of tremendous uncertainty, every headline seems to take on a bit of urgency — especially if you are looking at our lives together in America as a war between cultures.

Take for example two recent Supreme Court decisions: Monday’s decision on a Louisana abortion law and the ruling that LGBTQ workers are protected by Federal civil rights laws.

These decisions, and many others relating to abortion, gender and sexuality, and religious freedom, are undeniably of great consequence. As are the legislative battles about how we govern our society together, and electoral outcomes.

These all matter — a lot. It’s important to live out our convictions about these topics in our representative democracy.

But let’s do some “real talk” here (as we say often in the American Awakening movement) . . . We live in a pluralistic society of extraordinary variety in people groups, belief systems and perspectives. Any particular outcome should not get twisted into a titanic battle between good and evil, with the fate of the country hanging in the balance.

That is the type of thinking that leads to the deeply flawed logic of the Flight 93 election, as debunked by David French.

But to my brothers and sisters who serve a living God — we don’t have to give in to this type of thinking. We have the secret sauce in the words of Jesus. He told us under the new order of Jesus, the only principle governing our affairs with others is to love our neighbors as ourselves.

That concept was enshrined in the words of our American Declaration of Independence — “all are created equal.”

All of us. Every. One. Of. Us. As children of God to be loved (per his commands), and as citizens of this land who are to be respected. We are not at war with each other, we are part of God’s created order, and citizens of a great nation — together.

This culture war approach has devastated our country. In the most free and prosperous nation the world has ever known, fully 80% of the American people believe that our country is spiraling out of control; nearly 60% of Democrats believe that Republicans are dangerous for the country, and approximately the same portion of Republicans believe that of Democrats.

In the words often attributed to Gandhi — “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” Or as Jesus said, a house divided against itself cannot stand, which Abraham Lincoln channeled in his famous 1858 speech.

If the stakes are perceived to be sufficiently high in a “war,” it becomes easy to justify dehumanizing rhetoric, dirty political tricks and outraged social media chatter. That “culture war” language gives us permission to adapt the “anything goes” tactics of warfare. We see others not as people to be persuaded or known, but enemies to be disgraced, dismissed and defeated.

In a war, you don’t have to listen to others. You don’t have to serve them. You certainly shouldn’t take the time to get to know them or their kids, buy things from their businesses or stand in solidarity with them against injustice. Instead, you have to bludgeon into submission with votes, memes, “canceling” and, yes, sometimes even ostracization.

We need a new framework for thinking about this pluralism, which is a feature — not a bug — of our wonderful country. We have to learn how to live as a huge, diverse nation with so many different convictions being brought to the table. Not everyone will agree all the time, even about important matters. Yet, as followers of Jesus, we have to love each other anyway.

Jesus modeled this fully, both in his approach to those outside the Jewish “in group” of the day (think his story of the Good Samaritan, and his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well), and with his politically diverse followers.

Take for example, Simon the Zealot. Simon was likely a member of a group of radicals who advocated for civil disobedience as a way to protest the Roman empire’s injustices, hoping to topple the empire and install a religious monarchy.

On the other hand, Matthew had been a tax collector who worked for the Roman government, and given his ties, one might imagine he had a more favorable view of the empire, and working within the system to bring about reform.

While one can’t be completely sure of the disciples’ political alignments (although I suspect Simon wasn’t the only zealot in the bunch), using a little bit of imagination, you can bet they locked horns on these topics plenty of times as they followed Jesus around.

Jesus was bringing them all along, but on an entirely different mission. He was bringing a third way that almost no one saw coming: a kingdom so upside down that the poor and needy were first and the wise and powerful would be last. The kingdom itself was already within them, around them and among them. It was a journey of discovery, right in the midst of their strongly held beliefs, pulling them all into a new space where each would have to sacrifice something of what they believed to be the right way to rule the world.

That was the key. They followed Jesus together. After Jesus ascended, they all received the same Holy Spirit and told everyone the same Good News.

What does that mean for today in this terribly divisive moment? As children of God and followers of Jesus who are called to love our neighbors, and as Americans asked to respect that “all are equal,” let’s see each other through that prism and model that for others.

As many have reminded us through the years, true love — and our honor as citizens — is revealed by how our convictions lead us to treat people who disagree with us.

When people stop seeing others as enemies and start seeing them as partners, great things can happen.

Let’s lose the war language.

Let’s see each other as God sees each of us, as his children capturing a part of who he is. As citizens with their own treasures — each one of us is broken but beautiful, with rich cultures and backgrounds and painful/redeemable/wonderful experiences which have led each to a complex system of beliefs. Let’s see the best in each, as a vital part of the diversity that has always been key to America’s unique promise. And let’s figure out how to hold fast to our own convictions while allowing others the space to do the same.

This fourth of July, in this remarkable land, our goal shouldn’t be to defeat those who don’t share our beliefs. Let’s dedicate the day to our own spiritual awakening, their awakening, and together, an American Awakening.

If you like what you are reading check out American Awakening: Eight Principles to Restore The Soul of America and listen to the American Awakening Podcast, now playing on the Relevant Podcast Network. 

Signs of Life content is created in partnership with American Awakening.

Last Friday, President Donald Trump called a hasty news conference to make an announcement about houses of worship in the U.S. Despite the status of the coronavirus pandemic — the U.S. has experienced 100,000 COVID-19 related deaths, and the pandemic is on the increase in certain sections of the country — Trump deemed churches, mosques, synagogues and other places of faith “essential” and instructed state governors to immediately allow them to meet.

“If they don’t do it, I will override the governors,” Trump said. “In America, we need more prayer, not less.”

Not too many Americans — and probably no Christians! — would disagree with Trump’s last statement, but public opinion is mixed on the rest of his speech. In over half the states, churches are already allowed to meet in person as long as social distancing guidelines are observed, but most Americans are still wary of attending.  Earlier this month, the Center for Public Affairs found that 48 percent of Americans still don’t think religious services should be allowed, and 42 percent think they should be allowed with a few restrictions. Among Americans of faith, the numbers aren’t much different: 45 percent think that religious services should remain virtual for the time being. The Barna Group found that 70 percent of American pastors don’t expect to resume in-person services until at least June.  Now June (or even July or August or September) when many universities will be reopening is right around the corner, so we aren’t talking about forever—we are all just talking about whether opening immediately is the right answer.

At its core, the President’s speech reveals he doesn’t know how faith really works. Bottom line, “Church” isn’t about a building or a weekly service. 

If that is your understanding of Church, it’s easy to see why a full-scale re-opening would be the top priority. If church services are batteries for spiritual life, then spiritual life can’t go far without them. 

To be fair, that’s not entirely wrong.

Going to church is a deeply meaningful experience for people of faith. Preaching and singing can be replicated over Zoom to a degree, but there’s a lot more to being in a community of faith than preaching and singing. There are relationships. Opportunities to serve. Opportunities to be served. The Church is fundamentally a community, and that’s not something that ever quite feels the same over a screen. We miss going to church because we miss loving and being loved by others in that beautiful, close, incarnational way. 

That’s the rub. For the short term — some weeks or perhaps months — the most concrete, beautiful, loving thing many of us can do for each other is continue to observe reasonable social distancing guidelines. Healthcare professionals remain deeply concerned about the state of the coronavirus in the U.S., and the chance for re-igniting the contagion remains very real. COVID-19 isn’t done with us yet and until it is, in many parts of the country and world, maintaining a safe distance, avoiding large gatherings and wearing masks in public are important for protecting the safety and wellbeing of our neighbors. 

Jesus said loving your neighbor as yourself is the greatest commandment after loving God. That’s why we need to differentiate between going to Church and being the Church. 

Going to church means you get to see people you love and enjoy some in-person teaching and singing, but it also might mean that you pass the coronavirus to other people in your church community. The alternative means keeping your distance, continuing to watch your pastor on Zoom and awkwardly singing “Oceans” by yourself.  However, if you are alive in faith and hope, in that moment you really are being the Church. You’re taking part in an ancient and beautiful legacy of loving society’s most vulnerable and marginalized by protecting them from the spread of a dangerous virus. 

Some people are concerned about the exercise of our freedom of religion, and whether these social distancing guidelines are testing Constitutional guardrails. That’s fair. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” is the great line often attributed to Thomas Jefferson (probably apocryphally, but the line is great whoever said it first). A crisis certainly provides any government an opportunity for overreach and Americans should pay close attention to the laws being enacted right now. But insofar as there are any such real concerns, is the best course of resistance defying the advice of medical experts and risking the safety of others around us? Is taking to the streets, endangering people who did not consent to be endangered, really the most proportionate exercise of liberty?

No. As Trump said, “we need more prayer, not less.” So let’s pray. For wisdom for our political and spiritual leaders, that they’ll navigate unprecedented and enormously complex times with wisdom and courage. For our houses of worship, that the people in our local religious communities will have patience for the days and weeks ahead. And for ourselves, that God will show us all the right course of action. 

In the Gospel of John, Jesus predicts that “everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Loving one another is the Church’s calling card and the one way people know the Church is really being the Church. And right now, love will often mean keeping a safe distance. 

There’s no doubt that people of faith are looking forward to meeting in-person again— that is going to be a very special day! And when that day comes, let’s make sure that the legacy of the Church in the time of the pandemic isn’t about how we imprudently protected our own liberties, but rather about how well we loved each other in this time. That, more than anything else, will prove just how essential the Church really is to the spiritual health of America.

If you like what you’re reading, check out the daily Signs of Life podcast by American Awakening. Now playing on the RELEVANT Podcast Network.

Signs of Life content is created in partnership with American Awakening.

No matter what group you currently identify within America, chances are there’s another group that frustrates, saddens and maybe even scares you. Maybe it’s Democrats or Republicans. Maybe it’s the people protesting the ongoing lockdown. Maybe it’s the billionaire class, or environmentalists or hunting enthusiasts. The point is, you know who your tribe is and with the endless news and social media cycle —  that means you know who’s outside your tribe too. 

There’s a notion out there that tribalism is worse now than it’s ever been. That’s a hard thing to measure, but no doubt, our current inability to overcome our differences has reached a crisis level that is having real, tangible consequences on our health as a nation. The divides we face are splitting up friendships, churches …even families. 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this isn’t sustainable. A country that can’t figure out how to work together despite disagreements is not going to get much done — especially given how many issues need our attention immediately. Beyond the grim unemployment rate, a deadly virus, and the exploding debt, there’s also America’s skyrocketing deaths of despair, systemic racial injustice and any number of other problems we need to work on together. But how can we tackle them when we can’t even talk to each other?

On a recent “Signs of Life” podcast, my wonderful teammate Jefferson Bethke shared the story of the remarkable and provocatively named “Robbers Cave” Study, performed by Turkish-American psychologist Muzafer Sherif in 1954. (The name is from the Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma where the study was conducted.)  A group of 11-year-old boys were brought to a summer camp and split into two groups; neither group was aware of the other’s existence. The boys had a typical summer camp experience, the same as any other group of 11-year-old boys would have. Swimming, hiking, that sort of thing. At the end of the week, the two groups were combined for yet another camp but — and this may not come as a surprise — they hated each other. The two groups did not get along. 

This study has been repeated many times over the years, and the results are generally the same. What researchers have determined is that the initial two groups came to define themselves less by their own internal camaraderie and more by what separated them from each other. Encountering a different group of peers made them feel threatened and close ranks on their initial group. Their bond wasn’t defined so much by who was in as much as it was by who was out.  

But the study doesn’t end there. For the final week, researchers tried to figure out how to pull the two groups from each other’s throats and get them to reconcile. 

The first attempt was a dud. Researchers tried to build unity by giving the two groups activities: sports, games, leisure activities — things like that. It didn’t work. The boys still bickered and bullied each other. 

So the researchers pivoted from activities to something else: a mission. (Fancy psychological testing language describes this as “superordinate goals”.) The boys were given tasks that required them to not just be together or even just get along, but to actually rely on each other to solve problems.  These challenges softened the hard personalities in play. The boys started to get along. When their focus was on solving a mutual problem, they didn’t have time to think about their own petty squabbles. 

See where we’re going with this?

There are a few things we can learn here. One big takeaway: we’re mission-minded people. We, as humans, are created to solve things together. Teaming up is in our DNA. When we don’t do it, we suffer. We’ll either spend our time working together towards common goals, or we’ll waste it trying to keep each other out. 

Think about the major issues facing your community. What if you stopped seeing those outside your tribe as obstacles towards fixing those issues, and instead as potential teammates? What if we stopped seeing the other side as a liability in our vision of the future, and started to see them as an asset? Maybe not one we agree with all the time. Maybe not one who shares every single value or priority. But definitely as a person with valuable thoughts, skills and opinions. 

Think of Jesus’ community; the people who followed him. Surely, the movement he founded would have had a much easier time if they’d all been part of the same pre-existing tribes. But easier isn’t always better, and Jesus knew what he was doing. He called fishermen and tax collectors, Pharisees and zealots, women and men, Jew and Greek, slave and free. You can bet there were plenty of disagreements in the early Church — some of them are even written down in the Book of Acts. But these people were able to put their differences aside to focus on the bigger issue of sharing with the world the lessons that Jesus had taught them. Needless to say, their cooperation ended up making an impact that changed the course of history. 

We need to start looking at the bigger picture. We need each other to solve the problems we face. The other people in our lives, even the ones who look, think, believe and vote differently from us, are image bearers of God. Just like us. There is no them. There’s only us. When we join forces to tackle problems, something in us changes. And once we, as a people, are changed, the world itself will start to change too.

If you like what you’re reading, check out the daily Signs of Life podcast by American Awakening. Now playing on the RELEVANT Podcast Network.

Signs of Life content is created in partnership with American Awakening.

These are unusual and dark times, and unusual times call for extraordinary measures. Our world is burdened by despair, division and death — and that was true before the coronavirus pandemic hit us. 

Even ahead of the virus, we saw our spiritual adversary at work. Light confused with darkness, truth with untruth and life with death. Not just out there in the world but also amongst our people of faith. There were 150 thousand deaths of despair last year. As of this writing that’s well over twice the number of coronavirus deaths to date. Anxiety. Depression. Loneliness. Exploding in every demographic. And that’s before corona. Yes, a spiritual death has been on the march for a long time. 

I compare it to the final season of Game of Thrones. White Walkers have been on the march. People here in the U.S. – like the people south of the Westeros’ Wall – are trying to figure out how to survive and, if possible, thrive. 

As people of faith, we know how to survive and thrive. We know how, as the New Testament has it, “to seize the life that is truly life.” For those of us who know and believe in light and life, an extraordinary opportunity exists right now.

That’s why I’m on a campaign to restore the soul of America. I love this country and I love the people in it. And I believe we are more than what we’ve become.

Since my youngest days, I’ve been wrestling with who we’re supposed to be as people of God. When I was nine years old in my extremely fundamentalist church, I found myself in a theological argument with an elder who was saying God was against interracial marriage.

Even at nine, I was perplexed. No way the God that I knew was about that.

I left home at seventeen in search of some answers about God and His children. I hitchhiked alone across the country for the better part of a year and found America filled with beautiful, broken people, just like me. People of every color — young, old, rich, poor — with ideals that ran the gamut from the most liberal to the most conservative.

I’ve been on a journey since those early church beginnings, winding through worship and fellowship experiences of nearly every denomination there is. This wasn’t “church shopping” or whatever you want to call it. This was finding people of unbelievable faith because there’s so much richness in all those spaces.

At its core, this story was anchored in a vision God put in my heart when I was very young. That vision told me that what binds us all together is far greater than that which separates us.

But something happened to me in 2016. I watched how many of our religious leaders conducted themselves. Many senators and governors I knew, including people of faith, stopped speaking the truth. They compromised on cornerstone principles of who we as a Church are supposed to be together, as children of God in America. They traded these principles for power, trading credibility for influence.

I felt the same way about this as my nine-year-old self felt about racism in the Church: there’s no way the God of the universe can be about this.

I literally couldn’t sleep. I became, in some ways, a broken person. I had to do something. I left my own political party to start a third party initiative I called Better for America. Troubled by the state of our country, I ran for the United States Senate of Massachusetts under the banner of uniting America. The thing I was proudest of, my management team was black, white, Asian and Latino. But even better, it was full of Democrats, Independents, members of the Green Party and Republicans.

What I found out there on the campaign trail was well beyond the reach of politics. At thousands of events and meetings, I looked into people’s eyes and saw their anger. I understood it. Our leaders often drive us to anger like that.

But underneath that anger, I saw fear, pain and sadness too. 

Many of these people don’t know they are children of a living God. They don’t know they were built for purpose and meaning. 

I lost my bid for Senate, but I realized the real campaign wasn’t over yet. The spiritual core of my team stayed together. Nearly eighteen months ago, before anyone ever heard of coronavirus, we saw the death and despair and division already out there in America, and knew we needed an American awakening. 

Is that crazy? Probably a little. 

Is it good crazy or bad crazy? Only God knows and time will tell. 

Now, we vow to employ any possible tool to tell people they were made for purpose and meaning, that God loves them and there’s more for them. And along with our books and podcasts and concerts and gatherings, my teammates helped me see the greatest instrument of all is God’s people together: the Church. 

We have the greatest opportunity as Christians to change the world in my lifetime. People’s spirits are crushed by the lies of the day. There’s nowhere to turn. They’re lost. Depressed. Anxious. Lonely. They are literally killing themselves at astounding rates. 

People need us. God’s story has the light and life and transformation that people are looking for, but they need to see that it’s working for us before they accept our help. They need a living witness of redemption and sacrifice. They don’t need to see people of faith devoted to getting power at any cost. They can find plenty of examples of that outside the Church. 

There is a path. There is a way. We can only get there if we allow our souls to be rebuilt and if we commit to do this together. Because when the White Walkers come, what do you do if you want to stay alive and keep others alive? You put aside your differences and you fight for life. 

In the Church we’re weighted with political entanglements, tribalism, trifling disagreements and, too often these days, irrelevance. 

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could flip that script and live a sacrificial Christianity instead of a triumphalist and tribal one in search of power? Because that’s what the world needs. 

But in order for that to happen, we have to let God change us first, both personally and collectively. For example what if, inside the Church, we’re each supposed to look different, sound different and think differently from one another? Think about Paul’s mindblowing, world-changing line in Galatians: “We’re not Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free, but one in Christ.” 

Paul was talking about opposite ends of every spectrum in his world being brought together. Let’s bring those amazing words to today’s world. We’re talking about Republican and Democrat, socialist and capitalist, police officer and police protester, taking up each other’s legitimate concerns. 

Are we ready for that? 

In this cool Christian world, we’re probably a little more ready to roll than my old fundamnetalist Church. But understand: they were good folks. They just didn’t think the children of God should be together. Are we ready for more than that? Really? 

When I first started thinking about how to present all this, I wasn’t sure what rules or forms I could push on. I was — and remain — especially wary of making it look like I’m doing this alone. Candidly, I’m not that much alone. A mid-fifties white guy can only offer so much without, say, my sister Marissa, the leader of our team, and my brother, Calvin, an amazing young visionary. Maybe I’m just a frontman for this great, racially diverse team. 

And this is a call for all of us, together. And it will be our final destiny for all of us together, all around the throne. As this becomes true here, we realize there is no them. There is only us. 

And when that’s true, we have the opportunity to stop the White Walkers together. So, brothers and sisters, right here, right now: why not us? Why not today? If you see this possibility and believe in the vision, then you can join us in this radical statement of God found in Isaiah that we’re called to live into.

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

    because the Lord has anointed me

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

    to proclaim freedom for the captives

    and release from darkness for the prisoners,

 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor

    and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn.

If we live into this together, there is nothing that can stop us. I believe in us — I believe in the possibilities of this land and that our greatest destiny still lies in front of us — and I believe that we can be a part of a great American Awakening.

If you like what you’re reading, check out the daily Signs of Life podcast by American Awakening. Now playing on the RELEVANT Podcast Network.

Signs of Life content is created in partnership with American Awakening.

Early on in quarantine, our collective American panic took a strange swerve. Maybe you noticed. The initial slew of responses, whether from our employers, the influencer set or the inescapable brands were all focused on how we could keep busy, even if we couldn’t go anywhere. 

Maybe it’s not surprising that places like CNN and Forbes dropped articles with headlines like “How to Stay Productive During Quarantine.” A viral internet factoid reminded us all that Shakespeare wrote King Lear while he was in quarantine (“and what have you done?” hardly needed to be said out loud). One “motivational” message shamed the world by telling us all that if we don’t come out of quarantine with a new skill, more knowledge and a new side hustle “you never lacked time, you lacked discipline.” A widely mocked LA Times article even suggested everyone should stop wearing sweatpants and “dress like the adult you’re getting paid to be.” 

In any case, it seems that the American instinct with anxiety is “work through it.” We want to know our lives still have meaning on lockdown, and we don’t know how to separate meaning from work.  

Now, this isn’t all bad. This is America. We like to be productive, and our productivity has led to some real breakthroughs that have benefited the whole world. Even now, in pandemic season, examples of American creativity and ingenuity in our virtual offices can be pretty inspiring. 

But many (most?) Americans also know deep down that this workaholism comes at a price. The cost has always been there, nipping at the edges of our consciousness, but it’s much more apparent during a global crisis. If you were an alien watching this country right now, would you be impressed with how committed Americans are to keep up their professional pace in the middle of a crisis, or would you suspect that they have some sort of addiction to productivity? Would you think the reason they stay busy is that they don’t know how to slow down?

Being Led to Rest

Think about it this way. Around 1000 BC, King David wrote Psalm 23 — his most famous work and probably what most people think of when they hear the word Psalm. You how it begins: “The Lord is my Shepherd…” I’ve read or recited that psalm many hundreds of times over the years, but I recently noticed something I hadn’t observed before. Something that shows just how much David understood the human impulse to stay productive at all costs. 

David doesn’t say “You let me lie down in green pastures,” which would seem like the obvious word choice. He says “You make me lie down in green pastures.”  

Similarly, the Psalm doesn’t say “You’re with me beside quiet waters.” It says, “You lead me beside quiet waters.” 

Why does the shepherd—David’s word for God—“make” and “lead” the Psalmist to do things that any sane person would want to do? Did David not want rest, beauty and peace?

Well, no. Quite the opposite, actually.

While scholars in ancient Hebrew history aren’t certain what was happening in King David’s life at the time he wrote this psalm, what is known about his life, in general, is that he had tons of enemies, and many of them were members of his own family. For just one tragic example, his son Absalom started a civil war against his father. 

We also know that David spent a lot of his life on the run, either running from these enemies or looking for a fight. He may have been a king, but David’s life was busy and rough. In many psalms, he talks about being exhausted and demoralized. In one instance, he feels utterly hopeless and abandoned, even by God.

Maybe you can relate.

You’re not a king, and your enemies probably’ aren’t Philistine giants or even necessarily other people, but I believe most of us can relate to the sense of being overwhelmed, exhausted and demoralized – especially right now. Most of all, we can relate to the reality of needing someone to make us lie down in green pastures and lead us beside quiet waters. If we aren’t led to it, many of us will never do it. 

That’s not just my opinion. Research shows we’re not very good at finding those pastures/waters on a regular basis. Statistically, we are the most overworked nation on the planet.

●  At least 134 countries have laws setting the maximum length of the workweek; the U.S. does not.
●  In the U.S., 85.8 percent of males and 66.5 percent of females work more than 40 hours per week.
●  According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), “Americans work 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more hours per year than British workers, and 499 more hours per year than French workers.”

Again, I am very proud of the American work ethic and believe that our approach to work is a wonderful attribute, but it is fair to ask the question — maybe we take it just a bit too far? To put it strongly, there is something almost pathological about our need to work. 

That’s why I want to propose that there are three things we, as Americans, ignore that we could be re-learning this season to integrate into our normal routine. Let’s call them the R-words. 

Rest

In the Jewish Torah and the Christian Bible, Genesis 2 explains that on the seventh day of creation, God rested. The Hebrew word used in the Torah is menuchah which translates, simply, rest. It is from this passage that the Jewish tradition of Shabbat or Sabbath was born.

Gallup’s most recent poll found that Americans average about six hours a night these days, compared to nine hours back in 1910. Forbes contributor Neil Howe suggests our diminishing rest has been propelled by technologies like the light bulb and the Internet which allow us to work 24/7. We can work more, so we feel like we should work more. But can and should aren’t the same thing. 

Recreation 

Obviously, recreation can mean anything from tossing a frisbee to playing corn hole to SeaDooing on the lake, and there is nothing wrong with any of that. But our broad application of it has buried the deeper significance of recreation.

The original Latin word is recreare which translates: create again or renew. The first English use of the word was in reference to refreshing or curing a sick person. Recreation is fundamentally about re-creating ourselves through activity. It’s not just having fun (although it often is fun). It’s an act of creation. 

Recreation, when done well, teases our itch for a simpler, more meaningful life. It makes less become more, but only for a spell. We get a taste of less and we love it. Then more takes over again and we’re back where we started, longing for less.

Restoration 

While rest is a temporary break in the action—an eddy in the rushing river of life; and recreation is an act of temporarily re-creating ourselves and our circumstances; restoration is returning ourselves and our circumstances to their best form—to the way they are meant to be. 

It is easy to fall into anxiety, hopelessness, sadness and even anger when you consider the state of our country, and the world. We are in desperate need of more than rest and recreation. We need restoration. We need to strip away the superficial, extraneous and meaningless addiction to productivity for productivity’s sake in order to restore our most meaningful lives. We have to do our part and, if we can, help others do theirs. 

I don’t know when this season will be over. Restrictions may loosen and some people may start going back to their offices, but it’s clear that our future is going to be shaped by COVID-19 for a long time to come. But we as a country can be better prepared for what’s next if we’re willing to be led to rest, recreation and restoration.

If you like what you’re reading, check out the daily Signs of Life podcast by American Awakening. Now playing on the RELEVANT Podcast Network.

The recommended cancellation of the Public Service Student Loan Forgiveness Program represents more than a lost opportunity to unburden millions of Americans saddled with incapacitating student loan debt. An essential feature of the program has caused many borrowers’ debt to grow significantly while making program-eligible payments.

The program requires that students be enrolled in income-based repayment plans that cap their payments at approximately 10% of their gross monthly income. Private student loan debt is also capped at 10% of gross monthly income, so students with both of these loan types would need to make payments at a combined cap of 20% of their gross income. If that 20% payment does not exceed the standard repayment option, then a portion of the principal and quite possibly some of the interest are unpaid. In order to prevent loan delinquency, the Department of Education and its subsidiary Navient structure the payment so that the unpaid portion of principal and interest is added onto the principal balance. It becomes impossible to pay down student loan debt using the standard repayment option. This is due to something called “negative amortization.” Investopedia describes negative amortization as “an increase in the principal balance of a loan caused by a failure to cover the interest due on that loan. For example, if the interest payment on a loan is $500, and the borrower only pays $400, then the $100 difference would be added to the loan’s principal balance.”

Though student loan forgiveness seems like a no-brainer to the indebted, those without student loan debt have been harder to convince that it is a wise use of taxpayer dollars.

Oppositional Statement #1: How will it affect me or my family if the Public Service Student Loan Forgiveness Program is cancelled? We don’t have any student loans. 

On an individual basis, this program makes a difference in where people can afford to live, whether or not they can ever afford to buy a home, and what their retirement will look like when they are older. This also means loan forgiveness will affect the number of people who can pay property taxes and share more of the financial burden to fund our schools, roads, and other societal priorities. That is the societal impact.

But let’s take a moment and discuss how it will affect the Church. First, I do want to say that I believe God can do anything. I don’t want it to appear I am doubting his capabilities. However, as His hands and feet we are to do good works that benefit the spread of the Gospel and charity for relief of the poor, widowed, orphaned and hurting. In the context of the Church, a 2014 Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Study shows that church members ages 49 and under made up 54% of the Church in the United States. A 2019 Experian data chart shows that student loan borrowers under age 49 owe 82% of the nation’s student loan debt at a whopping $984.4B ($984,400,000,000). That’s a LOT of zeros. Even more so, that is a lot of debt for 54% of the Church, who may have to make the unfortunate decision between tithing and paying for groceries. 

Opposition Statement #2: Why should someone else’s debt forgiveness come out of my taxes?

Understandable.  It isn’t fair to have to pay someone else’s tab. But just for fun, let’s examine how you already do that. Tax breaks given to 60 corporations in 2018 impacted the Federal government with a loss of $20.7 billion in uncollected taxes. Our government still has expenses. How do you figure the Federal government makes up for that tax deficit? The first method is to cut expenses in the budget. Another method is to have the taxpayers foot the bill.

Furthermore, let’s assess how everyone’s tab (including yours) is already being paid for via Social Security, roads, and public schools, all paid for by taxpayers.. Just. Like. You. If someone who had a fully funded retirement with no children and never contributed toward taxes for Social Security or public schools, what condition would they be in when it is your time to use them? A la carte tax policies do nothing for the common good. 

Oppositional Statement #3: 20% of gross income is not too much to pay toward student loans each month!

Yes, it sure is! To provide context, let’s use an example. An individual earning $60,000 per year with federal and private education loans must pay $1,000 per month in student loan repayment according to income-based repayment plans. Income taxes are around 28%. Housing in theory should cost no more than 30% of gross household income, though that is debatable due to the housing crisis and lack of affordable housing. If this individual is a tithing Christian, they are supposed to offer up 10% of their income to the Lord before any other expenses. After income taxes, student loans and housing, and if they’re a tithing Christian, this individual would be left with 12% of their gross income ($600) toward all of their other expenses including car payments & insurance, health insurance, utilities and food. 

As of September 30, 2019, the Department of Education has processed 1,151,443 eligible applications for the Public Service Student Loan Forgiveness Program. Some may assume that the cancellation of this program will simply return borrowers to the position they were in before the program was created. They would be sorely mistaken, as the program’s sustenance is vital to resolving the problem it has itself created. Student loan debt is not just a worldly, economic problem; it impacts the tithing ability and thus the spiritual health of up to 54% of the American church’s membership.

The question of whether or not Americans have a right to oppose federally funding this program is non-negotiable: its citizens have the legal right to oppose any government programs as stewards of their society’s resources. Christians however, must examine whether opposition to such a cause is the best moral position to hold as well as its long-term impact on the Church.

“That’s so sexy,” he answered, leaving me dumbfounded.

Knowing the guy didn’t profess faith in Christ, I wrote off his inappropriate remark. As a younger woman, I didn’t have the boldness to say that his response caused me to feel disrespected, belittled, hurt and angry. I lacked the moxie to clarify that my studies and ministry work had nothing to do with wanting to be sexy. But when I complained to a Christian guy friend about the incident, his response threw me.

“I doubt the guy meant it. Probably he was joking.”

I couldn’t get over the Christian guy so quickly explaining away what the unbelieving guy said. What about my perspectives and feelings? Should I not have taken offense if the unbelieving guy hadn’t meant to hurt me? Was I being too sensitive? Even if he’d meant to joke, must I accept humor that put me down as a woman?

Women friends understood where I was coming from. They were as upset over the Christian guy’s response as those of the unbelieving guy. Exchanging similar stories, and worse, we bemoaned our all-too-common experiences of sexism.

Years later I devoted a seminary thesis toward overcoming misogyny and global violence against women and girls. Research uncovered sobering connections between subtle sexist put-downs of women and not-so-subtle harassment, abuses and violence. Abuse expert Lundy Bancroft describes the mindset that paves the ways for harmful mistreatment of women: “Abuse grows from attitudes and values. The roots are ownership, the trunk is entitlement and the branches are control.”

Male perpetrators tend to think of women as objects they are entitled to possess and control.

Ministry to abuse victims opened my eyes to serious ramifications. Story upon story of harassment, abuse and assault confirmed that sexism is never a joke. Over the years, it has struck me that men—including Christian men—so often make excuses for other men, adding insult to women’s suffering. Is it any wonder that so many victims remain silent?  One in three women suffers sexual and/or domestic violence and/or stalking over a lifetime. At the same time, many fear exposing the truth. It is high time for society—especially faith communities—to oppose every form of sexism harming women.

Thankfully a rising wave of men and women are saying: “Enough!”

Carolina Panther quarterback Cam Newton recently owned his “extremely unacceptable” remarks to reporter Jourdan Rodrigue who covers the Panthers for the Charlotte Observer. His apology followed public pressure after a news conference in which Rodrigue asked him about one of his teammate’s skill at route running. Newton joked, “It’s funny to hear a female talk about routes.” He emphasized the word “routes,” smirking, “It’s funny.”

“I don’t think it’s ‘funny’ to be a female and talk about routes.” Rodrigue boldly tweeted, “I think it’s my job.”

What Newton said was no joke. Mike Florio of Pro Football Live comments, “What we saw yesterday was a little window into his soul, little window into his mind, little window into how he thinks about men and women and what their roles should be as it relates to football.”

Florio, an attorney, explains that behavior such as Newton’s is “a silver bullet that helps prove a case of discrimination.” Rarely, if ever, does someone admit that a man or woman is better suited for a particular job. Those who have experienced sexism, racism, or any other kind of discrimination, know that putdowns often manifest through a more socially acceptable vehicle—humor. And, to many, that kind of humor is unacceptable.

James Corden, a British comedian who hosts the Late, Late Show ran into this reality, last Friday night, after joking about Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual harassment and rape of dozens of women.

According to The Daily Wire, the Hollywood glitterati in attendance of the annual gala for AmfAR (the American Foundation for AIDS Research) wouldn’t have it. Groans rose from the audience as he joked about allegations made by Lauren Silvan and some 36 women who have come out to allege Weinstein sexually abused them in one way or another.

After decades of silence about his crimes, women and men agree it is no laughing matter.

Jenni Konner, executive producer of the HBO series Girls, told The New York Times last week: “I see this as a tipping point. This is the moment we look back on and say, ‘That’s when it all started to change.’” I hope Konner is right, for Hollywood, the NFL, Fox News and numerous evangelical churches suffering through scandals.

My soul feels sick and sad over continued stories of women suffering. Today it’s in the spotlight, and that’s important. But as fast as news comes to our attention, it becomes old news, and we move on to the next thing. Already the situation with Cam Newton seems to have blown over. It’s easy to feel outraged as new stories surface of Harvey Weinstein’s alleged predatory behavior. And it’s essential—rather than moving on—that we take concrete steps toward eradicating all forms of sexism that lead to harassment, abuse and violence.

With that in mind, I offer seven ways to build safe communities for women:

1. Think critically about humor.

Like anything, jokes can be used for good or ill. It’s never OK to laugh at another’s expense. Let’s not forget that humor can also serve as a powerful tool for calling out injustice.

2. Pay serious attention to women’s reports of sexism.

Believe them. Don’t ask judgmental questions. Become educated about their options. Ask what kind of support they want/need. Empower them to make their own decisions about the situation.

3. Don’t make excuses for men’s sexist behavior.

Too often gender stereotypes subtly elevate males over females. Don’t buy into untrue thinking that female perspectives are inferior to males; that females are too sensitive, irrational, crazy, illogical, etc.

4. Take concrete steps to immediately stop all forms of sexism.

Put-downs, crass joking, harassment, groping, stalking, verbal and emotional abuse, sexual assault and every other form of violence is never acceptable. Remember many sexist behaviors are crimes.

5. Invest in the healing of victims.

So often, the rehabilitation of perpetrators overshadows the needs of victims who deserve top priority.

6. Implement a zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment, abuse and violence. 

It is never in the best interests of a perpetrator to have another chance. Show victims a zero tolerance for what they have suffered.

7. Don’t underestimate that rehabilitation requires professional assistance and takes a long time. 

No doubt God’s power can redeem perpetrators. But that always entails a process of true remorse, restitution, and healing. Never allow a perpetrator back into any position of leadership without a transformed heart, mind, and spirit (if ever).

And few debates are as complex as the debate over the second amendment. Our hearts break as we witness deadly events like those in Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Sandy Hook, Orlando and now Las Vegas. With increasing frequency, our free society presents us with ever-exaggerated abuses of freedom. How do we as Christians engage this debate in light of our country’s constitution? More to the point, how do we engage this debate in light of our Kingdom calling?

Our society is constructed around the concept of a social contract, namely our ability to enjoy freedom is predicated on our ability to coexist with each other peaceably. In order to do that, we sometimes have to be willing to give and take rights in degrees—so our freedoms do not infringe upon one another (e.g., your constitutional right to move about freely ends at my front door). Limits are placed on our rights so that we may all enjoy as abundant freedom as is possible.

When it comes to guns, it will be impossible to remove guns from our society. Regardless of what has been done in Australia or Holland or any other example, guns will always be a part of the American experience, in large part due to the Second Amendment. Still, we face a situation where access to certain weapons seems to run against public interest.

Inherent in the rights enumerated in the Constitution is the idea that our rights can only be enjoyed by a people who values the ultimate right: the right to life.

Think about debates on drugs, say opium. There was a time when there were not laws in place restricting access to opium or cocaine. But there came a point where we as a society recognized that, while we have a constitutional right to imbibe whatever we wish, we did not have the restraint to allow unrestricted use of that drug. Our rights were limited, but for the public good. We did not ban or restrict all drugs, but certain drugs were deemed too dangerous.

Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves as Christians, apart from whatever the Constitution says, are we going to be a people who value unfettered access to guns even if that access comes with an increasing toll on human life.

A similar argument can be made in regards to abortion. Most Christians recognize a right to privacy, but the court has extended that right to include the right of a mother to decide in private what she does with her unborn baby. While most Christians agree with the right to privacy in the Fourth Amendment, many do not think that it extends to the point where a woman can end a pregnancy and kill an unborn child.

Can we not agree that some rights of some gun owners be limited to protect the children already born, too?

When society can not responsibly exercise freedom, then it is the burden of the government, of the people, by the people, and for the people to make every effort to protect human life and insure the our access to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. We must be willing to accept the limits forced on us by our own sinfulness, and be willing to admit that any American is more precious than any Amendment.

We live in a broken world, which by its very nature is limited by sin. We see only in part, we live only in part and we long for the demise of sin and the arrival of true freedom. Here and now, we must recognize our limits, and seek hearts of wisdom. Our chief identity, after all, should not be in our rights as recorded in the United States Constitution, but in His work on the cross.

If you’re like me, you find yourself asking, “Why, God?”

I don’t know the specific reason that God has for letting any particular devastating, tragic or violent event take place. None of us on this side of the new creation do.

I cannot speak for God on why He allows natural disasters to wreak havoc on millions of people.

These incidents and those like them seem as pointless and vain to me, as they do to anyone else. Nothing that you or I can say can make us feel OK with their happening. Our God-given sense of justice tell us that something is terribly wrong with the world and it will not let us settle for pat answers (see Romans 8:18-23).

Nonetheless, we are not left in utter silence and without hope. God has revealed enough about Himself for us to have confidence in Him as not only the just judge and ruler of the earth but also the compassionate Creator and Father who hears the groaning of His sin-wrecked creation. We have a God who knows and who cares.

While we can’t necessarily say why God permits a specific bad thing to take place, we can take into account five truths from scripture that can help us in thinking about What God is doing.

God’s goodness lets us see the badness of ‘bad things.’

Many have pointed out that you cannot have ‘bad’ without ‘good.’ And they are right. Even though good can exist without bad, bad is the opposite of good and is actually a distortion of good. God’s good character gives us an abiding standard for seeing what good is and for measuring what comes short of it (Romans 3:23). Just as we can’t account for true, objective good without God, no one can recognize the real badness of evil without him. Otherwise, these “bad things” that happen are simply subjective, human distaste for unfavorable circumstances.

God’s sovereignty gives meaning to bad things.

If God is not in control, then we can have no sure confidence that there is a point to the evil around us. If God really could not have stopped bad things from taking place, then why should we remain hopeful that He has purpose in those bad things and works them toward the good of His people (Romans 8:28)? If bad things aren’t anything but accidents on a cosmic level, then God is not sovereign. Unless He is both good and sovereign, we can’t say with Job, “Though he slay me, i will trust in him” (see Job 13:15).

It was faith in God’s sovereign goodness that led Joseph to say to His brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20). Further, God’s sovereign goodness is what makes the gravest of human tragedies—the murder and execution of the Son of God—actual good news (Acts 2:22-23; cf. 4:27-28).

We have to affirm God’s sovereign goodness if we are to recognize the good news of the bad thing that is Jesus’ crucifixion.

God’s holiness leads us to a reverent agnosticism.

I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, and neither are you.

Unlike the prophets in the Old Testament to whom God revealed the meaning behind Israel’s circumstances at a given time, we do not have a specific word from God on his interpretation of contemporary events. He has already shown us enough of His purposes and mission for us in the world with the life, death and resurrection of His Son (see Hebrews 1:1-2).

Because we dare not speak for God presumptively (as you’ve seen some TV preachers do in pronouncing certain public events as unmistakably God’s judgment for specific sins), we should pursue a reverent agnosticism about why individual bad things happen. As the William Cowper hymn states, “God is His own interpreter.” We must never try to make sense of God’s providence apart from what He has told us. This dynamic is what theologians describe as a “word-act” revelation: God’s words interpret God’s actions. And that is precisely what we have with the events recorded in the Bible.

God’s presence comforts us when we face bad things.

All this talk about God’s sovereignty and purposes can make Him seem distant, abstract and even absent from the suffering that takes place in our lives. Despite what our feelings can suggest, He is the God who never forsakes His people or gives up on His creation. The one who is exalted is also ever-present, drawing near to the brokenhearted (Isaiah 57:15).

In other words, as both transcendent and immanent, God is sympathetic but not limited. He is sovereign but not stoic. He is neither constrained nor callous. No one hates and laments the bad things more than He does, even though He allowed them. This is one of those places where we must see Him in the fullness of what his Word proclaims Him to be. No one cares more than He does, and no one is in more control than He is.

We see these attributes of God converge in the incarnation.

God’s incarnation reminds us to accept mystery.

Arguably, the most central truth of Christianity is the incarnation of God the Son. This belief unites all strands of the faith throughout the centuries. It’s simply fundamental to the Christian faith that God became a man (John 1:14; Colossians 2:9).

Let’s be honest: We don’t know how this works—how two seemingly incompatible natures coexist in one person. But, we need to remain committed to our confession that Jesus is Lord (Romans 10:9,13; cf. Joel 2:32). Jesus is fully God and fully man, and we simply cannot explain or exhaust this mystery and reality. The same is true for affirming God’s goodness in light of bad things. We do not know how God can remain completely good and also allow perplexingly terrible things to happen. But, like the person of Jesus, God has revealed that both are true.

Why does a good and sovereign God let bad things happen? Again, I do not know, but that’s only one of many sacred truths that a mere mortal like me cannot grasp.

This essay was adapted from an earlier version about the same topic, published in 2016. 

While this action is likely to be viewed positively here in the U.S. and by many around the world, there are two principles that should shape Christians’ reactions to this—or any—military action.

First, redemptive violence is a myth.

Walter Wink writes,

[lborder]The Myth of Redemptive Violence is the story of the victory of order over chaos by means of violence. It is the ideology of conquest, the original religion of the status quo. The gods

In short, the Myth of Redemptive Violence is the story of the victory of order over chaos by means of violence. It is the ideology of conquest, the original religion of the status quo. The gods favour those who conquer. Conversely, whoever conquers must have the favour of the gods.

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This way of thinking is a trap. It wrongly conflates justice with retribution. In the end, this perspective leads to cycles of violence (which is often thought of only in terms of domestic violence).

Second, all violence is escalatory. 

This is why leading contagious disease experts are now treating outbreaks in violence like an infectious epidemic. Gary Slutkin, a global expert in this field, reports that the greatest predictor of future violence is a preceding act of violence.

Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way: “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.”

Both of these principles are rooted in the Sermon on the Mount.

In Matthew 5:9, Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers for the shall be called sons of God.” He doesn’t leave it there though. In 5:39-42, he dispels the notion of returning violence with violence and, in 5:43-47, he explains the call of the peacemaker:

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You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

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This message of peacemaking directly counters the established conflict resolution paradigm of Jesus’ time—as well as in ours. Importantly, Jesus goes beyond deconstructing their (and our) existing understanding. Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, He builds an entirely new framework from which we can approach the world. This new approach defines, in real terms, the “Kingdom of Heaven.”

Scholar Donald B. Kraybill says,

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The kingdom points us not to the place of God but to God’s ruling activities. It is not a kingdom in heaven, but from heaven—one that thrives here and now. The kingdom appears whenever women and men submit their lives to God’s will.

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This gives us an important understanding of what Jesus meant when he instructed the disciples to pray (in Matthew 6), “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Or, as N.T. Wright says, in his book Surprised by Hope, “Jesus’s resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord’s Prayer is about.”

As we approach Easter, it’s critical that we embrace these concepts, not just in some erudite theological sense, but in real and practical ways: Jesus’ life and death on the cross means more than our personal salvation. It inaugurated God’s Kingdom on earth.

When the apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5, that we—as the people of God’s new Kingdom—are to be “ambassadors” for the work of reconciliation it means that we’re also to actively live under the new rules. He writes:

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Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

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When it comes to violent military action we need to live under the new rules of the Kingdom of Heaven. That isn’t to categorize the recent retaliatory airstrikes as immoral or wrong, but it is to say: That type of response is based in an outdated paradigm; in the old rules.

Donald Norman writes about faith and politics. He’s an alumnus of Fresno Pacific University and serves as associate director of Alongside Ministries International. Opinions reflect only his own.

He took a long look at the room of would-be pastors and ministerial leaders, each of us zealous to earn our future roles in churches, ministries and on the mission field and delivered his first teaching point:
“The wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time always results in the wrong thing happening.”

He went on to explain that if we got one thing from his class, it should be this: Never, ever consider ourselves above any temptation. Too many leaders have found themselves disqualified from positions of influence after just such a major fall, and he urged us to remember our own fallibility and to live like people who need healthy boundaries and accountability.

In the wake of a recent article in the Washington Post, the vice president of the United States, Mike Pence, has been widely criticized for the fact that, based on an interview in 2002, he follows the “Billy Graham Rule.”

Following this rule means that he won’t dine alone with a woman or attend functions that serve alcohol without his wife present with him. The tidal wave of response has the public, Christian leaders and prominent feminists alike debating whether these rules are appropriate for his position of leadership, and specifically if they exclude women from places of power and influence.

While some have lauded Pence for taking steps to guard his marriage, many are pushing back, claiming that such rules reduce women to sexual temptations and prevent Pence from interacting with women in key roles as equals. Many argue that Pence’s personal decision to “protect” his marriage shouldn’t have any crossover into his professional obligations, or create a distinguishing factor between the men and women with whom he interacts.

Certainly, for any of us, our marital status gives us neither an “opt-out” from professional responsibilities, nor the right to relegate our colleagues to a demeaned status. But, is Pence’s decision to draw boundaries simply about protecting his marriage?

It may be that we are missing the bigger picture by zeroing in on the Billy Graham rule.

Rules that establish expectations and implement accountability are just as much about protecting one’s platform to lead with transparency and authority, as they are about protecting one’s marriage and personal values. In a world where leaders of all kinds often fall from grace after a secret personal indiscretion comes to light, could it be that guidelines like the Billy Graham rule actually preserve a leader’s platform and hold him or her accountable to their constituencies?

A decision made by Pence or any other political leader to implement boundaries need not be an indictment of the people they rub elbows with, but rather an acknowledgment to the public that they intend to lead with clear intentions and proven oversight.

For those in positions of influence and power, men and women alike, there will always be increased scrutiny and increased opportunities for moral failure with higher stakes.

It is every leader’s duty to examine their own hearts and put healthy boundaries in place that will assist them in leading with integrity and excellence. This doesn’t necessitate sidelining either gender in an attempt to avoid opposite-sex contact, and it doesn’t excuse even a hint at sexual discrimination. Rather, boundaries should help avoid that very scenario by placing clear expectations on interactions.

Boundaries are necessary tools that help us walk in integrity and live above reproach, to avoid even hinting at the appearance of corruption. It’s the moment that we allow rules to become more important than people that we begin to gravitate toward legalism. In the Scriptures, Jesus warns against legalistic practices that inflate our egos and lull us into a sense of self-righteousness, while our hearts remained riddled with corruption.

Setting boundaries, by contrast, stems from an appropriate awareness of ourselves and of our propensity toward sin. Jesus also teaches about the importance of setting healthy boundaries. When we set boundaries, it doesn’t come from an inflated sense of self, but rather a rightful recognition of our flawed hearts.

Boundaries like the Billy Graham Rule need not accuse women or vilify men, but rather to invite accountability for those in positions of authority, even as they perform the important and necessary duties of their position (which will include interacting with the opposite sex.)

My seminary president’s “wrong person/wrong place” motto was not what I expected to hear from a spiritual leader and seminary president. But, due to his humility and self-awareness, his words stuck with me. As one of the few females in the class, I never once took his words to mean that I was personally a stumbling block and temptation to the men surrounding me.

Rather, we were all seated at the same table, equally fallen and equally responsible for our own actions. As believers, we can recognize that this is not an issue of men versus women, of tempted versus temptress, but rather an issue of the condition of the individual heart.

I cannot answer for Pence’s heart and motivation behind his personal boundaries, but I do think we could benefit from more leaders—regardless of their ministry, industry or politics—who are willing to hold themselves to a higher standard of accountability and transparency.

Natalie Walker writes about relationships & faith at natlantabrave.com. She resides in the heart of Atlanta, counseling women and overanalyzing world problems great and small.

What do these people have in common? They’re all girls who went missing. They’re all household names.

And they’re all white.

When discussing the #missingDCgirls with my roommate this weekend, we easily rattled off these names; we saw them plastered on the nightly news and even in People magazine. Names we’ll never forget. When I first read about the missing girls in D.C.—in my Twitter feed, from various celebrities—I was caught off guard. Surely, that many black girls can’t have gone missing and we haven’t heard about it?! I thought to myself. This is 2017!

And yet, I racked my brain for a “famous” missing child of color over the years. I couldn’t come up with a single one.

After a weekend of a lot of different claims, Monday came with a little more insight: The D.C. area isn’t experiencing any more missing children than normal, they simply are starting to utilize social media to share missing children’s pictures. (Some of the photos were actully misleading.) So many pictures shared of African American girls caused concern, and the internet (being the internet) ran with it.

Though still worrisome—any missing child should worry us, “normal” rates or not—it was not as alarming of a story as I previously thought. Yet, there is still reason for alarm: the different ways different people groups are treated by the media and the selective outrage we show.

Because the words we hear matter and the words we say matter. Words affect our beliefs, our biases and, ultimately, our actions.

Have you ever noticed how the majority of Middle Eastern people you see on TV play one generic role? On some level, I knew that, but I didn’t fully realize it until this article went viral. Similar to a lot of minority actors recently complaining about always being cast as the help.

Have you ever noticed black suspects show up on our nightly news at much higher percentages than they show up in our criminal justice system? Some studies point to a distortion index as high as 24 percentage points of overrepresentation of black suspects, in addition to underrepresentation of white suspects.

Have you ever noticed how little attention missing children of color get? Even though black people make up 40 percent of our nation’s missing children, when black people make up only 13 percent of our population, these missing persons generate very little media attention.

I could go on and on here: The adjectives used to describe women in leadership roles versus the ones used to describe men in similar jobs, the previous arrest record of black people involved in a law enforcement shooting and yet never the officer’s misconduct record, the average amount of lines given to male characters over female. All of these instances perpetuate unhelpful stereotypes; all of these instances affect the way we view certain people groups.

We were given the most glaring example of this the very same week as #missingDCgirls went viral. In New York, in what is now being classified as an act of terror, a white 28-year-old man sought out, stabbed and killed a black 66-year-old on the streets of New York. An article explained the deceased’s prior run-ins with the police and mentioned he was combative right before his death. The article described the murderer—now being tried as a terrorist—as “dapper but deadly.”

As Christians, we should be grieved by this. As Christians, we should long for a better world. As Christians, if our hearts aren’t for equality, our hearts aren’t for the kingdom of God.

We Christians don’t get to be pro-life when it comes to fetuses but not when it comes to refugees. We don’t get to be for feeding the hungry when Jesus multiplied fish and bread, but not when it comes to the impoverished in our own nation. We don’t get to care about some missing children more than others, especially when the only difference is skin color.

If we’re upset over some victims of gun violence but not others, grieved by some untimely deaths but not others, worried about some missing children but not others—we aren’t concerned with the injustices at hand. We’re concerned with the proximity to ourselves.

It’s easy to try and distance ourselves from the ugly parts of life—it happens there, to them, to those people. This is human nature. This is normal. But we’re called to a different way of living. We’re called to something more. A life marked by radical inclusion, not selective outrage.

Let us not be a Church that has concerned ourselves with orphans starving in Africa, but not with African Americans living next door to us. Let us not be a Church that allows media bias to tell us how to view our neighbors, that lets dictated fear sit in our hearts and fester into selective outrage and selective action.

Let us not be a Church that only seeks justice for some.

Krysti Wilkinson is currently roughing it in sunny San Diego, California. She enjoys great people, great books and great coffee. She’s usually the only friend making an embarrassing face in “funny” group pictures. Krysti tweets & ‘grams @krystiwithakay.

While the foundations of this thinking are vague, the sentiment is easy to find. A survey from a year or two ago indicates that more than half of Americans believe that the United States claims a special relationship with God. Unfortunately, the survey didn’t require those asked to give any biblical or theological rationale for this belief.

While Christians should not expect those outside of the Church to care about theological acumen, could the Church be at least partially to blame for the popularity of this idea? After all, a great number of evangelical churches hold patriotic-themed services on or around holidays such as the Fourth of July and Memorial Day. In doing so, we seem to be causing blurred lines when it comes to Church and country.

Scripture leads us away from this idea that God has a special relationship with the United States—or any other contemporary nation-state for that matter.

Don’t Go Backward

To desire that God enters into a covenant relationship with any modern-day nation is to walk backward in salvation history (Galatians 4:3,9). We dare not go back to the types and shadows of theocratic and cultic orders when we now have the substance to which they pointed (Hebrews 10:1; Colossians 2:16-17). That’d be like paying to see a trailer after watching the movie. Or, it’d be like our returning to animal sacrifices even after Jesus once and for all accomplished the redemption of His trans-ethnic people (Hebrews 10:4-10; Ephesians 2:11-22). More on that later.

God’s covenant relationship with the Israelites in the Old Testament is utterly unique. Yahweh made specific promises to their ancestors (Genesis 12; 15; 17, etc.) and acted in an extravagant way to establish them as a nation through their exodus from Egypt (Exodus 19:4-6). Through Moses, He gave Israel the Law to govern them as a nation, and the Law contained the terms and conditions for their relationship. In short, God would bless them for obedience and curse them for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28). And—spoiler alert—Israel disobeyed continually and in turn received the stipulated curse of exile from the promised land of Canaan.

Israel’s story then climaxes with Jesus. By means of the cross, Jesus Himself took on the curse of exile in order to bring together the nations as one new-covenant people in the eternal promised land of the new heavens and new earth (Colossians 1:19-23).

To want the same relationship for America that God entered with ancient Israel is to want a nonsensical and unnecessary sequel to a movie that already resolved in Jesus.

Don’t Presume When God Has Not Spoken

If there is one thing we can learn from the book of Job, it is not to presume to speak for God. Job’s “comforters” made the mistake of interpreting what they observed about their friend’s circumstances in unwisely simplistic fashion. Job was suffering, so they reasoned that he must have done something wrong to deserve his troubles. The good are blessed and the wicked are punished. Makes sense, right?

However, the narrative reveals the opposite. In short, the book of Job teaches that there is no formula for figuring out the events of life, especially tragic ones. We just don’t have access to God’s agenda. As things go for individuals, like Job, so the same goes for present-day nations. God has His reasons for removing and setting up kings and kingdoms (Daniel 2:21), but we should not claim to be privy to them.

Those who wish to conclude that the apparent prosperity of America means that God owns a special bond with the country are at risk of making the same kind of presumptions about reality that Job’s friends did. And, in case you missed it, those friends aren’t heroes in the Job story; we dare not repeat their naive, karmic reasoning.

When and Where Did This Relationship With America Begin?

Like we saw, God inaugurated the theocratic order of Israel with dramatic flare—complete with plagues, an angel of death, split seas and glory clouds. If He entered into a similar relationship with the United States, then when and where was this special bond established?

Was it when the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620? Was it when the Massachusetts Bay Colony set out to be a “city upon a hill” in 1630? After the Revolutionary War? Or, better yet, was it when the Judeo-Christian deity handed down the Declaration of Independence to Thomas Jefferson atop Mount Vernon?

OK, so the exact history gets muddy around that last point. But hopefully you see the point. Those who claim a special relationship exists between God and the United States face the impossible challenge of documenting the origins of this holy union.

The Savior Died to Redeem and Establish a People from All Nations, not a Political Nation

As the slain Lamb of God, Jesus “ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). The purpose of the cross was to bring together people from many nations, not to prioritize a single political state.

American adults might love to sing Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” and cheer about the Red, White and Blue around this time of year, but the children’s song about color holds true eternally: “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight; Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither American nor Pakistani (Galatians 3:28). Diverse ethnicity and sundry nationality finds spiritual unity in Him.

While the American people might certainly reap the benefits of Christianity’s influence on the world more than others do in some ways, we have no solid or authoritative basis for affirming any kind of special relationship between Yahweh and the U.S.A.

At a normal workplace, “hard news” from an executive at a staff meeting almost surely means layoffs. At a global ministry, the news can sometimes be much worse.

Jim’s ever-present jovial smile fades, and he tells us that multiple families were killed the night before, butchered for no other reason than their faith in Christ.

On more than one occasion, I’ve met an international co-worker who serves in a dangerous region only to be left with the sinking feeling that the new friend I just made could do 30 years in prison without a trial or have their head cut off with a machete in the public square.

My first week on the job, I met a photographer who had been held arrested for evangelizing in Cuba. The only reason he’s free today is because U.S. citizenship comes with a lot of perks, including a nation that can flex massive military and financial muscle to secure the release of a person held in a hostile country. In my line of work, persecution isn’t something we read about in a news story.

That’s why I was baffled by a new study by the Public Religion Research Institute from last month that white evangelicals in America believe they endure more discrimination than Muslims. In June 2016, the same research institute found that “almost half of Americans say discrimination against Christians is as big of a problem as discrimination against other groups, including blacks and minorities. Three-quarters of Republicans and Trump supporters said this, and so did nearly eight out of 10 white evangelical Protestants.”

I’ll show my hand here. I’m a white Republican evangelical who hunts, holds a concealed handgun permit, listens to country music and watches cage fighting. The group of Christians who believe they’re being persecuted are “my people,” ethnically, theologically, culturally.

Which is why I’m in a unique position to call out attitudes and behaviors, rooted in a false persecution complex, that damages Christianity both in the U.S. and abroad.

A TOXIC MIX OF BAD THEOLOGY AND Politically correct CULTURE

It’s impossible to understand the white evangelical attitude around persecution without unpacking Dominion Theology. This fringe movement was started by R.J. Rushdoony. That’s not a household name, but Rushdoony’s ideology has had a profound effect on both the American Church and political structures.

In the 1950s Rushdoony, a divorced, failed missionary to Native Americans in Nevada found a new career as a contributor to Faith and Freedom, a Christian libertarian magazine that claimed to be based around an “anti-tax, non-interventionist, anti-statist economic model.”

For all practical intents and purposes, the publication formed to stand in opposition to then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Rushdoony initially made a name for himself by claiming government support made Native Americans “socially and personally irresponsible.”

Rushdoony was heavily influenced by Cornelius Van Til, a 19th century Dutch philosopher who argued that sin inhibits a person’s ability to reason, and therefore the only truly sane people on earth were (Protestant) Christians.

In the 1960s, Rushdoony used his increasingly large platform to push his followers (mainly white Protestants) to avoid the “secularism” of public schools through homeschooling. In 1973, he published The Institutes of Biblical Law, a massive 890-page volume calling for a Christian Theocracy (“a system of government in which priests rule in the name of God”) in the United States.

Although Rushdoony passed away in 2001, the ideology lives on with his son-in-law Gary North at the helm. In 1982, North called for believers to “get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.” Today, the “Hard Christian Dominion Theology” still calls for the U.S. Constitution with biblical law.

It’s a vision that’s frighteningly close to the jihadist goal of enacting Sharia law.

If your starting point for the Christian faith is that members of other faiths have no rights and non-Christians are technically insane and that you have a God-given duty to control government, media and society-at-large, then yeah, anything less than that probably feels like “persecution.”

The irony is that this viewpoint draws heavily from what’s often referred to as college campus “snowflake culture.”

This relatively recent campus phenomenon is characterized by students demanding potentially controversial curriculum be labeled with “trigger warnings” and that “safe spaces,” physical refuges from potentially scary ideas, be provided by the institution.

Snowflake culture is equally unpopular on the political left and right. Conservative pundits regularly mock the whole system and President Obama openly took the idea to task in 2015.

Although adherents to Dominion Theology would no doubt be infuriated by the comparison, it’s easy to draw a line straight to the “snowflake movement.” Both ideologies desire to control the choices and behavior of others and to use force to do it.

A KINGDOM NOT OF THIS WORLD

When the New Testament mentions Zealots, it’s easy to put the group in the same mental box as Pharisees, hyper-legalists who get in the way of a true relationship with God. But first century Zealots were not the ancient version of John Lithgow in Footloose, but a political movement similar to the Taliban.

Zealots, and an even more extreme offshoot, the Sicarii, didn’t just fight back against their Roman oppressors. They targeted Greek and Roman civilians for execution and the Sicarii even murdered fellow Jews who were not considered to be pious enough. The sects eventually triggered war with Rome in 66 A.D.

Many first century Jews, including at least some of Jesus’ own disciples, expected Him to lead a political revolution. Instead, Jesus hardly mentions the Roman Empire during His ministry. In John 18:36, Jesus tells Pilate “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

To put the government of United States of America at the center of the gospel story, and then to feel psychological pain when that vision doesn’t come true, is simply a modernization of the Zealot movement, which Jesus rejected.

TURNING OUR BACKS ON OUR NEIGHBORS AND FELLOW BELIEVERS

The other problem with the “white Protestant persecution complex” is that there’s just no evidence to back it up. Persecution is not someone saying something negative to you, being forced to attend school or work with a person of an opposing viewpoint or a general anti-religious sentiment. Persecution is real, tangible harm inflicted on a person or group, and white Protestants seem to be holding a permanent hall pass.

In the history of the United States, no white church has ever been burned as a hate crime. In the last 10 years, nine black churches have been terrorized or burned. Only one time has an American on U.S. soil been killed for the Christianity (Cassie Bernall at the Columbine High School attack, and eye-witness accounts are conflicted on whether or not she was questioned about her faith). On a single day in 2015, white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine African Americans due to their race and faith in Christ.

When white evangelicals become obsessed with controlling the government, there isn’t much room left for sharing Christ. And there’s even less chance that non-believers will want to hear from Christians who are openly trying to dominate and control behavior through force.

And when our collective attention is turned to an American flag draped over a cross, it’s likely we will ignore the actual genocide and oppression believers around the world face. In 2016, 90,000 people around the globe were killed for believing in Christ and 600 million more were prevented from practicing their faith “through intimidation, forced conversions, bodily harm or even death.”

Simply put, we cannot feign persecution and effectively reach our neighbor at home. Nor can we properly understand the horrors fellow believers face around the world.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the most widely known and well-loved pieces of Scripture in all of history. Often times when we hear it, our mind gravitates toward the hero of the story, the Good Samaritan. We spend less time thinking about the catalyst of the story, the man who was left to die.

We don’t know much about the nameless man who was robbed and beaten, other than that there was something about him that deemed him unworthy of compassion by the priest and Levite who first passed by him. To them, he was invisible.

Next month, the state of Arkansas will execute eight men over a period of 10 days, according to an announcement from Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s office. The state, which has not performed an execution in 11 years, intends to execute the men in pairs between April 17 and April 27, an unprecedented rate in state-sanctioned executions.

Attorneys for the eight men argue that the state’s method of execution, lethal injection, will result in torturous pain, qualifying as cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of the eighth amendment. Their efforts to block the executions, along with reports of recent executions gone wrong in other states, have renewed a national debate on the ethics of capital punishment as it exists.

In the meantime, eight men wait to be seen, and wait on their fate. The titles they wear as “convicted criminal” and “death row inmate” most certainly make it easier for much of society to pass them by without looking their way.

But should they go unseen by the Church? Many Christians adhere to a pro-life ethic, advocating for the lives of the unborn. According to Scripture, our compassion cannot stop there.

Jesus plainly called our attention to prisoners as an expression of loving Him, “”I was in prison and you came to visit me … I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:36, 40) Hebrews 13:3 urges believers to, “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.”

A biblically consistent pro-life ethic undeniably includes convicts, prisoners and even, perhaps especially, death row inmates.

Consider the words of one man found guilty of both murder and adultery, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made … all of my days were ordained in your book, before one of them came to be.” (Psalm 139:13-14,16)

Based on his actions, King David was deserving of capital punishment, yet this professed murderer praised God for His goodness and grace in crafting his humanity and ordering his days. The Apostle Paul killed and persecuted an unknown number of early Christians before writing most of the New Testament from prison, ultimately taking the very place of those he persecuted. His life and ministry was a testament to God’s mercy on the guilty, and grace for the sinner.

These are uncomfortable, Gospel realities for Christians who seek and desire justice. After all, isn’t it just for a man to receive the legal penalty for his crime? Particularly, if that penalty is a state-sanctioned response to an illegal action.

When Jesus halted the stoning of the woman found in the midst of an adulterous act, He intervened in a situation that was legally acceptable. The penalty for the woman’s crime was, according to the law, death. Yet, Christ stepped in and responded, “Let him who is without sin among you, be the first to cast a stone at her.” (John 8:7)

Regardless of one’s stance on capital punishment for the guilty, it’s also crucial to take into account the serious problems raised with the death penalty in recent history. DNA evidence has exonerated those who were falsely convicted, and even more tragically, innocent but executed. The rates of those in prison who are mentally ill, who lacked legal resources because of their youth or economic disadvantages and the reality of racial prejudice in conviction and sentencing. 

Additionally, there are alarming questions being raised regarding the effectiveness and humanity of lethal injections as a method of capital punishment. These issues present very real evidence to stop us in our tracks, and at minimum consider the ethics of the death penalty in practice.

For believers, there is a higher calling to be considered. To follow Christ is to see those who are invisible to the rest of society. It is to reach out to the one who was left to die and extend compassion, not because it has been earned, but simply because of our shared humanity. A biblical pro-life stance recognizes the dignity of human life from beginning to end, and the mandate to love our neighbor as ourselves.

What’s happening in Arkansas matters for the pro-life movement, and for the Church at large. When Christ was done telling the parable of the Good Samaritan, He asked his audience, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

This reflects the very dangerous season we’re in as American Christians. The deeply held emotional attachments to partisan politics by many within the Christian community appear to be superseding the basics of the Christian faith, and this goes far beyond the immigration issues discussed at CPAC.

This isn’t a new or unprecedented problem. In fact, it’s an ancient one. For all of history, the people of God have been tempted by political power. In the Bible we read about the politics of Egypt, Babylon and Persia; the power politics of the First Temple, the politics of Roman Occupation, the Second Temple; and, the politics of the gentile world through the apostle Paul’s missionary travels.

These contexts are all unique and nuanced, but there is one simple takeaway: God calls His people—wherever they are—to a posture of obedience, not to a position of influence. Through obedience people certainly find themselves in positions of influence, even explicitly political positions, but God’s call is clearly, hear and obey in humility.

When we project our personal or partisan political ambitions onto these scriptures we fundamentally misunderstand them. Instead of heeding the call to humble ourselves before the all-powerful God, and to seek unity with His will, we wrongly interpret biblical leaders in political positions as a license to pursue political power ourselves.

As the people of God, we’re called to be culture-makers. Scholar N.T. Wright puts it perfectly is his book Rediscovering Jesus:

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Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion. … The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even—heaven help us—Biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically-rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way…with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom. I believe if we face the question, ‘If not now, then when?’ If we are grasped by this vision we may also hear the question, ‘If not us, then who?’ And if the gospel of Jesus is not the key to this task, then what is?

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This picture of our role as Christians is far from the narrow partisan paradigm many of us witness unfolding in our politics, and we should never confuse the two. When we do we willfully forfeit our unique and compelling ability to live out an authentic alternative to ways of the world.

Many Church leaders, from high-profile writers and speakers down to local pastors, have embraced partisan political power as the nexus of Christian influence on American society and culture. Sadly, it is plainly evident that within the evangelical community many have opted to exploit the Christian community in favor of partisan politics over Christ-centered culture making.

The CPAC panel discussion is a startling example of this but it isn’t the only one.

As a community, evangelicals have syncretized American mythology, public religion (also known as deism) and reformed theology with a narrow political worldview to create an amalgam similar to the Sadducees.

While this certainly isn’t a perfect comparison, it’s one that bears out the larger point. Like modern day evangelicals, Sadducees constituted something of a political party unto themselves comprised of the privileged class. They had a particularly conservative understanding of the scriptures, and according to the historian Josephus, “the Sadducees are able to persuade none but the rich” (Antiquities, 13.10.6).

The Sadducees influence ended with the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. The Temple was their locus of power; their Capitol Hill. When it was destroyed, and the political order was turned on its head, they lost their influence.

They lost their influence because they weren’t connected with the rest of God’s people. They became insular and focused on their own status and access to power. Through the life of Jesus, God models a different relationship with proximity to earthly power for us. In Matthew 20:16 Jesus says, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

In Mark 10:45, He said, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” And John 13:15-16, after washing the disciples’ feet He said, “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.”

In this dangerous season of “America first,” in which we’ve blurred the lines of what it means to be biblical culture-makers versus people with earthly power, these pillars of biblical servant-leadership serve as a check on our personal or partisan ambitions for power.

They demand of us faithfulness and obedience to God the Father, not to a country, not to government institutions, and certainly not to a specific political party.

It’s not clear to me when or how this message will break through with my fellow evangelical brothers and sisters, but it is clear to me that we cannot shy away from having this conversation in direct and public ways. Not only do we need to hold each other accountable, but the world needs to see us striving to be better, and doing so with charity and grace.

In part, the petition states,

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As Christians, we have a historic call expressed over two thousand years, to serve the suffering. We cannot abandon this call now. We live in a dangerous world and affirm the crucial role of government in protecting us from harm and in setting the terms on refugee admissions. However, compassion and security can coexist, as they have for decades. For the persecuted and suffering, every day matters; every delay is a crushing blow to hope.

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Specifically, we are evangelical Christians concerned for refugees who (a) are running for their lives from religious and/or political persecution, (b) have been shown through existing processes to pose no threat, and (c) have been banned from entry into the United States for a minimum of 90-120 days. While we fully support and appreciate President Trump in his stated mission to protect U.S. citizens from harm, we are similarly concerned for the safety and protection of refugees—some of whom are Christian, most of whom are Muslim, and nearly all of whom come from the homeland of Jesus himself. We express this concern not in spite of our Christian beliefs, but because of them.

To those who wonder why our Christian call to compassion includes Muslims, the answer is made clear in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. In this parable, an at-risk Jewish man—having been mugged and beaten and left vulnerable to further abuse on the side of the road—is rescued, escorted to safety and loved back to life by his religious opposite, a Samaritan. The merciful foreigner is the antithesis of the victim’s two fellow countrymen, both professional clergy, who ignore the victim’s cry and quietly walk by on the other side of the road. (Luke 10:25-37)

While the two clergymen continue to Jerusalem to report for religious duty, the Samaritan sees it as his religious duty to prioritize the human need before him. At great cost to himself, he offers money, transportation, shelter, food, healthcare, friendship and persistent follow through. Despite the glaring ethnic, socio-political, ideological and religious differences, the Samaritan recognizes in the beaten-down Jewish man a shared humanity, and on that basis loves his neighbor as himself.

Jesus concludes the parable by declaring that the Samaritan alone was a true neighbor. Unlike his clergy counterparts, he understood that charity, though it may start at home, must never end there. He understood that true love opens its arms and its heart—just as Jesus did for us—all the way to the ends of the earth.

True neighbor love is always costly. For the call of Jesus is never to deny our neighbor and take up our comforts and follow our dreams, but rather to deny ourselves and take up our crosses and follow him. Following him always includes moving toward, and never away from, the oppressed and the poor and the bullied and the vulnerable. Jesus is, unequivocally and unapologetically, the God who favors and gives special attention to the weak and the underdog. And so we must also be.

In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Jewish Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel echoed this truth: “Whenever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must—at that moment—become the center of the universe.”

Similarly, Dr. King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

And John, the beloved disciple wrote, “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” (1 John 3:17-18)

Our evangelical appeal to President Trump, then, is for protection of our own religious freedom—one that frees us to be pro-life in every sense of the word. Believing that God is the giver of all life, our aim is to uphold and support the dignity, sacredness, personhood and flourishing of every human soul, whether born or unborn, elderly or young, privileged or poor, healthy or sick, strong or weak, American or international, Christian or Muslim or other faiths or no faith at all.

We long to contribute to this life-movement in our time, as so many of our fellow Christians have in theirs. These men and women have fought for the abolition of slavery (Wilberforce), established orphanages for abandoned children (Mueller), advanced civil rights for racial minorities (King), fought against HIV/AIDS (Koop), provided human touch, restored dignity, and shelter for the poor (Mother Teresa), created places of belonging and contribution for people with disabilities and special needs (Tada), and fought against the sex trade and human trafficking (Caine). Like these men and women, we, too are petitioning for a kind of religious freedom that frees us to kick darkness, oppression, and bullying in the teeth.

Why are we Christians so motivated? Because for us, loving God and loving our neighbor are inseparably intertwined. We make it our aim to love as we have been loved by Jesus, to show mercy as we have been shown mercy by Jesus, and to bear burdens as our burdens have been borne by Jesus. For it is Jesus who said that whatever we do for the least of these, we do it for Him. (Matthew 25:31-46) How ironic, and yet how fitting, that this same Jesus, who in love reached all the way to the ends of the earth to save us, was himself a refugee of Middle Eastern origin! (Matthew 2:13-23)

We are asking of our president, with all the respect that is due to his office, something similar to what Mother Teresa asked a sitting president at the 1994 national prayer breakfast. Humbly, respectfully and prophetically, she petitioned for a religious freedom to uphold and support the sacredness of every at-risk, unborn child, saying, “I want the child. Please give me the child.”

Far from insulting the U.S. president, Mother Teresa offered to come alongside him to help him in his monumental task to build a more just, life-giving society in which every soul is treated as sacred and no soul is kicked to the curb. Far from adding burdens, she humbly offered to lift burdens through division of labor. Let the government protect all of its citizens from violence, persecution, and injustice as government has been ordained by God to do. (Romans 13:1-7) And then, let the government appoint and support people of faith to do what history has proven we do best: extend mercy and a cup of cold water to the world’s most bullied, vulnerable and poor.

Mr. President, we commend and support you for prioritizing our safety and protection in such volatile times. We can only imagine the burden that this must be, and you carry it in ways that nobody else does. And yet we similarly plead with you, sir—on behalf of the 65 million souls who are most at risk—that we not turn away the vulnerable refugee. While charity may start at home, it must never end there, especially in this country of ours that we call the land of the free and the home of the brave. Let’s champion freedom, sir. And, for the love of God, let’s be brave.

We want the vulnerable refugee. Please give us the refugee.

Immigration reform lies along both the vertical and horizontal planes. Vertically, the heart of God stands moved by the plight of the immigrant and the suffering. Horizontally, immigration reform will serve as a reconciliatory prescription for a nation divided by partisan politics. 

Accordingly, it is the cross that should prompt us to our lift hands toward heaven and stretch our hands toward our fellow man. The cross should enable us to see the image of God in citizen and immigrant. The cross should compel us to declare that a human being cannot be illegal. And the cross should drive us to reconcile the rule of law (as laid out in Romans 13) with treating the immigrant as one of our own (Leviticus 19:33-34).  

The cross gives me hope. Hope that the days of deportation and self deportation rhetoric are officially over. Hope that the politicians remember the promises made and reconcile rhetoric with action. For after all, faith without works is dead. 

Correspondingly, we as Christ followers should stand committed to reconciling conviction with compassion, truth with love and righteousness with justice.  At the end of the day, our objective should be to reconcile the Rev. Billy Graham’s message with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s march. In doing so, we will advance not the agenda of the Donkey or the Elephant, but exclusively the agenda of the Lamb.

Comprehensive immigration reform stems not from the impetus of political advocacy but rather from the womb of prophetic activism. The Lamb’s agenda activates a culture firewall of righteousness and justice. In other words, in order to defend life, protect liberty and facilitate the platform by which all Americans can pursue happiness, we must apply biblical optics and corrective lenses to treat spiritual and cultural myopia as we address the difficult and divisive immigration reform issue.

Both political parties in Washington D.C. have played the proverbial political football with the issue of comprehensive immigration reform. That’s why it’s wonderful to see the faith community take the lead on this issue that transcends politics.

Some Christians have used the rule of law argument against comprehensive immigration reform. This argument is often framed by pointing to the Biblical passage of Romans 13, which opens with the sentence, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.” 

However, I would suggest that to really see how the Bible looks at the issue of immigration, and how we should deal with the 11 million undocumented immigrants that reside in our country, one must continue reading the chapter. It continues, “owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law … You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” This passage of the bible does not conflict with the Leviticus 19: 33-34—the passage often used to argue for immigration reform. Rather, it conforms with it, as Leviticus states, “When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”

Justice demands that, as a nation, we rise above the political fray. Justice requires us to form a compassionate process of integration for those who have come with a pure purpose of providing for their families a better tomorrow. Justice is not amnesty. Justice secures the border and stops illegal immigration but also builds a bridge where the undocumented can qualify through a strict regimen of metrics, can pay fines and can begin a process of fully embracing the American dream.

In the 1960s, the evangelical community stood on the sidelines as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched for justice. In the 21st century, Evangelicals should refuse to repeat history. We should stand committed to contextualizing the moral imperative behind immigration reform. Driven by Matthew 25 and a commitment to reconcile conviction with compassion, the followers of Christ should lead the charge for immigration reform that protects our values, borders and, more importantly, the image of God in every human being. This commitment is consistent with the image of the cross and the agenda of the Lamb.

Many of us have asked that question at some point in our lives, whether hypothetically or not. Now scientific discovery is giving us the ability to ask the question in a new way: If you knew you were at high risk for developing a terminal illness, what would you do?

The disease may not exist yet, the prognosis might not been ascertained, but developments in cancer research have made it possible for high risk individuals to determine their genetic predisposition and take preventative measures.

In an op-ed for the New York Times on Tuesday, May 14, Hollywood star Angelina Jolie shocked the masses by writing about her recent choice to undergo a double mastectomy after genetic testing revealed she had a defective BRCA1 gene, giving her an 87 percent risk for breast cancer and 50 percent risk for ovarian cancer. She explained that her mother died of cancer at 56; getting genetic testing and choosing preventative surgery gave her and her family the peace of mind in knowing that she had done all she could to prevent developing the disease.

Jolie’s decision to undergo such extreme preventative measures is a brave one, and being heralded by many as such. Not just because amputating and reconstructing one’s breasts is a hard decision in itself, but because while making a tough decision, she also chose to do so publicly, capitalizing on her celebrity status in an effort to help women make more informed decisions about their health. She works in an industry that places high premium on physical beauty ideals, but she sacrificed that for what she deemed more important: her physical health, a longer life with her family of eight, and the possibility that despite all the criticism she might receive for it, it might yet reach women who are high risk for cancer and are not sure what to do about it.

These are admirable aspirations. Yet in the wake of her choice going public, I worry some women will misinterpret what Jolie is really advocating. It might be tempting for readers to take Jolie’s decision as a prescriptive measure for all women, believing that any sign of high-risk or early detection gives reason to undergo the preventative surgeries, but that would miss Jolie’s point entirely. Jolie took the test, sought counsel from geneticists and doctors, and chose a course of action that correlated with the degree of her personal risk. She is not encouraging all women at risk of cancer to do exactly as she has done. She is encouraging all women to be informed about their health and make informed choices, whatever those choices may be.

And a recognition of varied choices for varied conditions is important, since there are many types of cancer. Jolie’s condition, for example, is extremely rare, making up only 5 to 10 percent of breast cancers and 10 to 15 percent of ovarian cancers among white women in the United States, as pointed out by a follow-up article that the Times posted later that same day.

Studies show that there has been a growing trend in recent years of prophylactic, or preventative, surgeries, and this is where experts in the medical field are concerned. Chief of Surgical Oncology at the University of Minnesota Todd Tuttle reported to NPR on Tuesday that his 2011 study revealed women who had cancer in one breast believed they had a 31 percent chance of getting cancer in the other breast in 10 years. But for most women, cancer in one breast does not predict cancer in the other.

In fact, breast cancer researchers take that one step further than the Times and NPR stories mention. BRCA genetic testing does not determine a person’s risk for systemic cancer. In other words, finding out whether you have a BRCA mutation will not tell you whether or not your hypothetic cancer will metastasize; that is determined by tumor size, hormone receptor status, nodal status, and possibly multi-gene tests such as Oncotype DX and Mammaprint. So the effectiveness of preventative surgeries is limited to that rare five to 10 percent of people like Jolie who have the BRCA1 gene.

In other words, cancer is a complex disease. This is why it’s important for women to be cautious and remember the real purpose behind Jolie’s op-ed and very public decision. Jolie’s choice was right because it was right for her, not because it’s what all women should do. Readers should feel empowered by Jolie’s choice to educate and advocate for themselves and choose the course of action that correlates with their personal risk. Not all women are exposed to the same level of risk for the same reasons, therefore not all women should seek preventative surgeries.

Take me and my mother, for example. My mother died of metastatic breast cancer in January 2012. She had mastectomy when she was first diagnosed in 1997, but when the cancer metastasized it did not spread to her other breast, but to other parts of her body like her soft tissue, vital organs and bone marrow. A preventative surgery would not have helped her because of the type of breast cancer she had.

People have often asked me, given my family history, if I will get the genetic testing and how I might respond to the results. Knowing what my mother went through, and that I am surrounded by cancer on both sides of my family, I have determined that I don’t really need an expensive genetic test to tell me that I’m high risk. And while we’re on that track, I’m also high risk for heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and even a couple of extremely rare disorders like acromegaly, the syndrome more popularly known as giantism that has affected three of my family members, as well as Factor V Leiden, a blood-clotting disorder that has caused women in my family to suffer miscarriages and strokes. It’s clear that my odds aren’t good—for anything.

I may get the genetic testing, discover that I do in fact have a BRCA1 mutation, and choose to have a preventative bilateral mastectomy and hysterectomy, but only time will tell if that choice actually prevented cancer. Physical health is undoubtedly important—and, as men and woman made in the image of God, we should care for it well. But this truth must also be balanced out by another: that we are all mortal, and in the end, we are not in control. At some point I have to draw the line, come to terms with the choices that will give me the best quality of life, accept that I will die of something at some point.

In my own deliberation on this, I’ve been forced to ask a few deeper questions: At what point do these test results and preventative measures keep us from living full lives? At what point do our informed decisions become attempts to escape death, or play God? How do these ideas affect our quality of life psychologically, emotionally, spiritually?

So I have made my choice. Jolie has made hers. And you must make the choice that’s right for you.

We will all die, whether from heart disease or cancer or some really rare incurable, untreatable disease, or perhaps a tragic accident. It is only natural for us humans to want to stop the vehicle in time, to treat the disease preemptively, to know our prognosis and prevent it somehow. And it’s wise to get medical information in an effort to take care of our bodies. It’s also equally wise to do this in the awareness that life has a 100 percent mortality rate.

You may think that’s a morbid way of looking at it. But maybe seeing it from this perspective gives us the very freedom we need to steward our numbered days well, to make the choice that’s right for us, and to trust God with the outcome, because that was never really in our control to begin with.

So, back to that first question: If you knew you were going to die someday, how would you live your life now?

It is important to note that these statements are made by people and on websites whose express purpose is to “expose” or “correct” the claim that Islam is a peaceful religion. Frequently, such sites manifest considerable antipathy toward Islam and Muslims … as the homepage banner on one of these websites, for example, describes Islam as “one really messed up religion.” To put it kindly, the source of this purportedly objective information is not remotely unbiased.

For anyone interested, I propose an experiment:

1. Find an atheist. Not just an unbeliever, but someone who really hates Jesus.

2. Have that person start with the assumption that Christianity is a violent religion.

3. Now have him go through the Bible looking for proof of his preconception about our violence. Be sure he doesn’t overlook the places where “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13.14) celebrates the orphaning and widowing of his enemies’ families (Psalm 109:8-10). Be sure he lingers over the various causes of stoning people to death, and the genocides of the Pentateuch and Judges.

Check how many violent verses, from Genesis (or at least Exodus) to Revelation, your anti-theist finds. Now convince him you worship a God of love and peace.

I hope you would object—“But you have to understand the historical and literary context for those verses … progressive revelation, the nature of God revealed in Jesus Christ, old and new covenants, etc. No one can fully understand those things who has not studied them in a perspective of submission to the God who inspired them.” I agree. This is a perfectly reasonable objection, whether you’re talking about the Bible or the Quran. The fundamental truth is that it takes a person of faith to accurately interpret the texts of that faith. If I want to know what the Bible means, I’ll ask a Christian, not a Muslim. If I want to know what the Vedas mean, I’ll ask a Hindu. If I want to know what the Quran means, I’ll ask a Muslim.

Furthermore, sola scriptura biblicist that I am, it is still true that to understand a faith or a “religion”—for all the backlash this word often receives—requires more than merely dispassionate study of its texts (or even passionate study, for that matter). Whatever one thinks of the thing called “Christianity,” one cannot really know it without interacting with a Christian–or many different Christians. The community, the rituals, even some of the language, and yes, the sacred texts, are unintelligible without a knowledgeable insider to function as an interpreter. If you don’t know any Christians, you don’t know Christianity. If you don’t know any Muslims, you don’t know Islam.

I am not suggesting there isn’t a whole lot of horrible violence committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. There is. One doesn’t have to be a Glenn Beck devotee to see the headlines. But when other Muslims I know and trust tell me that those violent, radical Muslims are abusing and even breaking the Quran, I believe them. Why do I believe them? Because I have seen plenty of violent, radical Christians abusing and violating my own holy scriptures as a pretext to commit terrible acts. Why should I expect it to be any different to other religions?

We should be in the business of entering into meaningful relationships with Muslims to show the love of Christ, but when we level accusations of violence at their deeply-held beliefs, we do our cause a great disservice. It is possible to be convinced of the rightness of the Gospel without accusing other religions of inherent violence. Our efforts to show Muslims—and the world—the love of Christ must be based on the truth, not assumptions or baseless, hurtful stereotypes.

We must oppose the bearing of false witness against our neighbors, and against those we style as our enemies. But even that isn’t enough. It grieves me deeply that when arguments such as the “109 violent verses” are used, they are usually in the context of opposing Muslims who are trying to make peace with Christians, or opposing Christians who are trying to make peace with Muslims. This is not only tragic, it’s monumentally counter-effective. We should welcome anyone who extends an olive branch to anybody else. To whatever extent any Muslim is a threat to me, it’s not the one who is preaching peace from the Quran who poses that threat.

We would also do well to remember that our Lord said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” He did not qualify that phrase with the adjective “Christian.” Neither, I believe, should we.

This article was originally published on nailtothedoor.com. Re-posted with permission.

In Rolling Stone’s upcoming cover story, Mumford demurred when asked if he considered himself a Christian, as a teaser on the magazine’s website revealed. “I don’t really like that word. It comes with so much baggage,” he said, in terms that many fans will relate to. “So, no, I wouldn’t call myself a Christian.”

Mumford, the son of the U.K. founders of the evangelical Vineyard movement is hardly the first church kid to question or reject the faith tradition he was raised in. In fact, the words he uses to describe himself in Rolling Stone will resonate with the fast growing group within Millennial culture—the “nones.” As the Pew Research Center reported last year, 32 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds listed “none” as their religious affiliation.

Mumford’s remarks certainly aren’t a rarity, but they may disappoint the multitude of Christian fans who have seen in Mumford & Sons an intelligent and artistic articulation of their faith.

After all, Marcus Mumford’s faith as evidenced through his music is much like many of ours: his spiritual journey is a “work in progress,” he’s never doubted the existence of God, but he asks nonetheless not to be associated with any religion. “I’ve kind of separated myself from the culture of Christianity,” he told Rolling Stone.

A cursory glance at Christians in the headlines will tell you why. Why do the looniest Christians get quoted after every natural disaster? Why does the pistol-packing pastor who wants to burn the Koran get all the airtime?

I know what it feels like to want to distance myself from hateful statements made in the name of my faith. If this is all that Christianity is, I don’t want to be associated with it either. But of course, that is not all that Christianity is. And unless some sane people claim the label, the extremist fringes will have the last word.

A few years ago, I grew tired of people claiming to be “spiritual—but not religious,” because I do not believe this is enough. In a culture of narcissism, religious community matters. In our “have it your way” spiritual marketplace, religious community that is rigorous, reasonable and real is still the most nutritious item on the menu.

Yet often when I say this, as a minister myself, it is received with howls of complaint from people who want to do the God thing solo.

Their argument goes something like this: I like the idea of Jesus but I can’t stand the Church. Therefore, I want to identify directly with the primary source, Jesus, rather than with the annoyingly fallible human beings who have tried to follow Him but failed.

They describe to me a personal privatized journey free of the sins of the historical Church but with a direct hook-up to the guy who got it all started. What all of this implies, however, is that the person who loves Jesus privately is somehow better at it than those who try to do it with other people.

As Mumford went on to explain about such people who call themselves “Christian,” “I think the word just conjures up all these religious images that I don’t really like. I have my personal views about the person of Jesus and who He was. Like, you ask a Muslim and they’ll say, ‘Jesus was awesome’—they’re not Christians, but they still love Jesus.”

So, let’s recap. Jesus is awesome. Muslims are awesome for thinking that Jesus is awesome. But Christians? Not so awesome.

When people tell me they can’t stand Christianity, they are usually describing a Church that bears very little resemblance to the open-minded church I serve. They describe judgmental hypocrites who hate people of other faiths and are only after your money. They attribute all the world’s problems to the Church, from sexism to sexual abuse to warfare.

In very few arenas would we tolerate a similar discussion about another group of people. And yet open-minded people listen to such meandering musings with a sympathetic ear, as if they are hearing something wise, brave or original. When in reality, they are hearing something uninformed and insulting.

No one group of people can carry the blame for all the worst that pervades society. We call that stereotyping. I am not apologizing for a church I am not a member of.

Unfortunately, when it comes to all those horrors, the one common denominator is not organized religion, but a more frightening answer: people. It is the presence and participation of human beings. If we could just kick all the people out, we might actually be able to do this Christian community thing.

In a culture of narcissism, the easiest way to follow Jesus is from a distance on a solo stroll to the beat of the same drummer you have listened to your whole life: your own personal preferences and already held beliefs. From a distance, you are safe from the assault of community.

People will explain to me that without the Church, they are traveling light, without all that Christian baggage. But what exactly is this baggage? It’s people—who might actually be some of the best road companions there are.

Certainly, Marcus Mumford got one thing right—the Church is something you enter at your own risk.

Because you might actually bump into humanity there. You might hit up against something you disagree with. You might have to listen to music you don’t like. You might get asked to share your stuff. You might learn from a tradition far older than you, and realize how small you are standing before such a legacy. You might even be asked to worship something other than yourself.

A spiritual movement was taking shape, but I felt like it had to be more than just a one-off experience. We needed a way to connect with what was happening in our everyday lives. We needed media that could give voice to the unique, new thing God was doing in our generation.

At that time, nothing like that existed. That night, in my hotel room, I first wrote down the vision for launching this magazine.

I spent the next few years learning everything I could. I became the editor of my college paper. I wrote business plans, interned and asked questions. The original RELEVANT Media Group business plan was actually written for a college class in 1997, including a daily website, print magazine, marketing/design group and book publishing.

Originally, the magazine would be called Chronicle. You know, because it’d chronicle what God was doing in our generation. Thankfully, that didn’t stick.

A few years later, after more dreaming and planning, the magazine name evolved to That. As in:

“I love That magazine.”

“What magazine?”

“That magazine.”

I thought it was hilarious. Plus, it had an Acts 2 angle: “This is That.”

Get it? Pure gold.

I was an idiot. (And yes, I bet in the recesses of Internet archives you can find remnants of thatonline.com.) Thankfully, it took eight years of work and planning before I could finally get the magazine off the ground. In that time, God refined the vision and specifics.

Refinement, adaptation, evolution, change, hard work—all are common refrains I’ve learned over the last 10 years.

The magazine has changed, as has our generation. At first, the controversy was that we were a Christian magazine challenging our readers to live in the world, yet not of it. We had the audacity to acknowledge God could speak through more than just Christian movies, TV and music.

A few years later, our generation woke up to social justice. We thought maybe we should live every day intentionally—and for something bigger than ourselves. So Reject Apathy was born.

Somewhere along the way, people started doubting and then grasping onto faith. Our generation left the Church, embraced the Church, redefined the Church. Entire movements came and went.

In putting this issue together, it’s been fascinating to see just how much things have changed in culture and the Church since our first issue. On page 72, we look back at the shifts that defined the decade. On page 80, we look ahead at the challenges facing us next. On page 76, we look at the people who have most shaped the Church and our generation in the last 10 years.

To make that list, we asked our readers what leaders have most impacted them in the last 10 years. And while each is more than deserving and has made a massive mark on our generation, our team was struck by something: how white and male the list is. My hope is the list we run 10 years from now will look very different—and we’re taking it as a personal challenge to lead this effort.

As we celebrate our 10 years in print with this issue, I pulled out that original business plan. Yes, we’re best known for a magazine, but our goal all along has been to create a multi-faceted platform that gives voice to this generation.

Today, at RELEVANTmagazine.com we reach as many people in one day as an entire print issue does. Our podcast is streamed several hundred thousand times each week. And subscriptions to our iPad edition now outpace the print magazine. Times are definitely changing, and it’s exciting.

As I look forward to the next decade, I’m aware of the challenges facing us, but filled with optimism. Thank you for an amazing, life-changing first decade. I can’t wait to see what’s to come.

(Dramatic pause.)

Sometimes things don’t go as planned.

Let that sink in. See?

Media, like life, is all about intentional adaptation. Take this issue, for example. It turned out dramatically different than how we planned it—and even how it looked a week before going to print. The cover story, major features—everything seemed to change in the 11th hour.

We’ve known for a long time we wanted our January cover to tackle a hard-hitting “issue.” So we worked for months on a cover story looking at the conflict in the Holy Land—why it’s happening, peacemaking efforts, the (forgotten) story of the Church there and the eye-opening narratives our generation has to grapple with. Especially the Christians.

We took a crew to the Holy Land in October (my second journey there in nine months), where we again met with political and church leaders on both sides of the wall, taped countless hours of interviews, shot a ton of video and prepped for one of the most robust and, dare I say, important cover stories we’ve ever published.

Everything was in motion. Everything was good. We had a great writer working on the piece. We had access to leading voices. But then …

Things started to change in the region. The week before we went to print, violence escalated in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. Hundreds of rockets were fired, military force was striking back and civilian deaths were mounting on both sides. A cease-fire was announced just before we went to print, though I’m skeptical it will last long.

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people is a loaded issue. Whatever you think you know about it—the theology, history, politics, human rights aspects—there’s another side you haven’t heard. An important counter-narrative overlays the entire thing—a third way—and we don’t have the luxury of ignorance any longer.

In our magazine, we have basically one shot to get it right. And just like with partisan American politics, if we take one misstep—or even use a wrong term—people on both sides won’t hear anything we’re trying to say.

The last thing I wanted to do was rush to print with an article that could have been outdated the day it released. Or make some other error because of how quickly things kept changing in the region.

Yanking a cover story at any point causes chaos for our team—let alone a cover yanked at the last minute. But that’s exactly what we did. We went back to the drawing board the week before print, even though it typically takes four months to put together an issue.

A lot of late nights ensued, but the issue you hold in your hands is one we pray will impact a lot of lives. By removing the initial cover story, it opened up a lot of pages. And we hustled to make the most of them.

In hindsight, the way this issue came together feels more balanced, timely, personal and accessible—even though it wasn’t initially planned that way and wasn’t easy (at all) to dramatically change direction mid-stream.

Sometimes in life, you’re faced with a decision. You can either stay the course, or you can choose to pivot.

There are always reasons to stay the course.The job you hate is stable and has good benefits. The guy you’re dating has become a jerk, but you’ve been together so long. You’d love to move to Austin, but you don’t know anyone there. You already have all those size 38 jeans; it’d be expensive to buy a smaller wardrobe. It’d be too much work to change a 10-page cover story at a really late stage in the game.
Sometimes you have to pivot because of a crisis or situation beyond your control. Sometimes the pivot is prompted by something way less overt, but you still know you need to make a change.

It’s the beginning of a new year, the perfect time to take inventory of your life and prayerfully look for areas where a pivot can move things for the better. Your relationships, your job, your walk with God, your habits, your giving—are there areas where you need to intentionally pursue a new path?

Life never goes exactly how we plan it. The question is, what are you going to do when faced with a need—or opportunity—to make a change?

In case you’re wondering, the Israel story is going to be our May cover. And yes, it will be dramatically different than the one we would have run in January.

Major pivots are rarely easy. But they’re always worth it.

For decades now, the scientific community has been analyzing the changing climate and passing along their findings to policymakers and the public. Over the years, our understanding of the problem has grown and, because of our inaction, so has the problem itself.

Awareness and concern around the climate crisis—both in the public square generally and in American Christianity specifically—rose considerably in the middle of the last decade. But so did opposition from special interest groups such as the fossil fuel industry. Their dissuasive tactics were alarmingly effective. By the time a cap-and-trade bill died in the Senate in 2009, climate action had gone from being a moral priority to a partisan controversy, and it soon all but disappeared from our public and political discourse.

Of course, the climate kept changing during that time, and its global impacts kept growing. We in America just stopped talking about it for the most part.

Fast-forward to 2012. Both President Obama and Governor Romney made climate action a priority in the past, but this time it was almost completely absent from their teleprompters and talking points. And no matter how hard groups such as 350.org and Young Evangelicals for Climate Action pushed, it still barely registered during the campaigns. It was just that taboo.

That is, until the week before the election, when Superstorm Sandy tore through the East Coast, devastating New York and New Jersey. Suddenly, climate change was all over the news again, as everyone remembered why we need to take the warming planet seriously. This included New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who gave President Obama a last-minute endorsement titled, “A Vote for a President to Lead on Climate Change.”

“Our climate is changing,” Bloomberg wrote in the endorsement. “And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it might be—given this week’s devastation—should compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.”

As Mayor Bloomberg qualified, it’s very hard to attribute Superstorm Sandy or any other single weather event to global climate change. Climate is about long-term averages; many data points are needed to scientifically confirm a trend.

But we don’t want more data points like Sandy.

There are, however, some things we already know. We know that record-breaking storms like Sandy—and many of the other extreme weather events we’ve experienced in recent years—are very much in line with expert predictions for a warming planet. We know that hurricanes feed off warm water and that ocean temperatures along the East Coast were significantly above average this year.

And we know that, not only have we done little to tackle global warming, we’ve also done little to prepare for its impacts. Sea levels are steadily rising around the world and particularly along the East Coast. The most damaging impact from Sandy was the record-breaking storm surge, which happened on top of already-elevated seas. The higher the seas get, the more vulnerable our cities and communities become.

We need to act. Our nation needs to act. And we need President Obama and Congress to lead. They have a remarkable opportunity to do so before the end of the year.

As the fiscal cliff approaches, both sides are working hard to reach a compromise to reduce our unsustainable budget deficit. Republicans are generally opposed to increasing revenue by increasing income tax rates. Democrats are generally opposed to reducing spending by reducing entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. So, both sides need to find a new source of revenue as part of the solution.

This new revenue source could be a carbon tax.

The carbon tax is a market-based approach to account for the external/social costs of carbon pollution. Though it has “tax” in its name, it’s actually supported and even championed by a number of Republicans as well as Democrats. (Look at that—a policy solution with bipartisan support!) And it could make a big dent in the budget deficit.

It’s unclear, however, if there is enough political momentum in the right places for this to happen as part of a fiscal cliff deal.

Some policy experts believe that a carbon tax would need to be revenue neutral in order to draw enough support to pass. This means it wouldn’t be used to help reduce the deficit and the revenue it brought in wouldbe offset by tax breaks elsewhere. In other words, it wouldn’t be a tax increase; it would be a tax swap. And it wouldn’t take place in the context of debt reform; it would be part of tax reform.

While a revenue neutral carbon tax swap won’t address the fiscal cliff, it remains a viable market-based policy for addressing carbon pollution and global warming.

Former Congressman Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) is probably the most visible conservative leader on climate policy right now. He’s also an outspoken Christian. Bob heads up the Energy and Enterprise Initiative and is working hard to bring his conservative colleagues on board with policies such as the carbon tax swap, which he championed back in the House of Representatives.

I hope and pray that Bob and others like him are successful and that bipartisan momentum continues to grow for putting a price on carbon pollution, whether in the next month or in the next year. Those of us at the grassroots level will continue to do our part advocating for this as well. Because we need to move forward on serious climate action, and putting a cost on carbon pollution would be an historic step in a good direction.

After all, how many devastating wake-up calls do we need before we do the right thing?

Give the baby up for adoption

Have an abortion

Keep the baby and keep going

Truthfully, all of the above rolled through my mind. I felt burdened considering any of my options but realized very quickly that this multiple choice test had severe consequences for getting it wrong. But I made the decision to go through the journey of option C.That was 15 years ago, and though the years have passed, my feelings about that tender and painful time still evokes a deep passion within me.

The other day while driving through the heart of my southern Minnesota town I passed by the local Planned Parenthood and noticed a crowd gathered on the lawn outside the clinic. As I drove by I observed several bobbing signs and two camps of protesters. On one end, a few people were on their knees and appeared to be praying; On the other end I read a sign, waving in the wind, that read Keep your rosaries off my ovaries.

I drove by, quickly, and before I could absorb all that I was witnessing I felt my body burn flaming hot. Surprised at this feeling, I considered the emotion that had suddenly manifested itself onto the surface of my skin.

I recalled a time, about 6 months along in my pregnancy, when a client had stopped into the office where I was working. My baby bump just beginning to emerge and she stood there and looked at me, taking in my condition. Then without hesitation she lifted her finger, wagged it in my face, and said, “Tsk, Tsk, Tsk!”

I was devastated with more shame and more guilt. I have considered that moment over and over through the years and what I’ve come to realize is that in that moment she had as much of a choice as I had, six months before: Life or death. Proverbs 18:21 reminds us, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” That woman chose to offer up the fruit of death. In her choice words she crushed a spirit that was already fragile.

Our words play a crucial role in each other’s lives. What I really needed in that critically vulnerable state was encouragement, a gentle touch. I needed someone who, instead of offering more noise to an already chaotic scene, could come alongside me and listen. What I really hoped for was the ability to buy some groceries or pay for my college books so I could finish my schooling.

In Galatians 6:2 Paul writes,“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” I doubt a few painted words waving in the wind or pointing our fingers towards a stone building have much of an impact on the Kingdom. It is possible, perhaps. However, the idea behind Paul’s words here suggest something entirely different.

If we, as followers of Christ, are to fulfill His established law then we ought to carry each other’s burdens. If I were to help an elderly woman carry her groceries from her car into her home, the first thing I would need to do is get close to her. If I truly wanted to help her I would have to go to her. I wouldn’t merely stand on her lawn and instruct her from afar on the proper technique for lifting her heavy bags from the vehicle, or chastise her for trying to carry to much or too little, and then stand by hoping she fared well enough to make it safely into her home. No! I would rush to her side, make sure she was sturdy and stable, then pick up and carry groceries on her behalf. Why? Because I am strong, capable, and have been given the ability to do so.

In the same way we ought to consider our approach towards the women, men and establishments that are in the crux of conflict. What could happen if we put down our bullhorns and step away from the grassy knoll? Instead, seek out alternative ways to draw near in love and companionship. Let’s offer ourselves up in relationship with no hidden agenda or strings attached. Each of us adopting a swallowed understanding that this is the difference in satisfying the work of Christ on behalf of the hurting and broken world around us.

I lost my mother to metastatic breast cancer in January, so it’s not my disregard for breast cancer awareness that bothers me about the pink ribbon. The reason I am sick of the pink ribbon is because, in my experience, the pink ribbon does more for the person who purchases it than those affected by the disease.

Nowhere is the problem with “pinkwashing” more evident than with Etsy and their “Tickled Pink” email and subsequent corporate cop-out.

Two weeks ago, Nicole Smith, a member of Etsy’s marketing team, curated an email full of sellers’ items clad in the ubiquitous pink “breast cancer awareness” ribbons. Though I have my qualms with the pink ribbon for all it does and does not represent, the email seems innocent enough until you click through each of the listings. Only eight out of 24 items listed in the “Tickled Pink” email actually claim to donate to the cause they tout, yet Nicole’s email encourages Etsy users to purchase the pieces as a way to “show love to the women in your life.”

In short, these Etsy sellers have happily capitalized on a sensitive issue, thoughtlessly tacking pink ribbons onto their products without supporting the cause itself. Etsy’s celebratory endorsement of the sellers’ deplorable opportunism only adds insult to injury. Since Etsy earns money from each item sold on their site, both they and their sellers are profiting from others’ pain—and from their consumers’ ignorance. Because let’s face it: Not everyone is going to read the fine print to make sure their purchase donates to the cause.

And herein lies the issue with pinkwashing, as Etsy has so finely exemplified for us:

When there is no charitable action behind the product—on the part of the seller or the buyer—it turns breast cancer awareness into a trendy parade of pink paraphernalia, making breast cancer awareness about the appearance of generosity, rather than actively making a difference in the lives of those in need. It gives consumers buying bags of pretzels and footballs and tennis shoes—or, in this case, mugs and door wreaths—the feeling of having been generous, without their actually having to do anything.

But as one blogger named Hila so aptly states:

“Consumerism is not ‘awareness’ about cancer; it’s consumerism. Let’s not pretend otherwise.”

That realization alone is enough to make blood boil, but then there is Etsy’s dismissive and impersonal response to the criticism over their breast cancer awareness marketing tactics. For examples, see Nicole Smith’s tweet to Acacia and Mary Andrews’ forum response and quote for the Daily Dot.

As if those responses weren’t bad enough, there’s Marie Kelly’s response to my forum inquiry, which makes it sound like I’m just another Negative Nancy trolling the Internet.

And then there’s Nicole Smith’s reply to my private message on Etsy, which, although I can’t reveal its contents due to Etsy’s site policy, was nearly verbatim what Mary Andrews published publicly, with zero acknowledgement of my personal story as a daughter of a breast cancer patient or as an Etsy seller who actually donated a portion of my profits to my mother.

Etsy has had ample opportunity to express solidarity with those who have been directly affected by breast cancer and to hold themselves accountable to their brand as a “community of artists, creators, collectors, thinkers and doers.” But instead, they have chosen to make excuses for themselves and label criticism as “negative reference to other sellers,” as if voicing our frustrations and concern equates to hate speech.

This, ultimately, is why I have lost faith in Etsy’s brand, and it is the reason why I am choosing to close my Etsy shop: They have made it clear that my voice doesn’t matter, nor do the voices of Acacia or Hila or anyone else who is disturbed by their actions.

I’m not just upset by their ignorant and insensitive attempt at marketing to those affected by breast cancer. I am angered by their continued disregard of the voices in their community asking them to be accountable for their actions.

Nothing says corporate cop-out like a deliberate blind eye to someone else’s pain.

I’ll finish this post by saying that Etsy and other corporations like them are only partially at fault. As consumers, we have to acknowledge our responsibility in this issue by being active in our charitable efforts. The pink ribbon on your bumper, Facebook profile picture, sweater or cereal box means absolutely nothing if you are not reaching out to the people around you.

True generosity is radically active.

It is not fluffy or pink or cutesy or marketable. It is not the over-sexualized saving of second base. It is not the color of your bra in a cryptic Facebook status. It is tangible. It is personal. It is scary. It is unnerving. It is ugly-crying on the couch with your friend as she (or he!) discusses their diagnosis.

If you know someone battling breast cancer, or any other terminal illness for that matter, then reach out. Make them a meal. Run a marathon for them. Hold a benefit for them. Send them a card. Cry with them. Promise to care for their families when they are gone.

That is how you support a breast cancer patient.

All silliness involved with cult-listing aside, when we start changing our theology because of our political alliances, something has gone awry. But I guess this should not be that surprising in a culture that idolizes nationalism like we do.

Do you know how many churches in the United States have American flags on their church stages? Do you realize how ridiculous that is?

Other countries don’t do this. Can you imagine Jesus breaking the bread at the last supper, and then stopping to raise a Roman flag in the middle of the table before pouring out the wine? Don’t you think that would be inappropriate? Yet, thousands of our churches do this every week. To make matters even worse, they often put up a Christian flag as well.

God.

Country.

It’s all over the place.

I was just in Fox News the other day, and throughout the waiting room, there were books like “Serving God and Country”, “Our Sarah (Palin)”, or “Spiritual Influence” (I’m sure things aren’t entirely subtle on the other side of the news reporting spectrum either).

Don’t get me wrong. I love America. On a number of levels, I think it’s the best country that’s ever been. But America is a human Empire. It is not the Kingdom of God. It is no more or less important or loved by God than any other nation or empire through history.

God and country do not belong on the same plane. So why does this happen?

I think much of the idolatry of nationalism comes down to good ol’ fashioned, demonizing “us and them” crap.

“We” are the good guys. “They” are the bad guys. It’s fear. It’s the essence and source of evil. Here’s part of a conversation I watched happen two nights ago:

“Romney wants to make abortion illegal!”

“Well, good!”

“What?! How can he tell a woman what she can do with her body?”

“How can any of us decide whether we have the right to kill a human being? There are studies…”

I have my own opinions about all of those issues, but I just kept quiet and watched both sides sincerely knowing that his side was right. As a result, they were not really listening to the other person, but just spouting off the clichéd answers of their particular parties.

(Pro-life) is horrified at this monstrous (pro-choice) because (pro-choice) assumes (pro-life) wants to take rights away from women. At the same time, (pro-life) is horrified at (pro-choice), thinking that she wants to kill babies.

In these situations, we stop conversing with human beings and start dealing with principles. Principles aren’t supposed to bend and flex. You’re not supposed to stay “kind of” faithful to your spouse. You’re not supposed to “pretty much” pay your taxes. So, when we get into these divisive discussions, we end up arguing against people and for principles, demonizing the other into a “them” that stand in the way of our principles.

(Anti-gay marriage) is horrified at this monstrous (pro-gay marriage) because (anti-gay marriage) thinks that (pro-gay marriage) is trying to desecrate the sacrament of marriage while (pro-gay marriage) is horrified at the monstrous (anti-gay marriage) who is trying to discriminate against gay people.

As a result, we’re rarely even talking about the same thing. The pro-choice person is talking about the woman’s body, but the pro-life person is talking about the baby’s body. And neither side really wants to talk about the exact thing that the other does.

The pro-gay marriage person is talking about the right of an individual to be who he or she is without discrimination and the anti-gay marriage person is talking about the concept and sacrament of marriage.

They aren’t talking about the same thing, but they both have red faces, yelling at each other. If you really listen to both parties, it can look pretty ridiculous. Like one person yelling that the sky is blue, and another saying “No! You’re wrong! The grass is green!”

Perhaps, in an insanely polarized culture like the one we are living in right now, it is high time to shut up and actually listen to each other. Treat human beings like human beings. Try sharing a conversation over a meal rather than just another red-faced debate in some blog’s comments.

The reality is that most people want good in the world. Evangelicals used to demonize Mormons. They put them on cult lists. But now that their interests are aligned politically with Romney, they’ve found it politically convenient to discover the humanity of a Mormon beyond his label.

Maybe the world would be better if we didn’t wait for the demons to bow down to our same idols before we look at them in the face to see if they are actually demons or not.

As a student, he once spent 16 days in the Pacific Ocean with five guys and a crate of meat. He’s now the Hon. Consul for the Republic of Uganda.

When his grades weren’t good enough to get into law school, he sat on a bench outside the dean’s office for seven days until they finally let him enroll. He now runs a large law firm in Washington while also teaching at two different law schools in California.

He once pursued a girl for three years before she would agree to go on a date with him. She’s now his wife.

He doesn’t make appointments. Every Thursday, he quits something.

He regularly sets up office on Disneyland’s Tom Sawyer Island.

Clearly, Bob Goff is more interesting than the most interesting man in the world.

His recent book, Love Does (which was his first foray into writing—and, of course, hit the New York Times best-seller list), tells story after story of Goff’s very intentionally unconventional life—how he engages dreams, pursues strategic whimsy and truly loves people.

Goff creates intentional margin in his schedule (hence that not-making-appointments thing) so he can always be in the moment. He lives out his faith in tangible, inspiring ways and is touching countless lives along the way.

For example, Goff put his cell phone number in the back of Love Does—yes, his actual number—and tries to never let anyone who calls go to voicemail. And he’ll fly halfway around the world to attend the wedding of a person he just met. Who does that?

People like Bob Goff don’t just inspire me, their lives challenge me. They see each day differently than most of us. They see God opportunities in every moment, and then seize them with reckless abandon.

As we cruise to the end of yet another year—barring any Mayan surprises—many of us will inevitably take stock of our lives and think about tweaks we want to make moving forward. So with this issue, as you can probably understand, we wanted to go to Goff for some year-end advice. He’s a pro at embracing and cultivating an intentional carpe diem passion in his daily life, so who better to challenge us as we head into the fresh-start of a new year? (You’ll find the resulting article on page 60.)

Maybe you can tell, but I’m kind of a sucker for carpe diem. It’s the common thread through some of my favorite movies: Field of Dreams, Good Will Hunting and, of course, Dead Poets Society. (That hallway scene where Robin Williams shows his students pictures of previous generations? Probably no movie scene inspired me more.)

The plots of these movies drip with people who move from a place of restless complacency to complete, passionate pursuit. They go all-in.

It’s also probably no surprise that Rick Warren and Richard Branson rank among my heroes. While very different, they are guys who don’t see obstacles; they see opportunity. They look at incredible, unrealistic, massive dreams and say, “Why not?” They try to change the world and in doing so, inspire others to do the same.

We’ve been publishing RELEVANT almost 10 years now, and looking back, that’s one of the common themes you’ll clearly find in the magazine. We love giving voice to people who challenge status quo, point to what’s possible and spur our generation to say, “Let’s go!” Cynical people bore me.

I always want to pursue life outside of my own context and comfort zone. Take our cover story on actor Rainn Wilson. Many people don’t know the funnyman is also intentionally using his platform and resources to make a difference in areas important to him: Like starting a foundation in Haiti that’s doing charity differently, and cultivating a massive multi-faith conversation through his website, SoulPancake.
Wilson knows he won’t be on a hit show the rest of his life, so he’s purposefully living every day and pursuing every opportunity with a larger life imprint in mind. Would it be easier for him to just save his money, rather than pouring it into projects he’s passionate about? Sure. But then what difference would he have ultimately made?

Life is all about purposeful risk-taking. Passionate selflessness. Gratitude. Love.

That’s the way God created us to live—being fully engaged in the moment and realizing the eternal impact each of us can have when we have our ear to God’s heartbeat.

Carpe diem.

The show is an American Idol knock-off in which celebrity judges (including Simon Cowell, America’s favorite English grump) alternately bless and bash dreams of stardom. The moment in question came when 50-year-old Shawn Armenta took an ill-fated stab at singing (and dancing?) onstage. Simon hated it. Britney Spears hated it. Radio Disney princess Demi Lovato told the contestant, “A lot of people work really, really hard for their dreams. But it’s not meant for everybody.”

“That’s why you use auto-tune and I don’t,” the man snapped back, which almost made Simon spit out his drink and sent Britney into full-on angry-mama-bear mode.

The curious moment wasn’t the man’s retort, which, admittedly, has some merit. It was Lovato’s critique which, auto-tuned or otherwise, falls so strangely on our ears as to sound downright un-American. Someone can have a dream that, no matter how hard they work for it, isn’t meant for them? Nonsense. That is no message to teach our children, least of all when it comes from the Disney Universe—an empire built on the unqualified belief that “all your wishes will come true.”

But Disney isn’t the most die-hard progenitor of this belief. No, that honor goes to the Church.

Desire vs. calling

The American church service exists as sort of an American Idol in which there is no Simon Cowell, only kindly worship pastors and well-meaning Sunday school teachers, each determined to prove to every sheep in their flock that God not only loves them but has made them uncommonly gifted. Church leaders, often desperate for any warm body with an eager spirit, will shovel willing volunteers into whatever position they want.

You want to help with the youth group? Are you free this Wednesday?

You want to play guitar for the worship team? Here’s this Sunday’s chord sheet!

You want to cook dinner for small group? We’re on our way!

I exaggerate, but not overly so. I’ve seen a man’s request to sing his own original songs granted every Sunday, in spite of the fact that he was the only one who found them any good. I’ve seen a woman on a drum kit who couldn’t manage to find anything to hit besides the cymbal. I, myself, had my own childhood request to play the piano for church granted—although, to my youth pastor’s undying credit, it was granted but once.

In these and all the other horror stories we could all share, the repeated phrase is that they have a good heart: “She’s not a great singer, but she has a good heart.” “He’s not a great preacher, but his heart’s in the right place.” In the Kingdom of God, we have decided that desire is an apt substitute for calling.

But that is not the way God sees it.

David’s deferred dream

One of the lesser known but more interesting stories from King David’s life is that of his desire to build a temple. David had finally secured Israel and established himself as the undisputed master of the realm. He had his palace to prove it, a structure of unprecedented majesty. The shepherd had, as they say, done well for himself. This accomplished, his thoughts turned to the tabernacle: the tattered old tent where the Ark of the Covenant—the physical representation of the presence of God—was kept. He mused over this to his friend—Nathan, a prophet—saying, “Here I am, living in a house of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent.” Nathan saw David’s good intentions and basically gave him a thumb’s up. “Whatever you have in mind,” he says in 2 Samuel 7, “Go ahead and do it, for the Lord is with you.”

Notice Nathan’s confidence. David is a good guy, wanting to do a good thing; it seems right. But God, as He often does, had a few things to set straight regarding the good intentions of His children. As David relates the story much later, “I had it in my heart to build a house for the Name of the Lord my God. But this word of the Lord came to me: ‘You have shed much blood and have fought many wars. You are not to build a house for My Name, because you have shed much blood on the earth in My sight.’”

It’s important to note that David’s warring activity—virtually all of it—was explicitly commanded by God. This prohibition was not punishment. It was simply the recognition that God has created a body with many members in it and that just because a hand wants to be an eye doesn’t mean it’d be any good at it.

However, that doesn’t make a hand any less useful. Or valuable. Or beautiful, in its own way. Nor does it mean that the eye doesn’t have any work to do. As God went on to tell David, “You will have a son who will be a man of peace and rest, and I will give him rest from all his enemies on every side … He is the one who will build a house for My Name.”

David wanted to do a good, noble, selfless thing. That didn’t mean it was God’s will for him to do it.

Giving our dreams to God

Our first response whenever we meet an eager young heart who wants to go into missions, or seminary, or worship music, or acting, or writing or anything at all is one of reciprocal eagerness. The American mantra to go for your dreams, make your wishes come true and deserve every little thing we take it upon ourselves to accomplish has been adopted wholesale by our Bible studies and church services.

But David’s story makes clear that our desires and our calling are not always one and the same. It took David being in very close communion with God to know the difference. And God—speaking the truth in love, since He could hardly speak any other way—affirms David’s talent, assures him of the purity of his desires and explains to him why he’s just not the right fit. God had another role for David to fill.

This does not give us, or anyone, license to wander the halls of our churches, squashing the dreams of anyone we deem not worthy. The better application is to examine our own dreams in light of the reality that their goodness just does not make them right.

Because a lot of people work really, really hard for their dreams. But it’s not meant for everybody.

This year more than most, the candidates are going to be talking about the economy, the unemployment rate and taxes. A lot of the discussion has been fueled by the Occupy movement and its references to the 1% and the growing gap between the top and bottom of the income groups. Why was there a bail out of Wall Street when so many other people are suffering? Why is the income gap growing? Why is the poverty rate around 15%? That’s more than 45 million people. And the most important question, at least for the candidates: who’s to blame?

Scripture is very clear about how we should treat the poor and the consequences if we don’t. Not many people argue that we should be seeking solutions for poverty What we don’t hear as much about causes of poverty. At least, we don’t hear about all the reasons. What we usually get out of politicians are narrow, small-minded answers that ignore the bigger picture. And a partial understanding of a cause will lead, at best, to a partial solution.

The Bible groups poverty’s causes into three general categories: calamity, oppression, and personal responsibility.

Calamity

The Bible has numerous stories about those suffering from lack of resources due to drought, famine, disaster, and disease. Lamentations 4:9 says, “Those killed by the sword are better off than those who die of famine; racked with hunger, they waste away for lack of food from the field.” We don’t hear much about this today, especially in the U.S., because we have the wealth, resources, insurance, and infrastructure to recover from disaster.
Another form of calamity—one we might be more familiar with—is the death of a family member. In the Bible, work was nearly impossible without a male figure. That’s why the reference to being poor is synonymous with being a widow or orphan. If the father died it became much more difficult for the rest of the family to survive. The plight of single mothers and orphans can be alleviated by certain government programs in place today, but for those who seek to fix poverty, it remains one of the chief obstacles.

Oppression

Another reason for poverty given in Scripture is oppression. When people don’t have the power to stand up for themselves it’s easy for those in authority to take advantage of them. Think of invading armies and corrupt rulers stealing, cheating or offering high interest loans and unjust wages. Proverbs makes several references to the rich ruling over the poor and wicked men dominating the helpless. Here are two typical examples:

Proverbs 13:23 – “A poor man’s field may produce abundant food, but injustice sweeps it away.”

Isaiah 10:1-2 – “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their right and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.”

Personal Responsibility

It’s impossible to read through more than a few verses in Proverbs without getting to a passage about how laziness, idleness, drunkenness, selfishness, and foolishness lead to ruin. It reads like a discourse on how good behavior leads directly to success and lack of character causes poverty.

Proverbs 10:4 – Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.

Proverbs 23:20-21 – Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags.”

Outside of Proverbs though, most of the passages about the poor are not negative in this way.

What Obama and Romney Say

President Obama generally subscribes to the oppressive cause for poverty and suggests creating better systems and increasing funding. When asked about reducing poverty he said, “I make that commitment with humility because we’ve got a lot of work to do economically in this country to bring about a more just and fair economy.” After talking about expanding the Harlem Children’s Zone, a program designed to help struggling families, he said, “It can’t be done cheap. It will cost a few billion dollars a year…We will find the money to do this because we can’t afford not to.” The White House website lists program after program to combat poverty, each costing billions and billions of dollars.

Romney, on the other side, focuses on personal moral failure and had this to say about solving poverty: “We believe in hard work and education. We love opportunity… The 1960’s welfare programs created a culture of poverty. Some think we won that battle when we reformed welfare, but the liberals haven’t given up. At every turn, they try to substitute government largesse for individual responsibility.”

They’re both right. They’re both incomplete. The answer isn’t a one step process that fits in a five second sound bite, slogan, or political zinger, but involves a nuanced solution that involves everybody, including families and churches and businesses and government.

Scripture suggests that not all who are poor are oppressed, and neither does being poor automatically make that person more godly. This doesn’t negate our duty to serve and help, but it does make the one-size-fits-all solution from politicians seem shortsighted and insufficient. We can’t just throw money at a problem and make it go away. It helps those that need it and harms those it enables. Good systems are full of corrupt people and corrupt systems have good people. Neither can we just dismiss the poor by saying they brought it upon themselves and refuse to offer help or increase spending on the right programs.

We must use caution when we hear either presidential candidate espouse only one cause of poverty, because their solution will be equally short-sighted. The Bible is not narrow in its assessment of the plight of widows and orphans, nor is its prescription for how to help one of half-measures. The problem of poverty is multi-faceted. Our response to it must be equally so.

It’s true that we need greater civility, and that civility starts with ourselves. Nowhere is this more obvious, and more personal, perhaps, than in the comment sections of blogs and columns. Every time I post about the climate crisis—and there has been a lot to write about here lately—I have come to expect critical comments. These used to bother me a lot at first. As a non-confrontational people-pleaser by nature, I cringe at conflict and controversy, and I tend to take critical comments personally. I feel an urge to either give up dialoguing, or else lash back out and defend myself.

Over time I’ve grown better at sifting through the chaff. Every once in a while, I’ll read a comment that is more thoughtful. But often, the negative comments are spiteful and baseless.There is something about issues like global warming or immigration reform that really bring out the fury and passion in some people. It can get harsh—especially online where things are impersonal—and there is little accountability or few long-term consequences, at least for the critic. I guess I’ve gotten used to dealing with the pushback.

It’s more than just online comments, too. Sometimes the opposition is more organized and intentional. A recent fundraising email blast from a group opposing climate action publically targeted the group I help lead, Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, with harsh criticism and untrue claims. See how we responded here.

Being an activist makes you a lighting rod for opposition. As many of you know, it’s rough and can be surprisingly hurtful. But here’s the thing: taking a stand is often going to be unpopular. We cannot expect to take faithful stands and avoid controversy. Standing up for what is right and good—which is always about standing up with Jesus in the end—comes at a cost. Jesus Himself warned us about this. And, like the early Church, many parts of the global Church today actually face heavy persecution. While things might not be pleasant for us, we really have no right to complain. Rather, we have every reason to push on faithfully, commanded by Jesus and empowered by the Holy Spirit to treat even our enemies with love. For when we were still God’s enemies He loved us so much that He gave the life of his Son to reconcile us back to Him.

So don’t avoid taking a moral stand on issues because they are controversial, and don’t be discouraged when you face opposition for doing what is right. Expect such things and move forward anyway. Here are five thoughts on how I am learning to more constructively approach opposition and criticism:

Pray. The first thing I (try to) always do when I face opposition is pray. On one hand, it helps me to stay more humble, loving, and teachable. On the other hand, it reminds me that, while I am a people-pleaser by nature, my hope is to be like the Apostle Paul—ultimately committed to seeking God’s approval (Galatians 1:10).

Value good criticism. This usually takes intentional practice for me to do well. But thoughtful criticism—especially when offered with sincerity, civility, and charity—has helped me learn and grow a lot over the years. We all make mistakes and have blind spots; we can all benefit from constructive criticism if our pride and stubbornness doesn’t get in the way.

Engage respectfully. Good constructive criticism deserves to be engaged when feasible. If possible, I respond directly or in the same venue to the individual, and always first run my response by wise people who I trust to be fair. I’ve found that sometimes criticism is a matter of misunderstanding or miscommunication that can be clarified or otherwise resolved. But it is also okay to engage sincerely with each other and still not come to agreement. When interacting with fellow Christians, I’ve found it particularly meaningful that we are still able to remain united in love for God and each other in spite of significant disagreements.

Ignore the vitriol. There are a lot of malicious comments being thrown around out there. Sometimes people act like real jerks—especially online—when they disagree with you. Whether the content of the criticism is off base or the tone is inappropriate, it’s tempting to be intimidated or discouraged when others lash out. Don’t be. And don’t lash back out in return. Stand firm, brush it off as the nonsense that it is, and keep moving. If possible, I don’t even respond at all. It’s usually a waste of time and the attention just further encourages such shameful behavior.

Be joyful. Again, do not be discouraged. Remember Jesus’ advice: “God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you, and say all sorts of evil things against you because you are my followers. Be happy about it! Be very glad! For a great reward awaits you in heaven. And remember, the ancient prophets were persecuted in the same way” (Matthew 5:11-12, NLT).

That year, our generation began to redefine “pro-life” in a political sense, broadening it to a more holistic definition—being against abortion, yes, but also against the death penalty and unjust war—while fighting injustice and standing for human rights here and around the globe. Polls showed the swaying of young Christian voters toward the Democratic party, typically the party considered more friendly to social justice issues and helping “the least of these.”

But then the election happened.

Exit polls in 2008 showed young Christians actually cast their ballots for John McCain—and overwhelmingly so. In the privacy of the voting booth, most just couldn’t cross the abortion line.

That election accomplished something important. It enlarged the scope of values this generation of Christian voters cares about. Life, faith and morality are no longer limited to just a small handful of issues and policies. We’re in a new era—and in the 2012 election, we have a chance to make our mark.

Just one problem. By and large, this generation has checked out. Political apathy and distrust is rampant. Since 2008, we’ve seen nothing but extreme partisanship—a flat refusal by either party to work together for the common good. We know where the Republicans and Democrats both get things right, and we know where they get them disastrously wrong. And many of us feel we can’t fully endorse either political party or candidate, especially when they inevitably stand for policies both in and out of sync with our faith and ideals.

So, we’re a generation with no political party—which is exactly why we’re tackling politics head-on in this issue. Here, we don’t just illuminate where Mitt Romney and Barack Obama stand on the issues that matter to our readers; we also delve into the larger question of how politics and faith should coexist in the public space. If neither party casts a good model for how Christians should engage politically, what do we do? Where do we go from here? Our cover story takes that on.

Our hope is that a new dialogue and model for political engagement emerges. Faith and policy do not have to be mutually exclusive.

But for our generation, it can no longer be politics as usual.

Our New Digs

This summer was huge for the RELEVANT team. After months (and months) of design and development, we launched a completely new RELEVANTmagazine.com!

And even though the website looks entirely different, rolls out a ton more fresh content each day and boasts several new sections and features—like full access to magazine content online for subscribers—this is just the beginning.

Soon after launch, we rolled out a new section called RELEVANT U, a print and web magazine for finding your college fit and thriving while there. The section includes a great directory of Christian universities, seminaries and graduate schools.

We’ve launched Next, our section on creative innovation, leadership and social entrepreneurship that features visionary and practical content and spotlights Christian forerunners in our generation. We also have a Next podcast and newsletter, so if you’re one of the many leaders and creatives who read this magazine, that section is just for you.

We’re also excited to debut an all-new RELEVANTstore.com, featuring not just our products but also exclusive collaborations, limited editions and curated goods from vendors we love. One exciting item at the store is the release of the RELEVANT edition of Blue Like Jazz: The Movie, featuring exclusive behind-the-scenes bonus content and interviews produced by our team. We’re excited to be part of such a notable movie release. Be on the lookout for more collaborations to come.

That’s just the beginning. This fall, we’ll relaunch Reject Apathy on the website, re-engineered with integrated daily content, plus a new standalone Reject Apathy iPad issue every other month. We also have an incredible new RELEVANT mobile experience in the works and some other pretty big innovations soon to come (especially for subscribers).

We’ve been hard at work making a dynamic new online experience around the magazine. Make sure to stop by the new digs—and come back often!

As one might expect when it comes to issues of politics in the United States, the debate became almost instantly polarized between pro-gun advocates on one side, and pro-legislation advocates on the other side. While there has already been gallons of ink devoted to the political debate regarding gun control (and there will likely be gallons more to come) the broader issue for believers is how exactly Christians should talk about the issue of gun control.

The first issue that must be seriously addressed in a discussion of firearms in America is the “culture of violence” that seems to be a part of much of the American consciousness.  

While the historical factors that have led to this “culture of violence” are too extensive and detailed to discuss here, in short, the combined factors of the nation’s Revolutionary War origins, an extended frontier period, where violence and vigilantism were validated, as well as several other major social and historical factors, have contributed to an American ethos which, still to this day, legitimates violence on some level as a means to achieve one’s goals.  

Now, thankfully we do not see people beating each other up at the grocery store for the last package of Oreos on a regular basis (only on Black Friday sales for cheap TVs), but we can see in our movies, television shows, books, and overarching culture that violence is still seen as a somewhat legitimate—often glamorous—method for achieving one’s goals, whether it be overt or covert in nature. This ethos has managed to make its way into some of our laws as well.  

It’s not that these types of laws are inherently, morally wrong. The thing that disturbs me about such laws is that they not only prop up the “culture of violence” and its legitimacy, it’s that they also promote a “culture of fear.” Subliminally, these laws tell us that we must always be on guard, always ready for that wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing waiting to pounce. Rather than teaching us to love our neighbor, as Jesus taught, these laws teach us to fear our neighbor. They teach us to exist in a state of violent readiness, a state of paranoia. This is no way to live, especially for followers of Jesus.

Now, I am not a pacifist (I am from Oklahoma after all.) I believe that an individual has the right to protect his or herself and loved ones. People do have a fundamental right to live. But that does not mean we must always be on the lookout for trouble, cautiously waiting for that one day when it all breaks loose. Jesus taught us a fundamentally different way to live, not just to exist.

Peace, hope, love, and kindness. This is the way of Jesus. This is the way of the followers of Jesus. We are opposed to a culture of fear and violence, because these are not the ways of Jesus.

So what does this mean for the issue of gun control in the United States? I cannot give a definitive answer to that question. It is an important issue, one that must be addressed with level heads and civil discourse. The hyper-partisan yelling matches that have polarized the country will not work, especially not in the Church. I could tell you my opinions on what should be done about gun control, but I won’t. One voice claiming authority on the subject is no way to conduct such a discussion.

The first step is rejecting the culture of violence and fear, which so many of us have bought into, myself included. We are not naïve. We realize that there is evil in the world; that is seen plainly enough in the Scriptures we hold to and with the eyes God has given us. But we refuse to be a pessimist or a cynic. So let’s address the “culture of violence.” Let’s address the “culture of fear.” Then let’s look at the issue of gun control and earnestly address it from a posture of love, humility and hope. Hope for a future where violence and guns will no longer be necessary at all—God’s future. Now, wasn’t there a verse somewhere about swords one day being beaten into plowshares?

From the maker of The Muppets to the Mayors of Beantown and the Windy City, the list of folks cutting ties with the chicken chain is growing. The culture wars are in full swing, complete with protests, blog posts, name-calling and threats of glitter bomb violence.

 As you probably know, a couple weeks ago, Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy made comments in an interview with the Baptist Press that have brought some attention from groups advocating equal rights for same-sex couples. 

This, on the heels of a report from LGBT equality group Equality Matters, which stated that Chick-fil-A had donated over “$2 million to anti-gay groups in 2010.” Newsy politics picked up on the interview and made this video, and that’s when things started to really heat up.


 Roughly 6,000 people have signed a pledge to boycott Chick-fil-A, while others rallied behind former Arkansas governor and one-time presidential candidate Mike Huckabees’ declaration of August 1st as “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.” Christian opinions emerged all over social media networks and the blogosphere.

As often happens, these voices led to a flurry of other voices from both sides of the aisle. Some reasonable and well-intentioned. Many not. Unfortunately, the discussion has brought out the worst in American Evangelicalism. Clear, balanced conversation has been traded in for simply shouting past one another. Even the most helpful dialogue starters seem to be inevitably overrun with hate-filled comments slung back and forth across perspectives.

In short, this thing blew up.

If only Jesus had said something specifically regarding how to treat people who think differently than we do.

Untouchables

Imagine the scene. Jesus just finished what is now his best known teaching—the Sermon on the Mount—a practical manifesto for this new Way. He’s just touched on nearly everything, and their heads must have been spinning as they tried to make sense of it all. Key phrases still lingered in the ears of the listeners, now making their way down the rocky path.

“Treat people the same way you would like to be treated.”

“Don’t just love those who look, act and think like you—love your enemies, too.”

As the Great Teacher led the way down the mountain, perhaps in an effort to put skin on his words, Matthew in his gospel describes a leper approaching. One who is unclean. Rejected. Perhaps even sinful. From beyond the borders of community the outcast approaches, asking if this “christ” would be willing to make him clean. And what does the rabbi do?

He touches him.

This leper’s dying flesh was literally eating away at him, and Jesus breaks Jewish custom and law, reaches out his hand and touches the man. In front of the crowds who followed him, watching. His contact immediately brings healing and restoration—life to that which was dead.

What did his followers think? Did this encounter change how they viewed the next leper they saw, shunned by the masses as he crawled through the streets declaring, “Unclean! Unclean!”?

Does it change us?

The last time the church’s dirty laundry got aired with this type of excitement was in 2011 when Rob Bell was just about to release a book and let a teaser trailer slip in which he asked the now infamous question, “Ghandi is in hell? He is? And someone knows for sure, and felt the need to let the rest of us know?”

That question unleashed a slew of blog posts prior to the book’s release declaring that Rob Bell was a heretic, claiming he doesn’t believe in hell. For many within Christendom, Rob Bell became untouchable.

It was an interesting debate that certainly got people thinking about an important subject, but it too often devolved into bickering and line-drawing. Interestingly, the same week western Christianity was abuzz about whether or not Rob Bell is a universalist, a 9.0 earthquake and devastating tsunami hit Japan, killing over 25,000 people and injuring some 10,000.

But we wanted to talk about Rob Bell.

And it seems, in the midst of worldwide pain and heartache in recent weeks—the tragedy at the premier of The Dark Knight Rises, the Colorado fires, the Penn State abuse report, the Syrian massacres, unrest in the Middle East or even the drama surrounding the Olympics, that Christians would have plenty to not only talk about, but plenty in which we have an opportunity to participate with God in his redemptive plan for the reconciliation of all things.

But we want to talk about Chick-fil-A.

This begs the question—if Jesus were leading us down the mountain today, where would he be leading humanity?  Probably not into the ring to fight each other over this issue. The seeming inability of many Christians to appropriately engage the LGBT community is merely symptomatic of a much deeper issue—how we view “the Other.”

The Other

The issue is not homosexuality. We do the same with Muslims and Hindus, with Atheists and Agnostics. We do it with Christians that think differently regarding heaven and hell, baptism or remarriage, or those who get a little too charismatic when their favorite worship song is played. We do it with anyone who we view as “the Other.”

The real issue is us. 

We struggle to “put skin” on the words and message of Christ with anyone who thinks differently than us. Too often, we demand conformity prior to connection. When we approach one another as brothers and sisters—image bearers of the God we claim to serve—and celebrate what we have in common, we better position ourselves to helpful dialogue in the midst of disagreement. 

We carry divine potential for healing and restoration. We have an opportunity and responsibility to allow our words and actions to surge with the power and energy of a life of love.

Here’s a question: what it would look like if we, instead of taking sides in the Chick-Fil-A debate, simply stretched out our hands and touched the Other?

Tuesday morning when I signed onto Facebook, I saw my newsfeed was flooded with updates and posts to or about Brett McLean, who I went to high school with. Known for his shenanigans, I thought perhaps he posted another funny video with a Justin Beiber cutout, or maybe he too got married. As I began skimming through the posts, my heart sank through the floor of my chest. Brett had died.

Now I didn’t know Brett well. In a high school of 180 students, he was a grade below me. We only had a few classes together, and didn’t typically hang out with the same friends. We likely knew each other for the endless shanagans we both pulled at school (especially pissing off the choir teacher, which he had a special skill for). Yet in such a small school everyone knows each other better than you’d expect, and Brett and I served on student council together, and we also attended the same youth group for about a year or so. Even so, he was such a character of exploding energy, everyone knew Brett. In the handful of conversations we had, I saw a funny, outgoing, passionate, and devoted man.

What happened? I asked myself as I continued reading with increasing intensity. Brett has always had a heart for Jesus, and was an avid outdoorsman. This made church summer camp pretty much the coolest thing in the world to him. Since graduating high school, he’s continued going as a camp counselor. On Monday, they had a group of kids out at the White River Falls, in central Oregon, a few hours from where we’re from. One high school-aged camper slipped into water at the base of the falls when trying to take a picture, and Brett dove in after to rescue him. Neither were seen again.

Brett didn’t have to die to be a hero, he already was one. Many people, both younger and older, have looked up to him, whether in awe of his ridiculous and outragous antics, inspired by his religious passion, or general willingness to see everyone as equally valuable in God’s eyes, and therefore his own. Brett wasn’t just a nice guy, but he was both accepting of all, and giving to any. On Facebook, one person shared a story that captures Brett in his most core ethos. On a mission trip from Mexico, a stranger came up to Brett, and asked Brett for his hat, not knowing that it was one of his favorites. Still, without hesitation, Brett took off his hat and gave it to him.

I think it’s time we take off our hats to him. My heart goes out to his family, and thank you Brett for reminding me what it means to truly live like Jesus, even when it costs you dearly.

Last saturday at our wedding, when at midnight it became time to stop dance and start cleaning up, a few friends shared some improv poetry and impromptu speeches. Nelson, a groomsmen and my good friend, can always be counted on for a profilic speech when copious amounts of alcohol are involved. But this time he didn’t wax poetic about Carthage or the Ides of March. Instead, he simply shared this simple phrase, “We love you for what you believe in, and we believe in your for what you love.”

I believe we can all echo that mantra for Brett.

John 15:13 – “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Humans, however, are doomed to travel through the same four-dimensioned world as if they are chained to a railway car with a metal pipe strapped to their face; so that time appears to be linear.

At least they are moving.

For many contemporary Christians, it seems the rail car stalled sometime in the fifties.

LifeWay, a prominent book seller, recently pulled The Blind Side, a film released last year, from its shelves, after a complaint was filed expressing ‘dissatisfaction with…any product that contains explicit profanity, God’s name in vain, and racial slur.’

This action might have been understandable if the film was one of the many movies Hollywood produces each year that are banal vehicles for sexuality and brute violence, but it wasn’t: it was a true story, an inspirational story, in which the Christian faith was portrayed as neither bland goodness nor small-minded piety.

Unfortunately, LifeWay removing The Blind Side (a movie that oozes ‘feel-good’) for its (accurate) depictions of inner-city life is not an outlier. It is yet another indicator that mainstream Christianity is continuing its alarming trend towards the attitudes espoused by the militant isolationists of the early nineties, for whom the human world writ large was a thing to build walls and stockpile weapons against.

Surprisingly, this does not endear us to the rest of humanity.

Nostalgia is a generational disease. You would be hard pressed to find a generation that did not feel, intuitively, that the world had been a happier, safer place in their youth. But what we are seeing now is an entire religion suffering from a crippling nostalgia for a time that never was; a time when neighborhoods were safe (only in the suburbs) and people didn’t cuss or drink too much or even sleep in the same bed (only in the movies).

Because of this nostalgia, Christianity runs the danger of becoming a self-contained sect.

With each passing year, Christians find it increasingly difficult to engage the world community. We are becoming desperate in the attempt. This desperation gave us WWJD, and “Testamints,” and the bad taste they left in our mouths; it also makes us cling so intensely to the few true artists to come out of the last twenty years (Sufjan, Donald Miller) that they are forced either to distance themselves completely or be drained incrementally of whatever talent and cultural equity they had.

The solution to being relevant isn’t to attempt to identify the most hip band or technology and then try to copy it; it isn’t remove ourselves to a world of felt sheep on a felt board and Sunday school and happy-happy hand clapping.

The solution to our backwardness, our anger, and our increasing irrelevance is simple: it is to be honest. We must address the concerns of this generation of men and women, who find themselves living in an impossibly large and diverse world, where evil is nebulous in its forms and practices, and can be a chemical in a hamburger as easily as it can in a hijacked plane headed for a tower.

After all, what is more relevant than truth?

This doesn’t mean that we are giving in, selling out. Were the guerrilla translators of the fifteenth century selling out when they translated the Bible into an up-to-date language? We, the followers of the first radical, who were once the white-hot edge of the world, have become the dull, heavy weight it drags along.

Christians have to catch up, or else end up isolated, shouting extraneous slogans to the wind.

Christians must become unstuck in time.

Like most of us, Warren had always seen life as a series of ups and downs. You have some good times, then you have some tough times. But having those two things happening at the same time permanently altered his perspective.

“I used to think that life was hills and valleys—you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don’t believe that anymore,” he says. “Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe it’s kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad.”

The simultaneous existence of good and hard in our lives is something we all know to be true, but it is so rare to see it talked about vulnerably by leaders.

In our cover story on groundbreaking indie-folk band the Avett Brothers, they tell their fascinating journey of faith, making music and achieving breakout success. And then upright bassist Bob Crawford talks about the struggle and heartache they’re going through right now: His child is currently battling a brain tumor at St. Jude’s.

So while the band is in the midst of releasing a highly aniticipated new album, Crawford is having to do media interviews from the hospital where his child is fighting for her life.

Two rails on a railroad track.

“No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on,” Warren says. “And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for. You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems.” And that’s the key: In the midst of either season, what is your focus? For the Avett Brothers, the heartache of illness has brought the band—their families—closer together and closer to God. It’s changed them, and their music, forever.

For the Warrens, Kay’s battle brought a perspective to success that grounded the family and forever altered the course of their ministry. (As an update, Kay is in fantastic health today.)

Obviously, the “other track” in the railroad doesn’t have to be something as hard as cancer in your family. We have a Slice on page 12 that mentions the incredibly high unemployment rate for recent college graduates. In one moment, they’re celebrating the triumph of completing college, and in the next they’re stepping into job uncertainty in a terrible economy. (We tackle that on page 62, too.)

Two tracks on a railroad.

Personally, my wife and I have faced a lot of challenges in the last six months as well. While it hasn’t been anything as hard as cancer, it can be easy to get overwhelmed by the circumstances. But in the midst of difficulty, some exciting things are happening in our lives as well. The key is keeping the right focus.

We’ve all been there. We’ve all had the moments where we questioned God and couldn’t see the greater good in the midst of a hard time. And we’ve all come through those periods and looked back—now knowing what was next—and probably see the situation in a totally different way.

The challenge is always trying to live with a hindsight perspective in the foresight position. It’s not because we need to know what the outcome is, but just knowing that God is good and He is in control. He’s our provider. He’s our healer. He’s our comforter. He’s our strength. No matter what life throws at us, He’s what we need.

Life is never as good or as bad as it seems. So the challenge is, no matter what kind of season you’re in, to realign your focus and get it off yourself.

“If you focus on your problems,” Warren says, “you’re going into self-centeredness, which is ‘my problem, my issues, my pain.’ But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.”

Warren has lived this. The Avett Brothers are living this. And we’re all living this, to some degree. Life is a journey full of unexpected turns. Thankfully, there are always two rails to keep us on track.

We began to make our way back home, when my daughter asked me a question I would never forget:

“Daddy, why do people always steal things from us?”

Gulp.



A couple of years ago I would have told her that people steal because they’re poor and need money. That makes some sense to me, especially since there is such high unemployment and poverty in our neighborhood, and we are hardly the only victims of crime. But at the same time, that doesn’t help to explain the frequency of those thefts, or why someone would want to steal my wife’s clogs, which were definitely of negative financial value. This latest theft smacked of something more stupidly malicious.

Perhaps I should tell her that people steal from us because we are the minority here.  According to US Census data, there are eight Asians who live in my zip code, six of whom are from my family, meaning that we stand out like …well, like an Asian family in a neighborhood that is 90% African-American. Drivers who pass by our corner house are so transfixed by the sight of a young Korean family in this part of the city that they often don’t realize that the light turned green several seconds ago. Although comical in some sense, standing out for any reason can make one more susceptible to crime.

But we are not just any minority — we are Korean. And that makes us an even larger target for crime because as everyone knows …African Americans and Koreans just don’t get along.

There is a long history of antagonism between African American and Asian communities that has gone generally unnoticed in the United States, largely because the discussion on race is often framed between blacks and whites. The usual explanation for this antagonism runs thusly: blacks resent Asians who set up shoddy stores in their neighborhoods, charge exorbitant prices and then take that money back into the suburbs, a view that is not without merit. But warranted or not, it is that perception that has made Asians fear that they were a larger target of violent crime in urban areas.

This is not a completely baseless fear. I do not say this lightly, nor without personal experience. I have four Korean friends who have lost a parent in a store burglary, and my own wife’s family lost everything in the L.A. riots. I myself have the dimmest of memories from childhood of an African American man pointing a sawn off shotgun at my father in his hat store, and then spraying cleaning solution in his eyes in order to expedite his getaway. Just this week, my family came home to see that our back door had been kicked in, our home and sense of safety violated. Through these experiences, I had always been aware of a fear that pervaded Korean-American culture: that we were conspicuous targets of crime by virtue of our ethnicity.

But this dynamic was recently thrust into the public spotlight in a Pew Research Group’s study on Asian Americans, which contained the following statement: “Korean Americans stand out for their negative views on their group’s relations with blacks. Fully half say these two groups don’t get along well; while 39% say they get along pretty well and just 4% say they get along very well. In several cities across the country, there has been a history of tension between Koreans and blacks, often arising from friction between Korean shopkeepers and black customers in predominantly black neighborhoods.” Reading that, it was as if a previously subconscious undercurrent had become a concrete fact: the reality of Korean vs. black animosity.

And so, perhaps it was time for me to pass that bitter reality onto my little girl:

“Well sweetheart…you see, we’re Korean and we live in an African American neighborhood. And those two groups don’t get along. So maybe people have been stealing these things from us to intimidate us, or to get back at someone who once hurt them or treated them badly.”

No. I was never going to tell my daughter such a thing.

First off, it is not categorically true. I’m no fool, and am not ignorant of the racial prejudices of my own community or those of others. I realize that there is a chance that these thefts were racially motivated. It’s possible, even probable. But probability does not make something true. And even if these crimes were racially motivated, it would still be foolish and unfair to look at every person passing our house with suspicion, because the truth is that 99% of these people have no desire to do us any harm at all. It is not fair to cast such a broad net of suspicion over so many in response to the isolated actions of a few.

But that’s the mental trap that we so often get lured into in regards to race: generalization. We allow one person’s actions or one story to poison our perception of millions of innocent people who share nothing more with that person than the color of their skin or their historical nation of origin. How unfair, absurd, and contrary to most of my own personal experiences. My family feels by-and-large embraced by our neighborhood, barring the occasional purloined pair of footwear. I have started serving as a pastor at a church which is more than half African American, and have been treated with nothing but total kindness and support. And I was not about to sully my daughter’s perceptions just because material items had been taken from our house and car.

Moreover, I won’t tell my little girl such a thing because I don’t want it to become true.  With social dynamics, something doesn’t have to be true to have a destructive impact.  Let’s say you hear that a person doesn’t like you for some appalling and unfair reason. That idea may be patently false, but just the whisper of that sentiment is enough for you to look at that person differently. I believe this principle lies at the heart of animosity between Asians and African Americans, that the viral rumor of bad blood is creating real bad blood in turn. It is bigotry that is inherited through osmosis rather than experience.

But this also means that if one generation is raised without blindly accepting that rumor, then those prejudices can be exterminated.  I already have seen this take place in the evangelical community, where young Asian and African American Christians are consciously rejecting the prejudices of their forebears and embracing one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. I’m not minimizing the very real issues that remain between communities, but pointing out that prejudices have greater longevity if we choose to unwisely perpetuate them. I want the last generation to buy into the rumor of Black vs. Asian antagonism to be my own.

And so, after a long and very pregnant pause, I stooped down to my daughter and said, “Sweetheart, I don’t know why people steal stuff from us.  But thankfully there’s nothing that we own that we can’t live without!”  She took time to parse out what I had said, and when she grasped its meaning, firmly nodded her head in agreement.

And we left those shoes where they lay, and didn’t look back.

I’ve been there quite a bit these past couple of years. First to bury my uncle, and then my Granny back at Easter this year. But when my Granny and her brothers were growing up, there was another fellow, a bit younger than most of them, who would go on to make their little place famous. His name was Andy Griffith, and he died this week at 86.

Andy introduced America to Mt. Airy as Mayberry, but he didn’t bother changing the names of the characters he’d grown up around. My uncle, Otis, gained his place in Americana as Mayberry’s town drunk. Otis’ sister, my Granny, led the choir at the little Baptist Church on her street in Mt. Airy. When we were back for her funeral this past spring, my wife, Leah, took the kids over to the lunch counter on Main Street while I met with my uncle, who now directs the funeral home. After we’d all told our stories and sung Granny’s favorite song—”I’ll Fly Away”—we walked back over to Main Street and got an ice cream cone at the lunch counter. As I was paying, the fellow there said, “So sorry to hear about your Grandmother. Tell your family I’ll be praying for ya’ll.”

Some of Mayberry, of course, is just nostalgia. But some of its appeal is the longing that all of us have for a place where we’re known—for a lunch counter where the guy who serves you ice cream also says a prayer when your Granny dies.

This longing, I think, gets at the heart of what the gospel promises and what the church is called to be. Back in the 1990’s, when some of the church growth people were looking for an image in popular American culture to capture the essence of the church, they latched onto the tv show Cheers. “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name,” they said. Churches started handing out name tags, training their greeters to memorize names and directing new visitors toward small groups.

Now, I like a place where people know my name as much as the next person. But Mayberry, it seems to me, is closer to the kingdom of God than Cheers. The bar in the basement where friends gather after work is a “third space,” a place for individuals to opt into community on their own terms. It is a product of the fast-paced, fragmented modern life that Mayberry was created to resist.

Mayberry is an ideal. Sherriff Andy doesn’t carry a gun, Uncle Otis lets himself out of jail and there’s a famous episode about a “Man in a Hurry” who gets stuck in town because his car breaks down on a Sunday is transformed by his stay there. The peace of the place is contagious. But it is, in a way that Cheers can never be, a place where people live and move and have their being. It’s a place you can be from, a place you can come back to, a place where people not only know your name but also know (and talk about) what everyone used to say about you when your mother bounced you on her knee.

To say that the church is like Mayberry isn’t to say that it’s an ideal place, but that it’s meant to be a real one—not just a third-space where we check in for our religion fix, but a community where we know people and are known. It is a space where our habits are transformed by a peace that is greater than ourselves. It is a place that’s not only good news for me, but also for the world.

RIP, Andy. As we sing in the bluegrass tunes of Mt. Airy, “go rest high on that mountain.” Say “hey” to Otis and Granny for me. And say a prayer that the circle might be unbroken as we live into the gift that is community.

The overwhelming majority of presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial political candidates claim one form of Christian faith regardless of partisan affiliation. Both major parties have principled positions on a variety of issues designed to connect them with Judeo-Christian voters. And yet, despite the Republican Party’s deep ties to the evangelical right, the word Christian shows up only once in the 2008 Republican Platform (the 2012 will be published around the time of the summer national party convention). The big tent of the Republican Party also requires they make room for agnostic free market capitalists. Similarly, the Democratic Party has to be welcoming even to atheist environmentalists and their party’s 2008 platform is devoid of any wording relating to Christian philosophy or beliefs. It is the case then, that American political parties are not explicitly religious. Expressions of faith by elected leaders and candidates are frequently compromised by a secular political agenda.

This has not been the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, the most recent countries the United States has had an active role in democratizing, or in Egypt or Libya, where considerable financial support has been given to their revolutionary efforts. Political parties that are explicitly tied to Islamic faiths dominate Middle Eastern politics. The constitutions of the emerging democratic societies guarantee a freedom of religion, but they also outline Islam as the national faith. This question of the role of religious political parties is not limited to the Middle East; many European countries have their own versions of Christian Democratic parties, conservative organizations with the Christian faith as the core of the party’s purpose. In fact religious political parties are common, and in many instances, the norm in several democratic countries.

So why haven’t Christian political parties caught on in the United States? It is not for a lack of trying. The few parties that do exist are essentially grassroots efforts with little money, small organizational structures, no media attention and little ballot access in most of the 50 states. U.S. history contains several efforts to establish religious centered political parties with none achieving any degree of sustaining success. Modern political religious parties tend to fizzle within a few election cycles. More established minor parties like the Green Party and Libertarians have a better chance at winning seats in Congress.

Part of the difficulty in establishing a viable Christian based political party, for those who want one, is tackling the question of who’s version of Christianity is more preferred. Any number of books will tell you that religious denominations exist because differences in scriptural interpretation, policies and practices, and beliefs and a Christian political party would require significant compromises between groups. Decisions would have to be made about which version of the Bible would be preferred and what role biblical scholars and ministers would play in developing the party message.

Many Christians are hesitant to so closely align faith and politics under one banner. For whatever our debates on what the First Amendment means, Americans are comforted by the idea of religious pluralism, that our democracy is not a thinly veiled theocratic regime. We like knowing that we can leave or join a faith with no fear of persecution.

Politically, we like having Republicans and Democrats treat Christians as just one of many competing constituencies. It frees Christian organizations to take strong positions only on the issues they choose and leave the other non-religious factions of the party to sort out the rest. It is easier to be part of a larger organization than to be its foundation.

Being a part of a larger party grants us the power of influence without the burden of accountability. Without a viable, organized Christian political party we are free to judge the actions of our elected officials, with full knowledge that the positions and the responsibilities they bear will never be our own burden. But it also means politically oriented Christians will never be satisfied with the decisions made by their own party, their opponents or the government these parties control.

Ultimately, politics is a competition, and people who choose to vote or be active in their parties value one thing, winning. And history has shown, even if your party loses this election or the next one, eventually your Democratic or Republican Party will win an election. Our system is designed to support two major parties and without overthrowing one of them, a Christian party does not stand a chance. We won’t seriously support the idea of Christian parties because we don’t believe they will win. And because we’re human we’d rather win than be right.

“On the Fourth of July, we don’t only celebrate the birth of our nation,” writes conservative columnist Ken Klukowski. “We celebrate American exceptionalism—everything that makes the United States the greatest nation on earth.”

The term “American exceptionalism” is not a new one; it’s often traced back to Alexis de Tocqueville and the belief that our economic underpinnings were extraordinary. In recent years, however, the term has grown and evolved as American politicians have trumpeted it with increasing frequency. Michael Kinsley of Politico offers a blunt, contemporary definition for the term: “the theory that Americans are better than everyone else.”

If you want to run for political office these days, holding to such a theory is almost a prerequisite. “There is no denying it,” GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain wrote in The American Spectator, “America is the greatest country in the world.” But are Cain and his compatriots correct about America being exceptional, and if so, is it something we should be shouting from our star-spangled rooftops?

On the one hand, few deny that America is special. We are the most charitable country in the world. Each year, Americans voluntarily donate hundreds of billions of dollars to churches, non-profits and humanitarian agencies. We are one of the freest countries in the world. Americans can worship whatever god they choose whenever they choose, and no one here can force his wife to cover her face in public. The conditions are better in America. Unlike much of the world, clean water is a readily available commodity and the average wage is much higher than most of the world. No wonder a recent Yahoo poll found that 75 percent of Americans believe the United States is the “greatest country in the world.”

I do think America is great. In our sinew and our spirit, we are a great people living in a great nation. That’s why countries look to us when drafting constitutions and forming governments. That’s why we spend so much time debating immigration, not emigration. This is a wonderful place to live, and many citizens of other nations are clamoring to come here while our citizens largely stay put.

The politically correct police might have us believe all countries are exceptional in their own way, but such assertions are thin and meaningless. They’re reminiscent of a scene from The Incredibles in which the mother says, "Everyone’s special" and the son replies, "Which is another way of saying no one is."

Yet, even though I believe America is exceptional, I am not an “American exceptionalist.” Why? Because the former is rooted in objective facts and the latter is built upon bad theology and is counterproductive.

“[Exceptionalism] has been adopted by the right to mean that America, alone among the nations, is beloved of God,” writes Richard Cohen of The Washington Post. Many who comprise the religious right have long held that America has somehow achieved special standing with God. Working on a fundamental belief that obedience to God brings blessings and disobedience brings curses, these thinkers believe we’ve earned God’s blessings through historical obedience. However, this is rooted in several false beliefs, such as America being founded as a "sacred Christian nation" and the misapplication of Old Testament passages addressing ancient Israel to modern America.

Just as the America-is-a-dime-a-dozen paradigm falls flat in the face of facts, so these beliefs don’t stand up to historical and hermeneutical scrutiny. As former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson points out in his new book, City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era, the biggest problem of the religious right is not tonal or strategic, but theological.

This theology has many effects, most of them advantageous only for exceptionalist politicians. It keeps their detractors from saying “boo” about anything America does unless they want to be labeled “unpatriotic,” or worse, “ungodly.” After all, what God has built up, humans should not tinker with.

I love America, and I wouldn’t live anywhere else. But I also recognize the many difficulties in our country that aren’t so exceptional. We maintain a relatively high murder rate for an industrialized nation, and we have a high rate of prisoner execution. Our educational system is failing to compete with other nations, and continues to work against disadvantaged children in poor communities. An ideology that is constantly used as a tool to quiet those who want to deal honestly with our problems is a broken one.

How would you feel if your neighbor made no bones about the fact they thought they were better than you? What about if they told you they thought they were specially blessed by God and you weren’t? What if they required constant reassurance from you about how amazing they were?

My guess is you’d end up emotionally drained and tire of their company rather quickly. You’d probably avoid eye contact when retrieving your mail, stay indoors when they were out cutting their lawn and conveniently lose the invitations to their annual barbeque. Is it any wonder, then, that when Americans express the same sentiments we find our global neighbors running the other way?

The difference in believing America is exceptional and American exceptionalism is significant. Believing America is exceptional recognizes our blessings—like every good and perfect gift—come from God. It emphasizes God’s grace rather than America’s greatness. The latter assumes our nation has claimed favored status with God and often yields a don’t-you-wish-you-were-like-us attitude.

Why is this important? Accepting that America is exceptional due to God’s unmerited favor breeds the virtues of gratitude and humility. But a belief that America is the recipient of divine favoritism, on the other hand, breeds arrogance and triumphalism—an arrogance that robs one of any claims to being truly exceptional.

This July 4th, celebrate with gratitude, not with boastful entitlement. Let’s light fireworks, gather our friends and family, throw hot dogs on the grill. And most importantly, let’s bow our heads in humble gratitude to the grace-giver.