Gentle Reader,
It’s been nine months since I wrote anything meant to be published here.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine rages on.
Nineteen children and two teachers were murdered in Uvalde, Texas last week.
A student at our public high school overdosed on fentanyl today. (First responders were able to revive him with Narcan).
Lawmakers involved in the January 6, 2021 insurrection claim they “don’t recall” conversations leading up to that moment.
The SBC covered for hundreds of abusers for years, moving them from church to church.
I go on social media and make the mistake of reading comments, responses to events like these.
I’m a pastor. Or an academic. Or a theologian. Take your pick of title. I don’t really care. But I’m supposed to have something worthwhile to say as one unnecessary tragedy after another punches us in the collective gut.
Mostly I just want to say “shut up.”
Everyone, shut up.
People are dead.
Small children are dead.
And you want to yell at each other in the comments about how nobody’s gonna take your guns and the border needs to be closed and the election was stolen and those were good men who were wrongly accused?
Really?
Our addiction to rage and our inability to think with nuance, this is not of God.
Our unwillingness to mourn with those who mourn, this is not of God.
Our refusal to admit, for just a second, that we might be wrong about something, this is not of God.
Do you know that God doesn’t give you rights? No. God doesn’t. In fact, you’re consistently called to set your sense of rights aside and to consider others. To serve others. To sacrificially love others as Christ most explicitly modeled on the cross.
Church, we are ridiculous.
Church, we have bought into lies.
Church, we must be and do better than this.
The whole world is on fire, and instead of offering the cool water of the Gospel, we just fan the flames.
Join the circus with relish.
Brood of vipers.
Whitewashed tombs.
Repent.
We must repent.
And return to our First Love.
Why do you equate every day problems, to Christians or conservatives?
I don’t get the series of logical steps that you conclude that?
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Well, if you’ve got a problem with the call to repentance and renewal, you’ll have to take that up with God. God’s pretty consistent in that messaging.
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