Moral Elitism

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A friend of mine, Rev. Dr. Peter Scaer, recently wrote and posted a piece arguing that Christians should be willing to vote for the lesser of two evils. His central concern was pretty straightforward. Essentially, he wrote in his thoughtful way that Christians sometimes become so preoccupied with the personal shortcomings of a political candidate that they lose sight of what the candidate might actually accomplish in office, or what the alternative might mean for the people who’ll ultimately be affected by the election.

As usual, his points were good. And yet, for as sensible as they were, moral elitism found its way into the comment section. And by “moral elitism,” I mean the kind of thinking that declares all doors to the public square closed to the Christian because behind each one stand equally unsupportable evil-doers. Unfortunately, such a position usually ends up believing its refusal to participate in the political process as evidence of superior Christian faithfulness. Never mind the practical degrees involved in pretty much every decision the person makes about anything else in this fallen world, which includes the evil associated with the companies that make the products he buys, or the schools he sends his children to, or the evil in his own self. And perhaps worse, never mind that both decision and indecision will have profound consequences for his neighbor. But apparently, once a person has declared every choice morally unacceptable, the harder work involved with caring about what comes next is no longer an issue anymore.

Now, I don’t intend to reproduce Dr. Scaer’s argument. It stands securely on its own. But what I will do is at least explore this moral-elitism thing. I’ve never really handled it before, and so close to the midterms, I think it deserves examination, especially by Christians who take seriously their responsibility to live faithfully in the public square.

So, where to start?

Well, for starters, I suppose I should remind you that I’m a Lutheran. A confessional one. With that, I can promise you that Confessional Lutheranism understands vocational responsibility better than most. At least, we’re supposed to. Although onlookers might not be able to tell sometimes. I know a “Confessional” Lutheran pastor who, before the 2020 presidential election, wrote on his page that any Christian choosing to do what he planned to do—which was to stay home and rearrange his sock drawer—was just as faithful, if not more so, than the Christian who ventured out to vote.

Yeah, well, whatever.

Regardless of the confused among us, Confessional Lutheranism actually does have in its theological repertoire the teaching that God works through ordinary people occupying ordinary offices to accomplish His purposes in the world. Parents, teachers, legislators, employers, school board members, you name it—they all serve as instruments through which God works to preserve order in His world, restrain wickedness, and provide for His creation.

This is the doctrine of vocation, and within its framework, each role’s responsibilities are naturally determined, at least in part, by the very office itself. A teacher teaches. An employer employs. A legislator legislates. A wife marries.

But that’s not all there is to it. Who does the teacher teach and the employer employ and the wife marry?

Other people.

In other words, most, if not all, vocations include concern for the neighbor. And many of those vocations aren’t ones we just go and take for ourselves, but rather are ones entrusted to us by someone else. For example, my wife, Jennifer, entrusted me with the offices of husband and father when she said yes to my marriage proposal. When making her choice, her yes or no weighed what I might do or not do in those roles. That’s because she knew my service in those roles would inevitably affect her—that they’d affect her children and grandchildren, too. A similar principle applies to our responsibilities as citizens.

This is where things start getting complicated for the moral elitists.

We live in a fallen world, which means our choices will always involve fallen people. Thankfully, Jennifer was no moral elitist, because I am by no means a perfect husband or father. With equal thanksgiving, I’m glad she was still willing to cast her vote for me, knowing that no man steps into the vocation of spouse without weakness. Come to think of it, someone should design a study aimed at figuring out what percentage of moral elitists are single. I mean, if they really are true to their principles, applying their standards to all aspects of life, I’ll bet we’d discover most of them are probably still unmarried. After all, it’s awfully difficult to find a spouse when everyone who might legitimately qualify has already been disqualified by imperfection.

Now, before someone comes along arguing that I’ve disregarded a person’s character from vocation’s calculus entirely, stop right here and go back and read what I already wrote. Be honest. You know that’s not what I’m saying at all. Of course we have an obligation to consider character when entrusting roles to other people. But I hope you’ve at least grasped that all our choices belong within the larger responsibility of Christian discernment. No matter the choice, as Christians, we’ll choose what most closely aligns with the will of God according to His holy Word. We’ll apply that standard whether choosing a spouse or a governor. But when we elect a governor, we’re choosing someone to govern, not bear our children. Each vocation carries particular responsibilities, and the qualities necessary for carrying them out faithfully are not always the same. And so, our calculus accounts for various considerations relative to the actual roles being sought. But no matter the role, vocation never loses sight of its concern for neighbor. It’s always a part of the math.

Read that again. The choices we make, no matter how intently we’ve discerned, will have consequences that affect other people. That’s just how things work in this world. As this meets where we started, the Christian who turns up his nose, announcing to the world his dissatisfaction with the available choices and his plan to sit the election out, imagines that he’s somehow settling every moral question. But really, it’s little more than lifting oneself above the fray while leaving the neighbor in the mess.

The rest of us might be tempted to call such people “pompous citizens.” I prefer to call them “Pontius citizens.” That’s because when I observe moral elitists in the wild, my mind immediately goes to Pontius Pilate. Pilate found himself at a crossroads that particular Friday two thousand years ago. He had to decide what to do with Jesus. He knew Jesus was innocent. He knew the crowd wanted blood. And so, his decision? To sit it out. He washed his hands before the crowd, declaring himself innocent of anything that might happen to the Lord by refusing to decide at all.

And yet, his indecision was a decision, ultimately giving power to the ones who’d kill the innocent Lord. By the way, that’s almost always how it works. And history rarely forgets it. We certainly remember Pilate’s refusal to choose. Even though he wanted nothing to do with the event, two millennia later, he’s the only one the Christians remember by name. That’s right. All around the world, Christians remember Pilate whenever they confess the events of Christ’s trial and crucifixion in the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed. It happened “under Pontius Pilate.” Embrace that for what it is. Apparently, washing one’s hands of a decision in the public square does very little to remove responsibility for what follows.

And the principle still stands today. I mean, what does washing your hands of an election do to protect an unborn child against laws that make it a right to tear her into pieces in the womb?

And so, I guess what I’m trying to say is that folks, especially Christians, should be careful about confusing a fear of somehow being culpable with getting one’s hands dirty engaging in faithfulness. The Lord has placed us in this world. We exist in community with others, and when it comes to vocation, there’s no dividing us from our neighbors. Not really. Their lives will be affected by both the decisions we make and the decisions we refuse to make. Our task in all this is to discern as best we can according to God’s Word and then to act with courage within the framework of the “citizen” vocation.

We do this knowing we’ll never have the luxury of choosing between perfection and imperfection. Most often, we’ll be choosing between competing degrees of imperfection, with real people standing to benefit or suffer from our decision. That’s not always an easy thing to stomach. Still, when that moment comes, we can find peace within the boundaries of grace—which is what drives Christian discernment anyway. Grace leads us to Christian discernment’s most important questions, which do not change. The first asks, according to the proposition Peter Scaer put before us, which option before me most closely aligns with the will of God as given in His holy Word. The next most important question asks what love for the neighbor requires of a Christian in the decision. We ask both questions aware that our neighbor isn’t served by us standing at a comfortable distance, congratulating ourselves for having clean hands. Our neighbor needs us willing to roll up our sleeves and use them.

I was going to end there, but I had another quick thought. I’m willing to bet some are already applying this principle in a way that pits it against itself. In other words, and thinking back to the issue of life I inserted before, they might ask, “Well, what if the only option is not between life or death, but between death and death, with the only choice being not if an unborn child is terminated, but how the child is terminated?”

First, again, no one said this would be easy. But second, of course there will be occasions when abstaining from a particular choice is a genuinely conscientious decision. If Jennifer’s only choices for a husband were a man who beats women and another who molests children, then she must not choose either. In other words, there may be occasions when a choice is really no choice at all. So, why ask a question like this at all? Because that’s what people looking for excuses to maintain a faulty position do. They do whatever they can to turn a legitimate exception into a universal excuse that makes everything into a choice between two equally wicked outcomes. This is called a false equivalence, and it’s a particularly convenient way to avoid making tough decisions, if only because it eliminates the need to examine meaningful differences between the available choices. Of course, that doesn’t mean for one second that declaring two things morally equivalent establishes that they actually are.

Inherent to Dr. Scaer’s post is that Christian faithfulness requires more than being able to explain why everyone else falls short of our standards. It requires the wisdom to distinguish between competing goods and evils, and then the courage to act for the sake of our neighbors even when the available options leave something to be desired.

That said, there will always be that one guy on the job site criticizing the folks hard at work in the ditch doing the best they can to make things better. I say, let them remember Pontius Pilate. When all was said and done, his hands were the cleanest in the place. But we haven’t forgotten that the innocent Son of God was still murdered under his watch.

Truth Doesn’t Change Jerseys

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As many of you likely already know, last week we enjoyed our annual “The Body of Christ and the Public Square” (BOCPS) conference here at Our Savior in Hartland. For me, personally, what made the day truly extraordinary was not only that each speaker’s topic worked well with the others, ultimately building a stronger structure along the way, but that each used the mortar of encouragement while they worked. In other words, each made clear the importance of engagement in the public square. But then they also reminded listeners that God has promised the necessary courage for doing so. Resting in that promise, the encouragement became, “Go and be who you are in Christ. Go and be who He’s made you to be by His truth.”

I was the first to speak that morning. I’ll let you in on a little secret. My speech was a whole lot longer than what the attendees actually heard. Go figure, right? Well, just know that I skipped over a section for the sake of time.

If you were there, you’ll remember I shared a seconds-long video I thought captured something hopeful concerning the forthcoming generation. It showed the Hartland and Brighton football teams kneeling together in prayer after their game a week earlier. In context, these were young men who’d spent the evening in competition, and yet, even after beating each other up for an hour, they gathered together at center field, bowed their heads, and acknowledged something greater than the competition—the truth of Christ.

The primary thrust of my speech was allegiance to truth no matter what. And so, the video worked. It showed the importance of truth in a divided world. But then there was the section immediately afterward that I skipped—a story I was going to tell but didn’t. Had I shared it, it would’ve shown a striking contrast to the previous video.

Essentially, the Thursday before the BOCPS conference, my wife Jennifer and I attended our daughter Evelyn’s volleyball game. She plays varsity for Linden. It was a home game against Swartz Creek. While there, we sat maybe four or five rows from the floor, directly behind a group of about ten Linden football players who had come to watch the girls play.

Near the end of the final match, a parent—the father of one of the Swartz Creek players—walked past the group of boys, as anyone might when heading to concessions or the bathroom or stepping out to make a phone call. But as he walked by, one of the boys made a crass remark about him to the others, loud enough that Jennifer and I could hear it over the gym’s noise. The other boys erupted in laughter.

The man paused, looked back, paused again, but then decided to keep walking. There’s no question he’d heard what they said. Unfortunately, they kept looking and laughing, so he knew they were mocking him too. He glanced backward a few more times as he left the gym, as if he wanted to return and say something. But he didn’t.

Eventually, he did return. The boys started back up again. Walking by, he gave a few looks, showing he’d heard them the first time, but he still didn’t say anything and went straight to his seat. In my humble opinion, he showed incredible restraint, especially since he didn’t make a scene during the game. However, when he finally sat down a section and a half away, he didn’t position himself to watch his daughter play. He positioned himself toward the boys. In other words, he sat and stared them down the rest of the game. The boys saw him, but only did what they were doing before.

Now, Jennifer and I were not the only ones aware of what was happening. The group of parents just to our right saw the whole thing, too. At one point, one of them, one of our team’s bigger, more muscular dads (a man I thought at first was one of the Linden wrestling coaches but learned later wasn’t), moved down several rows and positioned himself directly in the offended man’s line of sight, effectively shielding the boys from his stare. Of course, the boys kept at it.

When the game ended, the Swartz Creek dad immediately went to the boys to confront them—as any man would. But here’s the thing. The Linden dad got up just as immediately, and no matter how the Swartz Creek man maneuvered, he positioned himself between him and the boys. As you might expect, the man inevitably started speaking his mind with some volume. The Linden dad finally told the man, in no uncertain terms, to get lost. Then he turned to the boys and assured them they had nothing to worry about because, in his words, the man was “obviously a goofball.”

Those were his words. Jennifer and I heard it all. And we couldn’t believe it.

I went straight down the rows, cutting between the boys, to the Linden dad who, again, I thought at the time was one of our coaches who might correct them, and said very plainly in front of all of them that the Swartz Creek man was in the right. I told him the man had every reason to be upset for what our team’s boys had said and done. I told him my wife and I were sitting right behind them, and that we’d heard and seen it all.

Interestingly, the Linden dad didn’t suddenly reverse course or see error in his efforts. He sort of laughed it off. Even worse, he seemed genuinely surprised that I would defend someone from the opposing team rather than the boys from our own.

Now, I suppose someone might argue that the Linden dad was simply trying to defuse the situation. Maybe that’s what he thought he was doing. But I don’t think he defused anything. In fact, I think he made matters worse, especially by turning to the boys and calling the man a name, just as they’d been doing. First, by participating in the behavior—the name-calling—he reinforced it and added insult to injury. And second, by shielding the boys from the consequences, he gave them permission to do it again.

As for how I know he didn’t defuse the situation, when Jennifer and I got outside, the Swartz Creek dad was still in the parking lot. And by the way, I haven’t mentioned that he was by no means a non-intimidating gent by appearance. Inside the gym, he had clearly been limiting himself. But here he was now, waiting in the parking lot, stewing furiously. His wife was furious, too, as were two other people who were with them. I can promise you, the situation was far from over.

Nevertheless, Jennifer and I went to him anyway. And listening through some extreme profanity, we eventually told him we saw what happened and that he had every reason to be upset. We told him Linden had been a terrible host, and we apologized for how he was treated.

After a few minutes of conversation, guess what happened next.

He was grateful for the understanding, the temperature dropped, and the tension finally dissipated. Essentially, what was about to become an uglier confrontation in the Linden parking lot ended with a measure of control.

We finally parted ways, thanking each other for the time. They all got into their cars. We got into ours. And we all went home. End of story.

Now, I realize this may seem like no big deal to some. I’ll bet some of you are even reading this and thinking, “Boys will be boys, and that man was an adult. He should’ve known better and just ignored them. Sticks and stones and all that.” I suppose if that’s your position, then you definitely need to keep reading. Yes, teenage boys will do stupid things. I’ve raised two of them, so I understand immaturity as a sign of teenage territory. What’s more, I know this in myself. Looking back on my own life as a young man, as the meme goes, I’m glad smartphones didn’t exist.

That said, the situation is a troubling one, and not only because of what the boys did, but because of what none of the parents seemed willing to do.

Here was an opportunity for Linden parents, at least the ones who knew what had happened, to teach their own a little something about respect, decency, and personal responsibility. It was a chance to remind them that wearing a Linden jersey—bearing the community name—carries with it a responsibility to represent their own honorably. Even better, it was a moment to experience the heavy, but also quite valuable, weight of apologizing for being in the wrong.

Instead, those boys learned something that I believe is terribly dangerous for our society as a whole. They were taught to defend their own regardless of what their own have done. When we as adults do this, in a sense, we’re teaching them that truth only matters when it serves them—and that’s a very bad lesson to carry into adulthood. It’s one that the rest of society will pay for in the end, because ultimately, it teaches that right and wrong depend on our own established loyalties. This is the absolute opposite of what I talked about in my already lengthy speech last Saturday. I made the point that objective truth doesn’t belong to us. We belong to it. We did not invent it. We are not its authors. We are its witnesses and, at crucial moments along the way, we are called to be its unflinching servants, even when that means we’ll have to eat some crow.

I suppose this is maybe where the whole thing extends beyond a varsity volleyball game and into the rest of our individual lives. We all tend to excuse behavior in people we like that we would almost certainly condemn in people we dislike. Indeed, we all have an innate tendency to defend those who share our convictions, even when they have plainly violated the very convictions we claim to hold.

I started my speech at the BOCPS conference talking about how parents bear the most responsibility in a society. Considering what I just shared, I’m not so sure we can, as parents, expect our children to develop the moral courage our society so desperately needs if we’re going to excuse moments like the one beside the volleyball court in Linden—especially if that behavior is the rule more so than the exception. We need kids who can speak truth to anyone, even when the wrongdoer is wearing the same jersey.

Now, do you see why I cut this from the speech? There’s a lot here. Still, the contrasting images remain relatively immediate for me. I watched that video of those Hartland and Brighton football players kneeling together in prayer two days before I experienced what I did at the volleyball game. The first was a moment when young men from opposing teams acknowledged something that superseded their loyalties. Then along came the second, one demonstrating the exact opposite.

I suppose I’ll leave it there. Or, at least, I’ll close by saying that if we want our boys to become good men, we’d better, as parents, have the courage to teach them what that means. In this case, it means standing against our own, especially when our own are clearly in the wrong.

The world already has plenty of people willing to throw their whole selves into defending their side. What it desperately needs is people willing to throw their whole selves into defending what’s actually true, even when it comes at a personal cost.

That kind of courage, no matter what anyone else might say, always begins at home.

Work that Matters

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I’m not going to lie. There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that follows our “The Body of Christ and the Public Square” conference here at Our Savior every year. As usual, I definitely felt it when my head hit the pillow last night. I suppose I’m feeling it right now as I type this while also knowing I need to finish the sermon for this morning.

I’ll get to it. In the meantime, a few quick thoughts need to materialize.

For starters, the people here at Our Savior who come together to make the event happen are not strangers to the same exhaustion I described. They already know that by the time the guest speakers have been delivered to airports and all the attendees have gone home, a year’s worth of work will have just coalesced into an eight-hour event. And when I say “a year’s worth of work,” I mean it. I started conversations with next year’s potential speakers a few weeks ago.

By the way, this year marked our twelfth year doing this and our twenty-fifth conference. Our MC, Dr. Chad Savage, has been with us since very near the beginning. He mentioned something during the event that caught my attention. He said he read that most conferences of this sort last about four or five years, holding one event per year, before eventually running out of steam and disappearing. If that’s true, then what we have here—the partnerships we’ve cultivated and the opportunities we’ve been given to influence—well, it’s all pretty special. If anything, it says something about the people here who keep showing up to do the work. Year after year, they take on arduous tasks, having already decided that the work is worth doing.

But I need to admit something to you. Within the last two or three years, I’ve told myself the forthcoming conference would be the last. This back-and-forth conversation with myself typically happens the week before. I know why. Because the pre-conference week is no different than every other already over-scheduled and under-accommodated week. Except this one has a thousand additional things from a year’s worth of planning to execute.

And yet, having said that, when I experience the congregation members around me smiling and serving and commending the effort to the Lord, as if they’re privileged rather than taxed by the burden, the thought of calling it quits dissipates.

Every year, the people here pull together to accomplish something that requires considerable time, patience, and dedication. They make room in their already busy lives. They accept responsibilities and fulfill them, knowing that few of the attendees, if any at all, will ever know or see how much they gave of themselves to make the experience possible. They do all this without expecting anyone to remember the part they played.

But their faithfulness takes shape in an event that makes it possible for people to gather, listen, think, and leave better prepared to engage in the world around them. It truly is a glorious demonstration of service, and again, I want you to know that ours happens because Christians in this place have decided the work is worth doing, even when nobody knows who’s doing it.

This year, Neal McDonough, Nick Freitas, Timothy Goeglein, and Father Calvin Robinson joined us as speakers. I spoke, too, as I always do. But that’s not important, because I already know and love this congregation, so I’m willing to do what needs to be done to see her double down against an encroaching world.

But the speakers don’t necessarily know or understand this place’s commitment to her Lord and what He has cultivated here. At least, not the first-timers. But then they arrive and get close to us—they’re brought into the trenches beside us—and suddenly, they understand.

In a way, you know that understanding has taken hold when the relationship for them is no longer celebrity to fan, or speaker to audience, but when they give up that distance backstage, letting their very real humanness show. That’s when you realize they see the value of a place like this just as much as you do.

I don’t know if that makes any sense. Maybe think of it from the other direction. A person’s public reputation can sometimes make it easy to forget the person himself. There’s a distance there. We recognize a face, associate it with a podcast or a movie we’ve seen or whatever, and we begin thinking of someone almost entirely in terms of what he represents. The same probably goes for the guest speaker. He gets an invitation and understands the relationship from a distance.

But then he reaches a moment when he’s willing to light up a cigar, sip a whisky on your deck, and talk about everything and nothing conference-related. That, for example, was my time with my friend, Father Robinson.

Or maybe, rather than requiring a limousine service to catch his flight, he prefers to climb into your Jeep Wrangler and spend an hour together with a new friend, talking about everything and nothing, during the hour-long drive to the airport. That was my experience with Neal.

Even better, when I dropped him off at the airport, I told him that even though I hadn’t met his family, I hoped someday I would. I barely got the thought out before he interrupted me, gave me a hug, and said, “You will.”

Neal became more than a speaker at our conference. He has become a friend. And friends are more interested in continuing the work together than getting an honorarium check and then saying goodbye.

And for the record, Neal’s expressed sentiment wasn’t meant only for me. He made it clear that his affection extends to the people here at Our Savior, too—to what we’re doing in this place. While driving, the more he learned about us—the intensity of our biblical fidelity, rich and reverent liturgy, creedal faithfulness, and the muscle we put into providing a tuition-free Christian school to the community—the more he insisted that when he comes back to Michigan (and he has every reason to do so since his son attends college here), he wants to stop by to say hello.

Believe it or not, that didn’t surprise me. I’ve already experienced it a hundred times with other speakers who’ve joined us here, some actually asking to return over the years. Like so many others, this place got under Neal’s skin in the best possible way.

As an aside to my critics, let me just say that it’s in moments like these that you’re reminded how much gets lost when we know people only from a distance. It’s not until you’re side by side that you can understand how we’re both human beings concerned with human things. But we’re also concerned about things that mean so much more—things like faith, how that faith is communicated to and maintained in the world around us, the well-being of our neighbors, family, and the kind of world our children will inherit after everything we’ve lived for is finally represented by that little line between the dates on our headstone.

It was a delight visiting with Neal about this stuff. It was a pleasure getting to know Nick. Of course, I never regret my time with Father Robinson or Tim Goeglein. They are men I respect deeply.

But regardless of the speaker, anyone who has ever taken a chance and cultivated a relationship with our efforts here in the middle of nowhere Michigan has left the place knowing there’s a group of diligent people more than willing to take responsibility for the things worth caring about.

In a way, that’s pretty much what our conference is meant to encourage.

Engagement in the public square begins with understanding that the people affected by public decisions are our neighbors. Questions concerning human life, religious liberty, education, family, and the freedom to speak truth reach into actual homes. They shape what parents can do, what children are taught, and how freely Christians can live according to their convictions.

I firmly believe that sincere faith in Christ, vividly shown through love for God and for their neighbors, is what moves the people in this place to care about these things. It most certainly moves them to participate when participation becomes uncomfortable. And why wouldn’t it? Christ told His Christians that we bear responsibilities toward the world around us.

I mentioned in my speech yesterday that the public square will be occupied by someone. The people who made it possible for Neal McDonough, Nick Freitas, Timothy Goeglein, Father Robinson, and me to give speeches are convinced that the Church’s absence in the public square is a bad thing. And so, they’re making sure Christians know they belong there. Even better, they want Christians to know they can serve on a school board, or speak at a public meeting, or talk to a friend about what God’s Word says about a topic deemed too political, or maybe even help organize a conference that, over the course of twelve years and twenty-five events, has equipped and strengthened thousands of Christians to do these things and so much more.

Since I already mentioned the critics, as some of you already know, an event like ours draws both good and bad attention. Every year, there are those who belittle the effort, including some within my own Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s circles. But whatever. I deal with it every year, and I expect I’ll be dealing with it for as long as we choose to continue the effort. I mean, if I made my critics’ approval a condition of service, then I’d already have my reason to quit.

But the people here at Our Savior doing the work deserve better than that. And so does the community benefiting from it.

I’ve already rambled on for long enough. So, to close, just know that I’m thankful for our speakers, our attendees, and especially the people of God here at Our Savior whose dedication makes this gathering possible year after year. Their service equates to a bright-beaming light of encouragement. Their willingness reminds me that preserving what’s good involves people from all walks of life who are willing to do what needs doing—especially when the work is hard.

As I said, I expect I’ll hear from the critics again. But in the meantime, there are good things worth defending, and there are Christians and neighbors who need to know what those things are and how to get in the game and defend them.

The Language of Faith

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It’s no secret to folks around here that Friday is technically my day off. It’s also no secret that I use Fridays to catch up on everything I couldn’t accomplish during the week. Typically, I use the day to reply to emails, maybe clean up the messes that have accumulated on my desk and shelves throughout the week, jot notes for the forthcoming week’s classes, chapels, and Bible studies, and finally, write Sunday’s sermon—or at least get it started.

I also use Friday to remember things I might’ve easily forgotten, which means I gather and sort through handfuls of sticky notes with messages I’ve written to myself all week, so nothing gets lost.

To do all this, I used to drive to the church to perform my Friday routine. Lately, I’ve been doing these things from home. I clean up whatever messes I may have created, then toss most of what I need into my rolling bag on Thursday night. Then on Friday morning, I set up my laptop on the dining room table and get started. In between tasks, I mow the grass or do other necessary chores around the house. Then it’s back to work, making sure nothing is forgotten, all so that the next week starts above water, not below.

I should at least mention that Jen works from home, and the dining room table is only a few steps away. I like that. It’s an opportunity for us to spend most of the day together, even though we’re focused on other things. Still, for me, it helps make it feel more like an actual day off than less.

Now for something seemingly unrelated.

This past Thursday, the day before the routine I described above, I visited a longtime friend and church member who is, each day, being pulled by dementia further and further away from most everything she knows. Thankfully, when I walk into her apartment at the assisted living facility, she immediately recognizes me, brightening the space with her quirky trademark smile.

Still, as our time together begins, her struggle shows itself. She does all she can to remember. And even what she can remember becomes nearly impossible to follow. The nouns and verbs and adjectives are all out of order. When they do land in reasonable positions, the story they tell is fantastical. People who’ve been dead for years suddenly are in the other room, sleeping next to the penguins someone else brought by earlier that morning, so we need to speak softly. Then she’ll ask me if I enjoyed the Snickers she never gave me when I first arrived.

For me, it’s the time with her that matters most. I do my best to sort through what she’s saying, and I don’t for one second get frustrated, even after an hour-long visit. I certainly don’t spend any energy trying to correct her. For one, I’d never think of telling her that the people she’s mentioning are no longer with us. In a sense, I don’t believe that anyway. The people she mentions—folks who’ve died in the faith—they’re not gone. They’re simply away.

In a mortal sense, my time with her is kind of like playing bingo—like anticipating the next number to emerge from the spinning bingo cage. Sometimes the conversation’s numbers line up, and we get a bingo. Sometimes they don’t. Either way, it’s obvious we’re both just happy to be together playing the game.

But here’s what I really wanted to tell you about my visits with her. And maybe this is what connects us to my introduction.

I’m not just her friend. I’m her pastor. And so, I visit her for a reason. And no matter how far from me the dementia drags her, when that pastoral reason begins, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” there she is. She’s back.

Next, I’ll say, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us,” and she’ll join right in with, “But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” That’s a whole lot of words to keep in order. And yet, she does.

A little further along, I’ll say, “The Lord be with you,” and she’ll reply without hesitation, “And also with you.” I’ll pray, and at the end, we’ll both say “Amen.”

After that, I’ll maybe sing a few stanzas of a familiar hymn, and guess what—she’ll sing along. I’ll read a portion of the scriptures, and she’ll sit quietly listening, even smiling or nodding during the parts you’d expect any normal person to smile or nod at. Afterward, I’ll start, “I believe in God,” and by the time I’ve reached “the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” she’ll have already stepped in and joined me. Further along, I’ll begin, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” and she’ll immediately join in, finishing the prayer without fumbling once with a single word.

I’m guessing you know where I’m going with this.

As a man who needs almost every Friday to keep from forgetting what’s ahead, I’m sitting with a woman who’s losing all memory of everything behind her. When we’re together, we more than represent the human condition from both directions, each of us struggling in our own way. And yet, no matter how far away our human frailty might carry either of us, what the Gospel has placed so deeply into us through Christian liturgy—what the Christian Church has believed and confessed for centuries—miraculously closes the gap.

In those moments, we’re together. I’m there. She’s there. Before and after, I may have forgotten to return a phone call or reply to a certain email. Before and after, she’ll have forgotten the names of her grandchildren while insisting that her mother is stopping by soon to help her paint the kitchen. Nevertheless, in those moments of Christocentric liturgy, something so much deeper is carrying us both, and it shows itself in a back-and-forth conversation that confesses the redeeming Christ who’s conquered all our frailties with such clarity that it’s hard not to be astounded.

Now, imagine if she’d grown up apart from such things. Imagine the disadvantage if her parents had treated worship as just one more negligible activity among many, rather than something that led to moments like these—moments when none of those other things matter for a mind that can no longer remember anything, but can only go with what has been instilled.

Yes, I know, the Lord’s promises to His people have never depended on the strength of their memories. Still, what we say and do so often that it becomes memory matters far more than we might imagine.

Sunday after Sunday, what God gives in holy worship’s liturgies is something we’ll certainly need someday, especially when our own words begin to fail, and so much of what we do know becomes little more than a heap of words and people and places and things we can no longer put in order. Even with that being true for my friend in the worst sort of way, the words of faith still come easily for her. She remembers her Lord. She hears and reveres His Word, confesses His person and work, and prays the very prayer He taught her. And what a comfort it is to know that, even as she may be forgetting everything else, she hasn’t forgotten any of that.

And, of course, my heart is well-served when I see her return in those moments, even more so when she recognizes and smiles at the one privileged to bring it to her.

The Legend of Hollow Clancy

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Not all that long ago, I told my son Harrison that I almost certainly produce more reading material than I consume. Don’t get me wrong. I read a lot. And yet, regardless of my intake levels, I never seem to run out of things to say. A person only needs to look around. There’s always something to observe, analyze, and describe if you’re willing to take the time.

Still, I should read more than I do, if only to expand my repertoire. It’s true I have a habit of revisiting books I’ve already read. Doing so always proves fruitful. It seems there’s always something new a person can take away from repeat visits with a favorite volume. For example, I’ve read Charles Dickens’ The Cricket on the Hearth more times than I can count, and I always notice something new. The same goes for C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. Interestingly, when I see folks online posting supposed meme-form quotations from Screwtape as prophetic musings applicable today, I can usually tell whether the quotation is genuine. Most of the time, it isn’t. You’ve heard the saying “Familiarity breeds likeability.” Well, familiarity also breeds discernibility.

Another book I read at least once a year is Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I crack it open every autumn. Indeed, when the Michigan sky begins gathering its grays, when temperatures begin dipping lower, and the chlorophyll in the leaves begins breaking down, leaving behind the colors my wife enjoys so much more than I ever could, it’s right about then that I start sensing the story’s draw.

I can’t say for sure how long I’ve been doing this. It’s been at least fifteen years or so. Before that, it was only occasionally.

I first fell in love with the story as a kid in Illinois. An older gentleman, one of the librarians at the Danville Public Library, saw me reading Stephen King’s Cycle of the Werewolf and thought I might enjoy it. He was right. Since the story is in the public domain, I took the liberty of publishing my own hardcover version in 2019 under my personal imprint, Angels’ Portion Books. I designed an elegantly eerie cover, scribbled a description designed to draw even the least interested reader’s attention, and then inserted my own introduction at the beginning of the manuscript, explaining why the story owned my devotion—and why it deserves everyone else’s, too. I did the same for a few other volumes I’ve always enjoyed, such as The Call of the Wild, Treasure Island, and, as you might expect, The Cricket on the Hearth. Each has a cover blurb and an introduction meant to lift what lives in my heart and set it into another’s.

Since I’ve written thousands of pages about thousands of things, odds are I’ve likely shared with you before the one line from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow that captured me so many years ago.

Very near the end of the story, just after Ichabod goes missing and the townsfolk do what townsfolk do—which is gossip—there’s a passage that explains how they “shook their heads and came to the conclusion that Ichabod had been carried off by the Galloping Hessian.” Contextually, this means most in the community accepted that, in a moment of sheer terror, their schoolteacher, Ichabod Crane, had been captured by an otherworldly specter and likely hauled away screaming into a terrible world between worlds.

How dreadful for Ichabod!

But then, the very next sentence is, in my opinion, the volume’s most frightening. It reads: “As he was a bachelor, and in nobody’s debt, nobody troubled his head any more about him.”

Wait, what?

For the record, headless horsemen don’t scare me. Werewolves and vampires don’t scare me, either. Aliens? Ghosts? Psychos in hockey masks with machetes? Yawn. Just ask my family. They’ll confirm I’m yet to discover a book or movie that has what it takes to put me on edge in the traditionally frightful sense. And also for the record, I’ve been reading and watching this genre since I was very young.

Still, there’s something different about the terror The Legend of Sleepy Hollow ultimately stirs. Since I already mentioned C.S. Lewis, it’s somewhat reminiscent of the very first line of his must-read volume A Grief Observed. The sentence reads: “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

What I mean is that it’s not so much Irving’s well-described spectral eeriness that puts a reader on the edge. It’s not even the headless Hessian who, as the majority of the Hollow’s residents superstitiously suspect, returned from the grave to carry someone away. It’s the grief of knowing Ichabod Crane evaporated from a community—the kind where everyone knows everyone—and no one cared in the least. They simply went about their lives as if he never existed in the first place.

That’s the real terror in the story. And even as a kid, I remember sensing it. I remember reading that one line and thinking, “How could it be that no one cares about what happened to Ichabod?” I know he was more or less an outsider. I know he didn’t necessarily even love the woman he was pursuing, Katrina Van Tassel, but was more interested in her father’s wealth. Still, that particular sentence is so distinct compared to everything else around it. It had me wondering what it would be like to disappear without even the slightest concern from anyone who knew me.

Although I suppose people did pay some attention to Ichabod’s disappearance. But it was all the wrong kind. Never mind Ichabod. Individual community members were concerned only to check their accounts to make sure he didn’t have any outstanding debts on their books. Han Van Ripper, acting as his executor, worried only about what to do with what few effects he’d left behind. And finally, without a splinter of memory for the missing man, the people immediately hired a new teacher and established a new schoolhouse in a different quarter of the Hollow.

In short, they cared about anything and everything surrounding Ichabod, but not Ichabod himself. Imagine that. Imagine in a tragedy’s aftermath being concerned with everything but the victim.

I’m pretty sure Irving’s narrative only pretends to be a ghost story. Really, it’s a commentary on something else. With that, for some reason, what I said before about familiarity breeding discernability has come back to mind.

Imagine if Irving would’ve gone further with his callous conclusion. Imagine if he’d given moral space to the headless Hessian’s actions, excusing them because, well, the angry ghost was struggling with a hyperfixation disorder. I mean, his head was taken off by a cannonball during the Revolution, resulting in a seemingly uncontrollable desire to wreak havoc while searching for it. Imagine if, rather than focusing on justice for Ichabod, the community aimed its investigation at understanding and proving the Hessian’s condition to help others living within the phantom plane avoid the same behavior.

By the way, anyone familiar with the story also knows Irving lets us wonder if it wasn’t actually the Hessian ghost who took Ichabod, but rather Brom Bones, Ichabod’s rival for Katrina Van Tassel’s love. Irving describes Brom as appearing “exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related,” even laughing when the pumpkin found at the scene is mentioned.

Imagine if Irving added additional material excusing Brom as suffering from some sort of maladaptive disorder, which he clearly does. Along the way, Brom is described as a “roistering blade” who looks for opportunities to fight pretty much everyone. He even leads a gang of young men Irving calls the “Sleepy Hollow Boys.” If Brom were alive today, he’d almost certainly be tagged with an impulse-control disorder—or maybe clinical narcissism—something likely caused by childhood trauma.

Imagine if Irving left the reader to assume that no matter what happened to Ichabod, whether it was the Hessian or Brom who offed him, it wasn’t either of their fault. Not really. They were both mentally ill. Which means they didn’t do it. Their conditions did.

Yeah, I know, technically, those imaginings aren’t in the story. And yet, they aren’t far removed from Irving’s own trajectory. He certainly framed the impulse that inspired them.

And so, I say once again, familiarity breeds discernibility. Admittedly, there’s something awfully familiar about all this. But I can’t quite put my finger on it. I mean, aside from a clinical diagnosis of the story’s villains, what’s so familiar about the people of Sleepy Hollow finding plenty to discuss after Ichabod’s demise—that is, everything except Ichabod himself?

The only thing I can think to say is that, for some reason, Irving’s tale feels less like an old ghost story than it should. It’s almost as if something happened relatively recently, and whatever it was, it proved that three centuries later, human beings still have a remarkable talent for making the victim the least interesting part of the tragedy.

A Break from the Ugliness

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As you might expect, I watched the recent interview with the three jurors from the Clancy trial. An NBC 10 Boston reporter sat with them last week.

It wasn’t long into the interview that my stomach started to turn, if only because the three women seemed so much more concerned for the pathology of Lindsay’s crimes than the crime itself. For example, considering the sheer brutality of the murders, my heart sank when one of the three jurors, Kellie Farina, spoke disappointedly, almost condescendingly, of the lone juror (a black man now getting doxxed by the media) who refused to agree to a not-guilty verdict. She said, “He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.”

Of course, for the relatively sane among us, that seems to be the quotation getting all the attention. Go figure. It really is dreadfully backward.

And then, even with Farina’s comment still hovering like sulfuric fog, another of the three, Roni Carlson, said, “I wish we would’ve come through for Lindsay,” as if Lindsay truly was the victim during those terrible moments in the basement with the exercise bands pulled so tightly around each of her children’s throats that their necks pretty much collapsed.

But if I remember the order of things, I’d barely gotten to these comments before tasting the first bit of my stomach’s sour. Another of the three, Paula Devlin, described the resistant juror as “arrogant.” More precisely, she said, “He was very arrogant. He really did not take anything that anybody said.”

When I heard that, my first instinct was to open Facebook in my nearby laptop’s browser and start tapping into that little gray space beside my profile picture that reads, “What’s on your mind, Christopher?”

What’s on my mind, you ask?

Well, first, I typed out Devlin’s exact words for context. By the way, is it me, or is the name Devlin eerily ironic—as if hell’s ambassadors are just toying with us? It’s like the fiends, normally keeping to the shadows, aren’t as interested as they used to be in hiding their identity. It sort of reminds me of the antagonist in the ’80s film Angel Heart. Literally Satan, he went by the name Louis Cyphre. Get it? Yeah, Lucifer. “Devlin” looks and sounds like something you’d see on Satan’s license plate when he’s out and around doing what he does.

Deviling. Dev’lin’. I wonder.

Anyway, after sharing Devlin’s words, I continued with a short bit of commentary. I wrote something like, “Arrogant? He held fast and wouldn’t surrender the case’s essential truth, which is that three children were murdered.” I ended with, “Courage looks an awful lot like arrogance from the devil’s side of the room.”

Now, you’ll notice above that I used the words “with something like.” That’s because I was only remembering what I wrote. If you scroll through my personal page, you won’t find the comment anywhere. I didn’t post it. As soon as I wrote it, I deleted it and closed my laptop.

Why?

Well, the day before I watched the interview, I shared a short piece on my personal page about needing a break from observing, analyzing, and commenting on these kinds of things. I admitted that even with my practice of posting and ghosting—which means I write something and then leave it behind, avoiding all comments entirely—the ugliness still finds a way through. Believe it or not, people read what I write, and no matter what it’s about, someone almost always seeks me out just to insult me. They find my email. They use Private Messenger. Some have even chased down my cell phone to text me. The twisted devotion in all this is rather astounding.

Of course, I’ve long understood that both praise and hatred are swirling in this territory. People who write for public consumption should expect both positive and negative reactions. But that doesn’t make any of it any less tiresome, especially since it’s not like I get paid to do it. Maybe if I made a few bucks here and there, it would be easier. But I don’t.

That said, and perhaps more importantly, I wrote in that short piece that no human being is meant to be pierced with hatefulness so frequently. I understand that life’s occasional conflicts can lead to hostile words. I mean, things happen, and unkind words are spoken. But I’m pretty sure none of us are designed to be verbally accosted multiple times a week all year-round. And for over a decade and a half, which is about how long I’ve been doing this.

I know this might sound like whining to some. I’m just telling you this has become my “normal.” And some days, it’s just too much.

Add to all this that it’s not as easy as it used to be. I’m having some trouble with my eyesight, which is making everything you’re reading right now so much more difficult to produce. What used to be relatively easy to tippety-tap onto the screen is becoming considerably harder. Sermons take longer. Preparations for almost anything I do as a pastor take longer. This takes longer. I used to just wake up on Sundays and start writing these things. I started this one on Friday and finished it this morning.

But enough whining. Although what I’m describing explains what happened immediately after I deleted the comment and closed the laptop. Instead of writing something, I finished listening to what remained of the half-hour interview clip, and then I picked up my daughter’s guitar, which was leaning against the back of a chair nearby, and started playing.

It’s an interesting guitar, actually. Evelyn found it lying on the side of the road not far from the high school last autumn. It was pretty beat up. The strings had snapped. A few tuning pegs were missing. It was cracked in places—punctured and scarred from whatever had happened to it before she found it. Nothing about its condition suggested it had any particular value anymore.

Still, she brought it home, and we tried to find its owner. We posted about it in different forums and waited to see whether someone would claim it. No one did. After a couple of weeks of waiting, with a mind to get rid of it, I eventually took it outside and leaned it against the trash can.

The next day, before rolling the cans to the street, I reconsidered and carried it back inside. I ended up spending some time over the Thanksgiving weekend doing what I could to repair it physically. I fixed the cracks and sanded the body. Eventually I painted it black. I replaced the tuning pegs and even added a rosette around the sound hole, with a new pickguard beneath. Essentially, I worked through everything that needed attention until the ugly guitar destined for a landfill—something somebody lost, or deliberately tossed on the side of the road—became an instrument again.

Admittedly, it struggles somewhat to keep a tune. But it’s been through a lot. And I’m certain it was likely never a virtuoso’s choice to begin with. Still, after some love, it’s singing again. And it’s really quite lovely.

I reached for that guitar after I closed the laptop. In fact, because Jennifer was away for the weekend in Rogers City, and I knew she’d be coming home soon, I decided to spend the next few hours listening to and working through a few Zach Bryan songs to play for her when she got back. She and Evelyn are both huge fans. So, I spent a little time strumming along and whispering lyrics, at least until my fingers, mouth, and memory began cooperating with each other.

There was something wonderfully refreshing about it. I wasn’t analyzing another ugly thing happening somewhere in the world, all the while anticipating the responses I’d almost certainly get from ratchety folks, whether actively or passive-aggressively, offended that I think Clancy deserves a millstone rather than a diagnosis. Listening and strumming and half-singing, I wasn’t wondering which stranger would eventually hunt down my contact information or find their way into my private messages. I was sitting with something I’d restored, learning songs for someone I love more than anything else in the whole world.

When Jen got home, after visiting for a while, I grabbed the once-broken guitar and played a few of her favorite songs. Evelyn, who’d just gotten home from volleyball practice—and who adores such moments—joined us. She even pulled out her phone and set it beside me to record a few, memorializing the moment for herself. One song they wanted to hear, “I Remember Everything,” I didn’t know it particularly well, so I wasn’t especially confident about how it would go. Strangely enough, it turned out pretty nicely. I suppose the thing about guitarists is that once a song gets going, often you can anticipate the next chord and fall right into it.

Now, with all of this in mind, looking backward to remember that humans aren’t meant to experience loathing in steady streams, I’m even more committed to the premise. I also think that escaping the ugliness requires more than closing the laptop and refusing to look at the screen for a while. Ultimately, the space left open has to be filled with something good and beautiful.

It’s true there will always be another cultural event to dissect. There will always be another “something” begging for commentary rendered through the Gospel’s lens—which means I will undoubtedly end up back in the saddle, likely sooner than later. Indeed, certain things deserve to be said, and there are times when silence carries a much heavier cost than the hatred I know I’ll receive.

Still, there’s something worth remembering about those moments with the guitar. I could’ve spent those hours immersed in another of this world’s messes, writing about one more broken thing that too many others seem hesitant to approach. I chose instead to take something that had already been broken—something I had repaired with my own hands—and I used it to make music for my wife, and I suppose my daughter, also.

I guess what I’m saying is that, yes, sometimes we should speak about ugly things. Some moments require someone to say what’s being left unsaid. But maybe there are also those moments when the better answer to a wrecked world is to just turn off the screen, pick up something broken, and make it beautiful again.

If you want to hear a couple of those moments, I’m happy to share. Evelyn texted me two of the recordings she made. Again, she set her phone right next to me, so the guitar you’re hearing is the one in my hands—the one left for dead on the side of the road, but now beautiful.

I uploaded the recordings. You can listen to them here. Note: I’m playing along with the actual songs.

https://cruciformstuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/sito-thoma.mp3

https://cruciformstuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/ire-thoma.mp3

Culpability Obscured

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Did you hear about the student at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne? Josiah Junkin is his name. He’s a former vicar in the South Wisconsin District of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). He was arrested a few weeks ago. August 20, to be exact. He was charged with molesting a two-month-old girl. Reports say he did this while changing the child’s diaper. Once investigators got involved, it seems he admitted to molesting the child more than once. And if that wasn’t enough, investigators took pictures of pages in Junkin’s journal, which apparently was a recovery resource from the “7 Pillars of Freedom” sex-addiction program. In the journal, in his own words, he knew that what he was doing was wrong, and that it could get him arrested if anyone ever found out. Still, he continued. He also managed to continue scribbling into his journal disturbing fantasies about children, some involving sexual violence.

Of course, this is all still pretty fresh, so it remains only a criminal allegation. Still, he did confess to the crime. And it seems they have some pretty grotesque pages from his journal. They even have testimony from his wife.

Someone asked me on Wednesday afternoon what I think should happen to him. I answered that he’s entitled to due process. But that wasn’t the question, was it? Just know I say things like that on my wife’s advice. It helps me avoid saying what I’d really do to him if I were in charge. He hurt children. Anyone who hurts children should be very glad I’m not king of the world. I’d definitely build a millstone factory.

Maybe I should ask you. What do you think should happen to him? Although before you answer that question for yourself, I should mention that the first news report I read described Junkin as a “Lutheran church leader.” Interestingly, in the comments that followed, some LCMS folks insisted Junkin shouldn’t be called a leader in the LCMS because he wasn’t ordained. He was a vicar, being supervised by an ordained pastor.

I was intrigued by that weird clarification. In context, it felt a bit like they were trying to shave off an edge of the story. I mean, yes, Junkin was a vicar. But common sense says that a store manager is supervised by a district manager and so on, and yet both are leaders in the business. Vicars are supervised, and yet they’re placed into the life of congregations to preach, teach, visit shut-ins, lead activities, and do so much of what a pastor does. Relative to the Church, that’s leadership in any ordinary sense of the word. Add to this that the South Wisconsin District said Junkin was assigned a substantial role in church planting in Viroqua, even describing him as the person who would “captain” the process. That’s leadership language. On top of that, Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, my alma mater, described him as a church planter and evangelist.

So, yeah, insist on the distinction between a vicar and ordained pastor if you want. But let’s not pretend the word “leader” doesn’t apply. It does.

I bring this up because I’m interested in the instinct that prompted the comment. My opinion? I think something horrific happened, and because it hit close to home for some LCMSers, before the smoke really even cleared, they were reaching for a qualification. In other words, they were looking to put a little room for an explanation between the horror of what happened and the church body to which they belong. Maybe that impulse is understandable. Sometimes the instinct to circle the wagons is stronger than the will to face the trouble squarely.

I think I’m right about this because I experienced it somewhat recently. I wrote a short piece a few weeks ago about how it hurt to see Stephanie White, the coach of the Indiana Fever, and also my cousin, get bashed so publicly for what she said—or maybe didn’t say—about the men-in-women’s sports situation. I never said I agreed with her. In fact, I’m pretty sure I said I didn’t. But the point was that it hurt to watch her get pummeled, if only because she’s family. And I admitted to wanting to help her however I could. I was instinctively willing to soften her situation.

Now, I’ve distracted you long enough. What should happen to Junkin, an LCMS vicar who sexually assaulted a two-month-old baby? And before answering, consider that the evidence more than suggests he’s a profoundly troubled man. His own writings betray a serious mental illness. Does that affect your first reaction? Does it make you want the charges dropped? Does it make you think that because of his mental illness he is no longer fully culpable and prison would be unfair? Does his form of crazy make the baby any less violated, or his actions any less his actions?

My guess is that most folks are answering no to all these questions. Whatever was wrong with Junkin, something in us still insists that a line was crossed and that crossing it must have serious consequences.

Now, keep your answer about Junkin in your pocket for just one more minute.

Lindsay Clancy was mentally ill, too.

I won’t relitigate the case here. Anybody and everybody knows she’s the mother who killed all three of her children—five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan. She strangled them with an exercise band, pulling so hard that she collapsed their throats to mere inches. There’s no question about whether Clancy killed the children. She admitted to it. The question being debated right now by the same anyones and everyones, even after the mistrial, is whether she was criminally responsible and therefore deserves punishment. Her attorney argued that her mental illness—postpartum psychosis—removes her responsibility.

So now, the instinct. Interestingly, Clancy has attracted an extraordinary amount of sympathy. Women had been showing up at the courthouse wearing pink in a show of support. Her defenders point to her history of psychiatric treatment, medications, and the possibility that she experienced postpartum psychosis. For Clancy’s supporters, these things have become the controlling facts of the case. They’re insisting Clancy was sick, and regardless of what she did, the whole dreadful scene must be viewed entirely through the lens of her mental illness.

Okay. Now take Junkin back out of your pocket. He’s sick, too. Apparently, profoundly so. A mentally healthy man doesn’t molest children. A mentally healthy man doesn’t scribble out sexual fantasies about children, let alone his imagination about violent sexual encounters with kids. Whatever diagnosis eventually gets attached to Junkin, something was obviously very wrong with him. That said, I haven’t seen or heard anything about anyone lining up to support him. I haven’t heard anything about anyone wearing matching shirts for Vicar Junkin.

Why not? I guess that’s at least part of the question bothering me. In Junkin’s case, mental illness is being used to explain his culpability. In Clancy’s case, it’s a magic eraser. It’s presented as something capable of swallowing her culpability whole. In other words, it seems for Junkin, the thought is, “Yes, he’s mentally ill, but he still did it, and that makes him responsible,” while, for Clancy, it’s, “Yes, she did it, but she was mentally ill, so she’s not responsible.”

For me, the only thing that helps any of this make sense is the instinct I mentioned.

With Junkin, some LCMS folks saw an ugly headline striking close to home and immediately reached for something to soften it. Stephanie is my cousin, so I felt extra sadness for what she was enduring, and rather than steer into her wrongness, I was willing to soften it. With Clancy, the instinct is the same. For the countless women supporting her, the postpartum aspect is personal. Some have endured postpartum depression and anxiety, or they know someone who has. And so, they reached for the qualifier “Clancy was mentally ill.”

But again, while that qualification may be true, it isn’t the point. The point is there’s at least one two-month-old girl that we know of at the center of Junkin’s story. Who knows if there will be more. With Clancy, there are three dead children—Cora, Dawson, and Callan. If anything, the children in both circumstances must be first and foremost in our consideration. I mean, in the truest sense of the word, justice begins with what was done to the victim. Maybe that’s part of what it means when we say a criminal must be brought to justice. In a moral sense, the offender is brought back to the scene of the crime—to the place where the victim still exists relative to the offense—and made to answer for the harm. The offender is brought there to make things right, not to be diagnosed.

Now, before my critics start piling on, of course, of all people, Christians ought to understand compassion for broken people. Mental illness is a real thing. Seasonal affective disorder is real, too. (Wink wink.) Empathy for folks with these conditions is good. Indeed, we should pray for Junkin. We should pray for Clancy. We should pray that whatever is diseased in either of them is treated. Most of all, we should pray for their repentance. But we’re not praying for these people while wearing moral blinders. Along with repentance, we’re praying for justice. That’s because Christian love understands reconciliation and divine forgiveness while also recognizing that, for certain crimes, prison doors sometimes need to be slammed shut and electric chair switches need to be flipped (Matthew 5:25-26).

If Junkin did what he confessed to doing, his mental illness doesn’t make the baby less violated. Clancy strangled her children. Postpartum psychosis doesn’t make Cora, Dawson, and Callan any less dead. Junkin’s and Clancy’s mental illness may help us understand why they did what they did. But it doesn’t exonerate them.

And perhaps more to my point, neither does our proximity.

So, in the end, I guess at least one thing I’m saying is to keep an eye on that tendency. When something hits close to home, whatever you do, don’t let your proximity to the villain obscure your sightline of the victim.

People Who Go To Church Are Happier

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Every year, about this time, I write something about summer’s departure. The folks here at Our Savior, the people who know me best, have come to expect it, if only because I know I can tell them such things. I keep very little hidden from them. They’re family. And it’s right around this time of year that I start to feel something they’re already expecting me to re-explain.

In one sense, I suppose people do certain things because the calendar says it’s time to do them. For example, when summer ends, you cover the patio furniture, maybe bringing a few deck items into the garage. While you’re in there, you may do a little cleaning. You notice the sun going down earlier. Maybe you start prepping your gardens. Or you finally decide to give the snowblower the lawn mower’s parking space.

If you’re me, you begin writing what amounts to a eulogy for June, July, and August.

I was talking with Jennifer about it on Wednesday. We were sitting on the front porch together watching the sunset. I confessed I’m starting to feel it. And by “it,” I mean the dread.

I tried to explain why the transition from summer to autumn is so difficult for me, even though I know the person I’m confessing to absolutely adores autumn. Yes, she’s one of the sensible people. The sensible people can look at the changing season and say Autumn is beautiful. Because it is. The trees are magnificent. The air is crisp. It means warm fireplaces, favorite blankets, cider and doughnuts, sweaters, and evening bonfires.

Yes. I know. But none of that helps.

Trying to explain the sensation to Jennifer, the closest comparison I could think of was being told by someone you love that she doesn’t love you anymore. I told her it feels like summer has sat across the table from me and said she’s leaving. But there was no fight. There was no scandal. I didn’t mistreat her. If anything, I showered her with devoted affection every single day. And yet, there she is, looking at me with that terrible calmness people sometimes have when they’ve already made up their mind before any substantive conversation could begin. She’s packed her things. She already has another place to go. And although I keep pointing out all the reasons she should stay, she’s not even listening anymore. In fact, even as I’m still pleading, she’s already gotten up from the table and is gathering the last of her things.

And here’s the worst part. I’m a sucker for her abuse. She’s going to come back to me. She does every year. And when she does, she’ll embrace me, and I’ll fall in love with her all over again. But then August will come, and once again, she’ll push me away.

For the record, I’m a relatively even-keeled guy. But this is my personal crazy. And just know, I do what I can to fight it. Indeed, I’m committed to resisting the seasonal sadness. I’ve tried sun lamps. Although to no avail. I have a fake palm tree in my office that somewhat helps. I’m looking at it right now. But notice I said it somewhat helps. Because there it is— pretending. Its green plastic leaves and its tropical ambition—all a manufactured defiance against Michigan’s very real autumn.

Jennifer bought it for me for Christmas a few years ago. It’s supposed to make the room feel more like summer. And, to a point, it works. Until I remember it’s fake.

Now, I’ve probably said enough on the topic already. But you need to know that what’s coming this Tuesday will make matters worse. Tuesday is when our church’s school begins its academic year. Most schools have already started, but ours hasn’t, which means I’m still living in a kind of disputed territory. Summer has filed for separation, but the decree isn’t final yet.

Tuesday is when the arbiter arrives. He’ll bring a bunch of papers issuing formal decrees that divide the property and mandate schedules and locations and times and so many other things. He’ll set the documents before me, and I’ll read them. The morning’s easier pace goes with summer. High-speed mornings and crowded, inflexible schedules, those come to me. The longer, unaccounted-for evenings, those go with summer. So do bare feet on the deck, open windows, and laugh-filled strolls up and down the hill in my side yard with my grandson in the wagon. Summer also gets custody of the fireflies and the croaking bullfrogs in the pond. She also gets to keep the strange freedom of stepping outside, even after a long day of visitations and meetings and whatever, and discovering by the sun’s position that there’s still an entire day waiting for you. The arbiter grants me darkness when I wake up and darkness before I leave the office.

The next thing you know, there I am, standing in the driveway while summer drives away with more than half of everything.

I know this all sounds so overly dramatic. But seasonal melancholy has never cared much about proportionality. And I warned you what to expect. Every August, my heart folds its arms and says, “I want July.”

But now, something else you should expect from me: the Gospel.

There’s a Christian difference between sorrow and despair. Christians are allowed to grieve departures. We are allowed to miss what’s good. We’re even allowed to cry about it. Jesus Himself wept at a tomb, even as He knew He was about to reverse the reason for sadness.

What I’m saying is that the answer to all of this is by no means that I just need to convince myself that I secretly love November. I don’t. And I likely never will. I’m built for summer. I’m wired for hot, sunny days. The answer is to remember “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1). In other words, August belongs to Him. He also owns November. He owns the shortening days. The long ones belong to Him, too.

But there’s still more.

Christ, who is God in the flesh, is “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). No matter the season, He doesn’t pack His things when the leaves start falling. He doesn’t somehow love me in June and lose interest in October. Or maybe better said (because I know plenty of folks who struggle with the kind of depression that extends well beyond any seasonal boundaries), my emotional condition at any given moment does not determine God’s feelings for me. In other words, when my corrupted and sinful heart tells me that everything is getting darker, colder, and farther away, the Holy Spirit works in me the knowledge that God’s promises remain exactly where He put them. In fact, He labors in ways to point me outside of myself to what’s actually true. He points me to Christ crucified and risen. He points me to my baptism. He points me to His Word. He points me to His wonderful supper. There, His verdict on everything has already been rendered. I am forgiven, redeemed, beloved, and most importantly, His. My sadness doesn’t make Him any less faithful. His promises remain true when the sun is shining at nine o’clock at night, and they remain true when it sets at 4:30 PM.

By the way, did you know studies have shown that people who go to church are happier? I wonder why that is. Oh wait. Could it be that the One who made us actually knows what we need?

I just looked back at some peripheral research I did for my doctorate. Believe it or not, I looked into this stuff. And the numbers are pretty remarkable. Gallup conducted a study on happiness levels among churchgoers and those who attend infrequently or not at all. They discovered that 67% of Americans who attend worship weekly describe themselves as “very satisfied” with their personal lives. If you remove the qualifier “very,” interestingly, the number jumps to 92%. In other words, nearly everyone who attends worship weekly reports being happier with life. Even better, more than two-thirds are willing to add the word “very.”

And by the way, it goes beyond simply asking people whether they’re happy. Harvard did a more generic survey a few years ago concerning long-term health data. They found there was 30% less depression in the church-going population. There’ve been a few other longitudinal studies that have found faithful church attendance equals less anxiety, hopelessness, and loneliness, while also being associated with a stronger sense of purpose and the ability to explain why that is.

Of course, statistics are not the Gospel. Not to mention, I know full well that Christians get depressed. I just spent the first half of this morning’s write-up telling you about how hard autumn is for me. Besides, I’m a pastor. I know darn well that Christians suffer terribly. I know darn well that Christians sit in pews with tears in their eyes and sometimes cannot explain why they hurt.

Now, I know correlation, as statistical science rightly reminds us, does not by itself prove causation. Still, I have to smile a little at the numbers. That’s because I know God’s heart. He loves me. And so, He gathers me to Himself in worship. A very important byproduct is that He puts me beside other sinners who need His merciful love just as much as I do. We receive His Word together. Even better, He gives us brothers and sisters who notice when we’re missing. In the liturgy, He gives us words to confess, prayers to pray, hymns to sing—all sentences we can speak when we simply cannot find the right words on our own. And in the middle of all of it, Christ is present. That’s the promise.

And so, the researchers come along with clipboards and spreadsheets and discover that, strangely enough, people immersed in all of this seem to fare better. Go figure.

So, to wrap this up, yes, summer is leaving me again. And yes, I’ll likely write another article next year that sounds an awful lot like this one. I’ll complain that the sun is setting too early. I’ll bristle at the thought of Michigan’s forthcoming cold. I’ll probably say something reminiscent of the arbiter who arrives every year to divide the possessions, and I’ll remember I’m getting the shorter end of the custody stick.

But am I really? Because I am keeping Christ. Or more accurately, Christ is keeping me. And unlike summer, He has promised never to leave me nor forsake me (Hebrews 13:5).

So, yeah, summer may leave. But she does so beneath a promise far superior to the season, which is that Christ doesn’t leave. With that, Ecclesiastes 3:11 makes a little more sense to me: “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” That includes Michigan’s autumn. And why? Because Christ is the beauty in every season.

Hold Fast to What’s True and Push Back

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If you visit with my weekend message every Sunday, you’ll remember that I was in the emergency room last week. At about one o’clock last Sunday, I made the trip because my eye had swollen shut.

Essentially, for the last few weeks, I’ve been dealing with an unrelated issue involving the gel inside my eye pulling away from the retina. Apparently, this can happen with age. However, there’s a possibility that the process can cause a retinal tear, so I went to see a retina specialist, and now I’m paying close attention to any changes in my vision.

That’s the background. It isn’t the actual story.

Let me start by saying that if you’ve never had a retina specialist inspect the deepest recesses of your eyeballs, blessed are you. It’s not a pleasant experience. It’s thoroughly intrusive. There are instruments. There’s pressure. There are moments when you wonder whether the doctor is deciding whether he wants to examine your retinas from the front, or simply push your eyeballs through the back of your skull and inspect them from the other side. And the thing is, you simply hold still and endure it because that’s what you’re supposed to do.

After the examination, my eyes were irritated—my left eye more so than the right. I also had a few blurry spots in that eye. I assumed this was the result of the examination itself, not to mention that’s the eye that had already been having the most trouble. Either way, the doctor had just spent considerable time poking, prodding, pressing, and otherwise doing things to both eyes that I absolutely did not enjoy.

So, I figured whatever was irritating my eye would get better with time.

A few days later, something resembling a stye developed beneath my eyelid. I didn’t know it was there. Not yet. The irritation continued. Then the swelling started. I later learned that something had apparently been torn during the examination, and the area had become infected. Again, I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew was that my eye was becoming increasingly useless.

Now, I couldn’t get an immediate appointment with my regular doctor, so I went to an urgent care in Fenton. The PA looked at it and said it was probably just a stye. Okay, fine. Drops were prescribed. But before walking out the door, I asked about getting an antibiotic, too, because by then, I had begun to suspect that something else was going on. And for the record, I’m hardly a person who goes fishing for antibiotics. I can barely remember the last time I needed them. In fact, I rarely make trips to the doctor for anything. Most everything that ever happens to me can be solved with a two-fingered pour of Scotch. But in this case, I had a distinct sense that something more than whisky was required. And so, I asked. I was told antibiotics weren’t necessary. Use the drops. Apply warm compresses. Give it twenty-four to forty-eight hours. It would get better. So, I did exactly what I was told, and I did so religiously. But it got significantly worse.

Two days later, I called my doctor’s office and more or less begged them to find a place for me. They gave me an appointment for the following morning, which was Friday. Again, I explained the entire history. I explained the retinal examination. I explained the irritation that followed. I explained how the swelling progressed. I explained that the drops were not helping. Same conclusion. It’s probably a stye. This time, I was prescribed a different drop—something stronger.

Again, I asked about an antibiotic, just in case. Again, I was told no. Again, I was told to continue the warm compresses and give the new drops twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Again, I went home with the new drops and did exactly what I was told. And again, it only got worse.

By early Sunday morning, the situation had changed considerably. I woke up and couldn’t see out of the eye because it had swollen shut. I could barely force it open to use the drops. The swelling had spread around the eye socket, and I was beginning to feel pain along the bone beside and beneath the eye. The entire area had become extremely sensitive to the touch. I woke Jennifer and told her I was going to the emergency room.

Now, get this. The woman in scrubs at the check-in desk, after I explained why I was there, tried to talk me out of checking in. “It’s probably just a stye,” she said. “I get those all the time.” She asked to see the drops I was using. She recognized them and suggested I just needed more time for them to work. She said her styes, with the same drops, usually went away on their own after about ten days or so. At one point, she told me that looking at me was almost like looking at herself when she had one.

Needless to say, it was late, and I was already exhausted. My eye was swollen shut. Every medical professional before this had already told me I had a stye. And now, before I had even officially checked into the emergency room, its gatekeeper was essentially telling me the same stupid thing—and was trying to talk me out of checking in.

I nearly left. I really did. I almost walked back out to my car, went home, and kept fighting whatever was happening to me with the stupid little drop squirter and warm compresses. And why? Well, forget the pressure building in my eye for a moment. There’s a strange psychological pressure that develops when enough people with medical credentials keep telling you the same thing. Eventually, you begin wondering whether you’re experiencing what you’re experiencing, that maybe you’re the unreasonable one. Am I overreacting? Maybe the “experts” are right and I just need to give the drops another day—or as the lady at the check-in desk insinuated, ten more days.

But I’m telling you, I knew something was wrong. With that, I insisted that I be seen by someone.

The first doctor who came in was a student. I gave her the entire history, beginning with the retinal examination and continuing through the visits, the drops, the compresses, the swelling, and the increasing pain. She examined the eye and then left. Eventually, another doctor came in. (By the way, is there a class in nursing and medical school devoted to not writing anything down? I gave the same history again and again and again at every visit along the way.) With that, a similar examination. But this time, something was different. At one point, the second doctor said something along the lines of, “I’ve never seen a stye actually do what this one is doing.” I didn’t like the sound of what she was saying. And yet, her words were sort of reassuring, if only because someone had finally acknowledged something other than what everyone else had been saying all along.

She said she wanted to do a little research. And then she left. Eventually she returned with the ER’s supervising physician.

Keep in mind, all of this occurred over several hours. If you’ve ever been to an emergency room, then you know time operates very differently there. Entire civilizations can rise and fall while you’re sitting beneath fluorescent lighting waiting for someone to tap on the door or curtain and say, “I’m Doctor so-and-so. What’s brought you in here tonight?” Again, is anyone writing anything down?

Anyway, the supervising doctor examined me, performed a few tests, and then, suddenly, there it was. This wasn’t simply a stye. She was certain I had preseptal cellulitis. The infection was spreading through the tissue around my eye, and it had progressed to the point that it could become orbital cellulitis, which is considerably more dangerous. If you don’t get on it right away, you can go blind. This is to say, I needed an antibiotic. Like, days ago! And as if that wasn’t enough, she said the drops I had been using so diligently were actually making the situation significantly worse. Go figure.

Now, jump ahead a few days. After I set the drops aside and started slamming down a proper antibiotic, the swelling had almost completely disappeared by Tuesday. I could open the eye normally. I could see through it. The blurring was, for the most part, gone. Although there’s something else I should at least mention. We had some leftover antibiotics in our medicine bin from one of the kids’ prescriptions. After my visit to the doctor’s office, and before the emergency room visit, I had already started taking them. As it turns out, they were the same antibiotic the ER eventually prescribed. A slightly smaller dosage, but still the same stuff. I’m betting that those first few punches are why things were already turning around by Tuesday. And that only reinforced what had been bothering me all along. I knew something wasn’t right.

Now, to start wrapping this up, as with everything, there’s a lesson here somewhere. I suppose first, I should acknowledge that doctors know plenty of things I don’t. But that said, I’ve never been one to surrender my reason, senses, and judgment entirely because someone in authority has spoken. It’s just never proven to be a very good idea. Then came COVID, and that instinct stopped being theoretical. And not just for me. So many learned there’s a distinct difference between respecting expertise and abandoning your own capacity to think, observe, question, and make judgments.

I suppose next, you should know I had a brief conversation with the first ER doctor about my job as a pastor—because, making small talk, she asked what I do. Unsurprisingly, I wandered into how frustrated I was about everything happening at the moment, but at the same time I didn’t want to be rude, becoming the ratchety patient no one wants to deal with. I told her that Christian sensibility often leaves guys like me somewhere between arrogance and passivity. What I meant was that conviction can rather easily become egotism: I know what’s what and I refuse to accept anything other than what I want. But humility has its own danger. A Christian can become so reluctant to assert himself, so determined to avoid conflict, that he begins distrusting what is plainly in front of him and allows dangerous falsehood to slip through unchallenged.

Remember, I almost walked out of the emergency room. I’d been told the same thing so many times that I was beginning to distrust what I could quite literally see happening to my own face. And so, maybe the lesson in all of this is that humility never requires us to pretend we don’t know what we know. It doesn’t require us to ignore the evidence in front of us or surrender our judgment whenever the opposition speaks confidently. Christian humility starts with recognizing that we can be wrong. But it also recognizes that everyone else can be wrong, too.

After this whole episode, I’m convinced that this is one more reason why Saint Paul wrote, “Test everything and hold fast to what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). For as humble as Christians ought to be, we’re not supposed to switch off our brains and obey whoever happens to be standing before us. I mean, just think about the Bereans. They were praised because they listened to Paul himself and then searched the Scriptures to see whether what he was telling them was true (Acts 17:11). Indeed, they didn’t reject the teacher. But they also didn’t surrender themselves to him. Not yet. First, they listened. Then they tested what he said, measuring it against the truth of God’s Word.

That’s a faithful Christian posture toward every earthly authority, if ever there was one. Show respect to the office. Receive good and honest counsel with gratitude. Be humble enough to admit when someone knows more than you do. But never—ever!—confuse humility with surrendering your responsibility to seek and maintain truth.

In the explanation of the First Article of the Apostles’ Creed in Luther’s Small Catechism, Luther writes that God “has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them.” This is to say, God made you, and He gave you the necessary faculties (eyes, ears, senses, and the like) for feeding a reasonable mind capable of discernment. And then, later in his explanation of the Third Article, Luther insists that “the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.” This means that, yes, our reason and senses are gifts from God. And yet, they are not chief. For the Christian, they are ultimately steered by the Word, the means through which the Holy Spirit establishes faith and keeps us anchored to what is really true. Indeed, God’s Word stands above every human authority, and it is by God’s Word that every human claim must finally be measured.

It even helps keep our own claims in check, because just as pride can make a person unteachable, blind agreement for the sake of a person’s authority or celebrity can also lead people away from plain truth.

So, to all of this, I say listen carefully. Think clearly. Ask questions. Test what you’re being told. Be humble enough to be corrected, but courageous enough to say, when necessary, “I hear what you’re saying, Doc, and I think you’re wrong.” And through it all, let faithfulness to Christ and His Word remain the goal. Because in the end, the Christian’s task isn’t to defend his own opinions or surrender to someone else’s. It is to hold fast to what’s true.

Excommunication? Yes.

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I spent the early hours of this morning in the ER. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be avoided. I’ve been dealing with trouble in my left eye for the last few weeks, and somewhere along the way, it appears a retina specialist injured it badly enough that it became severely infected. It has only gotten worse over the last week, and, as it turns out, two different eyedrop prescriptions from two separate but equally concerned visits were making things worse. I woke up early this morning realizing that a trip to the ER was unavoidable. Hopefully, I have what I need now. And, as it would be for any grossly disfigured, pirate-like person, I didn’t want to leave anyone waiting on the plank. So, after some rest, time with God’s Word, and prayer, I started tapping away at something I’ve been thinking about all week and was determined to get out.

Maybe you heard the news about Governor Healey in Massachusetts? If not, maybe I should actually start with something else first. And by something else, I mean a definition of excommunication, if only because some Roman Catholics are calling for Healey, a confessing Roman Catholic, to be excommunicated. I’ll get to the reason for the calls in a moment.

In the meantime, let me just say that excommunication is probably one of the most misunderstood practices of the Christian Church. For the most part, people hear the word “excommunication” and imagine punishment. But that’s not excommunication’s point.

Excommunication exists for repentance, absolution, and restoration. Jesus establishes the pattern in Matthew 18:15–20, showing Christians how to move patiently from private admonition toward gathering the whole Church’s engagement. But the process only progresses step by step as the sinner refuses to hear God’s Word, repent, and amend. Still, even in the final step—excommunication—restoration remains the goal.

All of this is to say that excommunication is the Church, in love, refusing to allow an impenitent sinner to exist comfortably in dangerous falsehood that leads away from eternal life to eternal condemnation. For the sake of the faithful, it also means guarding the Church from pretending that open, persistent, and unrepentant sin is somehow compatible with a faithful Christian confession.

Now, back to Governor Healey.

Healey, a Catholic, gleefully signed legislation last week eliminating the state’s previous legal restrictions on abortion after 24 weeks. Under the new law, abortions will be legal right up to birth. You read that right. As it is here in Michigan, a full-term baby can now be aborted in Massachusetts, too. The state’s Catholic bishops had already condemned the measure, even going so far as to call it a “gravely immoral” measure. Of course, that’s a sanitized description. I’d call it state-sanctioned barbarism.

I’ve implied the appropriateness of excommunication for Christians who openly defend and support abortion. In fact, I can think of a couple of folks in the past who transferred from Our Savior to other local LCMS congregations because I spoke those words out loud. I remember my District circuit visitor at the time mentioning the Johnson Amendment, seemingly in passing, and implying that I might be offending someone’s civil rights. I found the argument strange. Why? Because, ultimately, he didn’t ground his position in the Word of God, but instead said something more like, “You’d better be careful what you say about the state, because the state says so.”

That said, forget for a moment that God’s Word seems to matter very little to folks in these situations and instead consider that too many are way more confident than accurate with their Johnson Amendment invocation. Essentially, under section 501(c)(3), churches and other tax-exempt organizations are prohibited from financial partisanship. This means churches cannot use the congregation’s money to intervene in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to particular candidates. An easy example is that it can’t donate to or print materials on behalf of a local candidate or party.

What the Johnson Amendment does not say is that churches must become politically mute. Churches remain free to preach and teach concerning anything and everything under the sun. They may take positions on political issues, ideologies, legislation, public policies, and whatever, even when those issues divide candidates. And that’s good, because almost everything in our world is, in some way, Christological, and as such, the Church has both the freedom and the responsibility to engage with it, while also shepherding God’s people through it.

Still, remember that excommunication looks like punishment to the onlooking world, even though it isn’t. Add to that the misunderstanding that many interpret the Johnson Amendment as protection against political persecution or punishment, and we have a problem. But the problem only exists when a person gets both excommunication and the Johnson Amendment wrong at the exact same time.

Regardless of the fact that nothing, not even the U.S. Constitution, supersedes God’s authority, the Johnson Amendment does not say that a church must suspend its doctrine whenever a sinner happens to hold public office or the sinner’s dealings are labeled “out-of-bounds” politically by the culture. The Johnson Amendment does not erase the Lord’s instructions in Matthew 18. In fact, the IRS itself recognizes this by identifying a “formal code of doctrine and discipline” as one of the essential characteristics associated with churches.

Therefore, excommunication cannot be called a political punishment when exercised rightly. The Church is not saying, “You voted incorrectly, so we’re going to hurt you.” The Church is saying, “Through your actions in the public square, you are persisting openly and unrepentantly in something God calls sin, and because we love you too much to lie to you about it, we cannot pretend everything is fine. Repent, be absolved, and amend the sinful life.” And this would be the same process for everyone, whether the sin was committed in a voting booth, at a governor’s desk, in a bedroom, or wherever.

In short, the IRS’s concerns revolve around dollars. It can regulate a church’s use of finances in the public square. But it does not administer the Office of the Keys—the Church’s authority from Christ to forgive and retain sins among its Christians in the public square.

Looking back at everything I’ve just written, I need to be clear, especially for the usual suspects who are likely already preparing to email or message me privately. Understand that I’m not at all suggesting that to be a Christian, one must be a registered Republican. All political parties are imperfect human institutions, and there are plenty of things within the Republican Party that Christians can and should criticize. However, we shouldn’t pretend the two major parties occupy morally equivalent ground on matters about which God’s Word speaks clearly.

They just don’t. Not anymore. Not in 2026.

For one, the modern Democrat Party is nothing like what it used to be. It has committed itself institutionally to dreadfully ungodly positions concerning abortion, human sexuality, marriage, and a whole host of other platform planks that stand in direct contradiction to Christian teaching. And these are not obscure planks buried somewhere on page seventy-three of a policy document. They’re the defining commitments of the party—its principal talking points. On the other hand, while the Republican Party is often just as embarrassingly imperfect on other topics, when it comes to the fundamental moral questions, it remains the only major American political party whose stated positions leave any meaningful room for Christian conviction in the public square.

So, again, to my critics, I would never say that voting Republican makes someone a Christian. Salvation does not come through a ballot box, and the GOP is not the Kingdom of God. But what I am saying is that if Christians care at all about faithful engagement with the world around them, they forfeit the right to pretend that political choices occur in some morally sterilized chamber where God’s Word no longer applies. I’m also saying that at some point, continued political association with official platforms that stand in opposition to God’s Word becomes more than association. It becomes advocacy. It becomes cooperation. It becomes the deliberate lending of oneself—opinions, voice, vote, money, influence, public service, and so much more—to perpetuate things God has strictly forbidden.

That’s where I think the question of church discipline becomes unavoidable.

If a Christian willfully persists in sin, the Church needs to act according to the Lord’s mandate. If throughout correction, the person remains steadfastly impenitent, even as the goal of restoration remains, the door of heaven is closed until he repents. That’s why the Church calls this the Office of the Keys. It means the authority Christ gives His Church to forgive the sins of the repentant and to retain the sins of the impenitent—to open the door with the Gospel and, when necessary, to close it until repentance comes (Matthew 16:19 and 18:18, as well as John 20:22–23).

There’s no doubt in my mind that this applies when the sin has been folded into someone’s politics. If a Christian knowingly and willfully supports and/or makes possible the destruction of unborn life, openly celebrates the mutilation of healthy bodies in the name of gender ideology, or publicly advances other teachings fundamentally contrary to the Christian faith, the Church cannot simply shrug and say, “Well, that’s your political opinion.” Labeling something “political” isn’t a baptismal font. It doesn’t wash the sin away.

So, I suppose the harder question, then, is not whether someone has a D or an R beside his or her name. The question I’m suggesting we consider is whether political loyalty has become an actual loophole that allows, first, for a Christian to deliberately, publicly, and unrepentantly participate in what Christ confesses to be sin, and second, for a pastor to be absolved of having to deal with it like all other sins.

I think it has become just such a loophole. And I think we need to close it, regardless of the fallout, if only because the topic itself is not complicated. In Confessional Lutheranism, we already know that no matter the real or hypothetical scenario, everything must be observed through the lens of God’s Word. That also means, regardless of person—regardless of someone’s job or political office or opinions or whatever—no exemption from Matthew 18 exists for anyone. We all fall under its authority.

In Healey’s case, Massachusetts’ own Catholic bishops have already identified the moral character of what occurred. If they’ve pursued correction according to the Lord’s mandate, and still there has been no repentance and amendment of the sinful life, then Healey should be excommunicated. She used the authority entrusted to her to oppose Christ’s holy Word, then celebrated the moment and smiled for the cameras while doing it, proving her willful rebellion.

In the end, some folks will read everything here and immediately start tallying sins. “But what about this Republican position? What about that Libertarian one?” The question is not whether other sins exist or whether the Church has failed to confront them consistently. The question is whether clear, persistent, public impenitence should simply be ignored. I’m saying it shouldn’t.

Of course, the devil is remarkably skilled at taking what is objectively true and smearing it with enough subjectivity that, before long, God’s Word becomes “your interpretation,” or “your opinion.” That trick has been working for a very long time. Once that happens, the next move is kind of predictable. Rather than asking what the Church is obligated to say and do in all circumstances according to God’s Word, people start asking what the Church is permitted to say and do in certain contexts according to the government’s allowance.

But just remember, the Church’s responsibility to respond to anything doesn’t live or die according to the government’s rules. I can promise you that faithful adherence to the Johnson Amendment’s tax-exemption concerns will not be a part of the Last Day’s calculus. There’ll be no IRS agent seated beside the throne of Christ.

Besides, the Church should never be more concerned about its 501(c)(3) status than its call to bear the Office of the Keys. One comes from the heart of Caesar. The other, from the heart of Christ. Only one survives the grave.