The Righteous One

Let’s talk about Sodom and Gomorrah (fun, right?!). Abraham got wind that God was going to destroy these cities and tried to negotiate with God. Surely there must be a few righteous people.

So, God sent a couple of undercover angels to find out. A mob turned up and wanted to rape them. What was the sin of Sodom? It doesn’t sound like it was the legalization of same sex marriage.

I have heard, and written about, how the sin was the way in which the outsiders were treated. The word hospitality is often used, as if the sin was not inviting the men over for cookies and tea.

All of the men of the city came out to abuse and exploit the foreigners. Did every man in Sodom intend to personally lay hands on the angels? We don’t know, but by their presence, they were complicit. 

Abraham’s nephew, Lot, was not silent. He did not hide behind his locked door, he went so far as to offer up his daughters, willing to suffer loss, in order to protect the strangers. No one stood with him.

Only Lot and his family were spared the destruction. 

The righteous one was the one who stood up and said, “No;” even though he stood alone.

I love the Bible.

#FaithfulResistance

Christian Nationalism: Stop Making God Angry

“Christian nationalism is the conviction that we should stop making God angry.”

Please read or listen to this interview with Doug Wilson as he explains what the Christian nationalism is that he, and others, are working to implement.

When I say that I am opposed to Christian nationalism, this is what I oppose. It is both un-American and directly contradicts the teachings of Jesus.

“Stop making God angry.”

This is not, nor should it be, the mission of the U.S. government. It’s also not what Christianity is about.

In this interview, Wilson goes on to explain how Mosaic law should be applied and enforced. This is what Christian nationalism is about.

It is not about “Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays.”

Christian nationalism is about Mosaic law – Moses. Although, if you read/listen to the interview, you’ll see that it’s only about the laws regarding sex and reestablishing the patriarchy. “What our society needs to do is say: This is normal sexuality.”

He is very concerned about Pride parades, drag story hours, and adultery, but not so much about lying, stealing, coveting, etc.

Jesus was not an enforcer of Mosaic law. In Galatians, Paul explains that if Christians seek to enforce Mosaic law, then Jesus died for nothing (see my 10/4 post). For all the Bible talk, Christian nationalism opposes biblical teachings on the poor and the treatment of foreigners.

Christian nationalism lifts selected verses above Jesus and sets aside his teachings to embrace the very oppression that Jesus came to set the people free from.

That is not Christianity. It is just bigotry and power fueled by fear.

Jesus shared his mission with the people in the synagogue at the beginning of his ministry:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to set free those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

-          Luke 2:18-19

I believe the best way to counter this movement is to have honest conversations about what the Bible is, what it says, and most importantly, who Jesus is. That has become my mission and why I’m writing the series Faithful Resistance which I hope can inspire difficult, but fruitful discussions. 

You can listen to the interview here: NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Did Christ Die for Nothing?

“…if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.” - Galatians 2:21

This verse has been rattling around in my head over the last several days. After reading Galatians a few times and considering the world around us, I think I understand Paul more fully. 

Lately I’ve seen variations of the phrase, “What Would Jesus Do?” being thrown around on social media. It was popular a few decades ago, inspired by a book written nearly a century before called, “In His Steps,” by Charles Sheldon, but the campaign was started by a youth minister in Michigan in the early 1990s. 

Many of us who came of age during the “What Would Jesus Do?” movement took that question seriously. We believed, and still do believe, that being a Christian means that our lives should reflect the life of Jesus. We know we’re not perfect, but we ask the question. We try.

But, how are we supposed to know what Jesus would do?

Read the Bible! The Bible says…

Hmmm... Well, the Bible tells me what Abraham did. Would Jesus do what Abraham did?

The Bible tells me what Judah did. Would Jesus do what Judah did? 

Would Jesus do what Moses did? How about Joshua? David? Absalom? Esther? Peter? Paul?

Am I supposed to follow them or Jesus? 

Am I supposed to follow the Bible or am I supposed to follow Jesus?

That might sound like a nonsensical question, but I’ve come to believe that it’s at the heart of the division within Christianity we see today.

Many, many people have been taught that the entire Bible speaks with one voice, the voice of God, and that Jesus is subordinate to God and therefore Jesus is subordinate to the Bible, which because it speaks clearly and without error, it is to be followed. This is what it means to have a “high view” of the Bible. 

There are others who were taught to follow Jesus and to model their lives after him. In this view, the Bible is not a flat text, but is alive and speaks with many voices and perspectives. These Christians have a “high view” of Jesus and view the Bible as subordinate to him.

Then, there are many who have been influenced by both, particularly as churches in the latter group used children’s and youth curriculum, and adult Bible studies, that taught the theology of the former, and were left not knowing what to think.

For many years, I was in this last group - conflicted and confused. I’m not anymore. After spending years praying, studying, and discerning, I have come to understand that to subordinate the teachings of Jesus to the rest of the Bible, to the Law, is to reject him as Messiah.

This was what Paul was addressing with the Galatians: if they were going to insist on keeping the law, then Jesus died for nothing.

If people like Peter were not willing to dine with the gentiles, then Jesus died for nothing. 

When the teachings of Jesus are set aside in favor of the law, then Christ died for nothing.

When we refuse to love our neighbors because of the law, because “the Bible says…” then Christ died for nothing.

Salvation does not come from the law, or the Bible, we are saved by grace through faith in Christ Jesus. Through Jesus, the unclean have been made clean; there is no distinction anymore. It is finished. All you have to do is believe that it’s true. 

This was the radical message of Jesus. Not that I have been saved or you have been saved, but that God has declared all things clean.

That is the radical message that many do not want preached today.

Do you remember when Princess Diana went into the AIDS clinic and shook hands with a patient without wearing gloves? She knew that she could not contract the disease through simple contact, and she acted on that knowledge to restore the man’s humanity. It was scandalous.

Under the law, all kinds of things made people unclean, and the unclean were cast out to the margins of society because their uncleanness was considered infectious. Jesus went to those people and offered his hand. Then he didn’t wash them! It was scandalous.

Jesus did not abolish the law, he came to set us free from it. He declared that the thing that made people unclean was not infectious. He ate with sinners because he did not recognize them as unclean.

Yet, when someone comes along and says, “Actually, the Bible says that those people are unclean,” we do what Peter did and we stop eating with them, because it’s true, the Bible does say that some people are unclean. But, Jesus says they’re not. This is the inconsistency of Scripture.

We are faced with the same choice that Peter and the Galatians had: will we follow the law or will we follow Jesus? They are two different paths.

If we choose to follow the law, then Jesus died in vain.

My upcoming book series, Faithful Resistance: Seeking the Way of Jesus Together, is an invitation to have difficult conversations about the Bible and what it means to follow Jesus.

Click here to stay caught up on the Faithful Resistance movement.

Reconciliation

I’ve been thinking a lot about reconciliation lately. 

Back in the olden days, I wrote a lot of checks, I had a check register, and every month, I would reconcile my records with the statement I got from the  bank. This ensured that the bank and I lived in the same reality with respect to how much money I had.

The bank was always right, because somewhere along the way, I would manage to transpose two numbers, misalign a number that was in the “tens” with one in the “hundreds,” or add a withdrawal. Sometimes this process led to me discovering that I had more money than I thought and other times, less.

If I never took the time to reconcile these numbers, then over time, the discrepancies had the potential to wreak havoc in my life.

As I look around the world today, I feel the havoc that is wrought when reconciliation never happens. Two sides, each having made mistakes, refuse to sit down and go through the receipts.

Reconciliation can only come from a place of humility, of accepting the possibility that we could have made mistakes, of owning those mistakes and seeking to make amends.

Balancing a checkbook is not submitting to the authority of the bank, reconciliation is not submission, rather it is seeking to understand and desire the truth. Going through the receipts, and over the math, and finding that one transposed number is crucial to moving forward in unity and helps us to not make the same mistakes in the future. 

Reconciliation requires honest accounting. 

Reconciliation is about seeking the truth, even if it hurts…especially when it hurts. Knowing about and correcting our mistakes keeps us out of debt; this is confession and repentance.

Friends, for reconciliation to be possible, we need to agree on what is true; but therein lies our challenge. At some point we began to “agree to disagree” on what is factual. We stopped reconciling our accounts and now we find ourselves at a point where our numbers are wildly off and we don’t trust each other's receipts.

I don’t know how we can be reconciled if we cannot agree on the facts. We can agree to disagree on opinions, but not on facts. Where does that leave us?

There are days that I worry that it is too late, but I don’t believe that’s true. 

For reconciliation to be possible, we must stop seeing our neighbors as our enemies. We need to listen, not to influencers, media personalities, and politicians, but we need to sit and listen to one another. Ask questions. Truly listen.

Our conversations need to move beyond talking points, which only end honest dialogue. We need to share our own stories and speak from our own experiences.

We need to go out into the world and meet people who are different from us and not assume we know anything about them because of something we heard from someone else. Read books.

I’m not saying it’s easy, it’s going to be hard, but the alternative is much worse. We cannot keep going down the road we’re on. I hope that’s something we can all agree on.