Lesson Fourteen: Establish a Private Life
Last night, President Trump posted a video that ended with an image of the Obamas depicted as apes and today I was planning to write a post about living in a world ruled by the thought police.
We’ve been taught to fear the idea that the thought police will come, and we will lose our sense of identity. We fear that we will become clones, incapable of independent thought.
But the thought police don’t just censor content they disapprove of; they feed content to control us.
Hateful rhetoric is not deep intellectual thought; its propaganda used to dehumanize and create the kind of totalitarian systems that we want to avoid.
Racism, misogyny, and homophobia are not legitimate dissenting viewpoints. Neither are lies or propaganda legitimate. Just because I can find a Bible verse to support my view, doesn’t give it moral legitimacy. Using the Bible to determine who we get to have power over is abusing Scripture.
If we’re going to use the Bible to discuss tyranny and oppression, then we need to begin by asking what the Bible says about tyranny and oppression, because it has quite a lot to say.
The Bible is the greatest collection of resistance literature ever compiled.
Jesus wasn’t killed because he walked around telling people they could go to heaven when they die. He was killed for being a leader within a resistance movement.
One of the things he did, to keep his movement going, and to stay alive as long as he could, was develop a private life. He gathered a small group of followers to work alongside him.
This has been used to tell us that Jesus modeled small group ministry, so we should be in small groups, but I don’t think that’s what was going on.
When he preached to the crowds, he often spoke in parables, or coded language. Maybe he spoke in parables not because it was deeply spiritual content, but because it was seditious.
Then he would withdraw with his smaller group of disciples and expand on what he said.
Jesus modeled for us what it looks like to cultivate a private life. He had people with whom he could share more intimate thoughts. He also spent time alone.
A private life helps protect us. We live in a world with all kinds of information being pushed at us. We often end up in echo chambers, as the algorithms that feed us content continuously narrow what they give us.
We need to withdraw from all media on a regular basis. We need safe people with whom we can discuss ideas. We need to actively seek diverse viewpoints.
Establishing a private life helps ensure that our thoughts and ideas are truly our own.
This is part 14 of a series inspired by my reading of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons Learned From the Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder as part of my effort to offer Christian insight to those wondering what to do in this moment.