I Still Have to Get the Garbage Out

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I’m going to keep this as short as I can. To start, let me just say that this past week was pretty rough, especially Tuesday. I’m not even talking about the election. I’m saddened by the results, for sure. And yet, as my friend and one of our faithful school teachers mentioned in the school hallway on Wednesday morning, “It’s a good thing my eternal hope isn’t in my government.” Amen to that. Kingdoms rise and fall. But the Kingdom of Christ is eternal. With that in our hearts, each day is brand new.

I won’t get into what made Tuesday particularly challenging. Suffice it to say, there are days when the world and the people in it more than prove humanity’s perpetual spiral into madness. In this case, that world went after my family, enough that some among us spent many hours crying.

When the world comes after me, personally, it’s no big deal. It hurts sometimes. Still, whatever. But when it’s my family, well, that changes the weight of things. Right or wrong, I heard myself whisper more than once this past week that the character Reverend Daniel Michaels didn’t come from nowhere. And yet, back here in reality, it seems there’s little anyone can (or even seems willing to) do in an online world to stop any of it. And so, inevitably, there you stand, staring at the wreckage, wondering what on earth could possibly happen next.

But here’s the thing.  As always, the sun set on Tuesday and rose again on Wednesday. And guess what. I still had to get up on Wednesday morning and take the garbage to the street. Imagine that. For the most part, the world treated me and my family like a punching bag all day on Tuesday. And yet, there I was, still hurting, but also dragging a trash can down the driveway.

You know me. There’s a lesson in everything if you’re willing to listen and think about it.

I suppose the first noticeable thing in all this is that life continues, even after a hard day. When I got up, I still needed to get a shower, get dressed, and eat some breakfast. When I was at the street with the garbage can, I noticed my neighbor still needed to take his dogs out to do their business. Leaving my subdivision and turning onto the main road, I passed a garbage truck headed toward another neighborhood. Apparently, the garbage truck wasn’t concerned with how badly anyone’s Tuesday went. It was still on its way to empty their trash.

Now, some might simply consider all of this the relentless indifference of life. I suppose there’s something to that. But Christians know something beyond such psychological terms. We know that the sun setting on Tuesday and rising on Wednesday are, as I already hinted at before, reminders of God’s loving care. It was the Prophet Jeremiah who wrote so encouragingly that God’s mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23).

Of course, God’s Word has plenty of other encouraging texts. But even with just this one in my pocket, by the power of the Holy Spirit at work in and through it, everything about the day before me changes. Tuesday may have brought cruelty, but it has no authority over what God promises for Wednesday. Each day is a new day in Him. And in that day, by the same Gospel, courage is already waiting there for me when I awaken.

For the record, when I use the word “courage,” I don’t mean whatever sense is behind a guy charging into battle, his sword raised and his voice thundering above those who are most certainly his enemies. It can be that sometimes. But I’m here to say that most days it looks a whole lot more like a punch-drunk father and husband getting out of bed, saying a prayer, putting on his shoes, and rather than climbing into his Jeep and driving to Florida never to be seen again, he rolls the family garbage cans out to the street and then goes off to keep doing what God has called him to do. That’s at least a part of the kind of courage God imputes to each day. It’s the kind that already knows the Christian faith is remarkably well-equipped for days like Tuesday. I mean, as a Lutheran, my heritage isn’t a theology of glory, but rather a theology of the cross. Confessional Lutherans know something about suffering and loss and things that look and feel utterly hopeless. That’s because we know the Gospel keeps the preaching of Christ crucified at the center of all we are (1 Corinthians 1:23). We understand the last enemy, death, has already been destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26) by the One who rose again and gave the spoils of His triumph to all believers (1 Corinthians 15:54-58).

In other words, there isn’t anything  that has happened or will happen on any day of any week in any year that can outweigh Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The worst any day can bring is mortal death. But the person and work of Christ assures us that the grave will never have the final word on any particular tomorrow, not even our eternal one.

That, my friends, is the Gospel’s import for every day. And it’s the reason Christians can move forward, even through tears and sleeplessness and whatever else the world might throw at us. Christ is risen. Our sins are forgiven. Death has been conquered. And by Holy Baptism, we’ve been joined to that victory.

Of course, none of this even guarantees that any particular day will ever be easy at all. It guarantees something infinitely better. It certifies that Christ is present in each of our days, just as He was with the Thoma family on Tuesday, and then again on Wednesday, then also Thursday, and so on—just as He will be when the Last Day finally arrives.

So, suit up. Pray. Serve your neighbor. Love your family. Get in the game and play hard. Do the work God has given for you to do. And if it’s Wednesday and you live in Linden, take the garbage to the street—because the Lord has died and risen to save you, and with that, there’s living to be done.

Now, one last thing before I go.

It just so happens I have the greatest family on the planet. My children really are best friends to one another, being inseparable in every way. Only a second or two at our dinner table and you’ll know. Add to this that Jennifer is par excellence as a Christian wife and mother, making her a daily prize I’m forever ready to win. Put all of these human beings (along with their significant others) into a room together, and I’m overwhelmed with gratitude to God for the privilege of loving them, standing beside them, and being their father and husband. I couldn’t have a better life in this regard, even if I designed it myself. And truth be told, the events of this past week, if anything, have only reaffirmed how precious my family is to me, and how grateful I am that they are immovable in their love for one another and their confession of Christ.

God be praised for this. Indeed, and amen.

Ten More Seconds

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Churches around the world are celebrating All Saints’ Day today. Well, many are. I wonder about the ones that aren’t. Personally, I think they’re really missing out on something substantive.

I know a Christian’s salvation doesn’t depend on observing a particular day. But then again, life in general doesn’t depend on celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, either. Still, we do our best not to let such remembrances slip by unnoticed, if only because we love the ones we’re celebrating.

So, why not celebrate All Saints’ Day? As I wrote in my little volume Kids in the Divine Service, the Church sets the day aside to “thank God for the saints who have gone before us because of their great example of faith and God’s great mercy in their lives!” Essential to this is the promise that death will never have the final word for those who belong to Christ. Even better, it means Christians who die are not gone. Not really. They’re just away. And we’ll see them again. It seems to me that a day devoted to such things is worth observing. It’s certainly more deserving than something like the Super Bowl, which is another day folks put a lot of effort into celebrating.

There’s another aspect to the day that resonates with me. Admittedly, it maybe even hurts a little. It’s not necessarily a bad hurt. But that’s because it sees the visceral nature of separation from the ones we love through the Gospel lens. And by the way, notice I said, “ones we love,” not “ones we loved.” A relatively unsung part of the All Saints’ Day celebration is its present tense focus. Dead or alive, past or present, everyone who believes in Christ is, right now, a saint (a holy one set apart from the world and a part of God’s family), whether in the Church on earth (the Church Militant) or the Church in heaven (the Church Triumphant). From that perspective, even as we’re separated, mortal time and location begin losing their grip. In other words, death’s past-tense grammar doesn’t really fit the situation anymore. We don’t say of someone who died, “He was my friend.” That would be weird. It’s weird because he’s just somewhere else. And so, we say, “He is my friend.”

I know that was a little bit of a tangent. I meant to say something about the part that hurts—the separation—and I’ll bet plenty reading this know exactly what I mean by it before having to read any further. I first experienced it in its fullest measure when my brother Michael died back in July of 1995. I was there when his chest lifted and then fell, exhaling for the last time. In one second, he was there. The next, he wasn’t. And I wanted nothing more than to be with him. I knew I would one day. But that didn’t change the fact that, while driving home from the hospital, strangely, the song “Rocket Man” by Elton John happened to be playing on the radio, and the line “And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time” hit so incredibly hard that I nearly drove into a ditch.

I missed him so badly. Thirty-one years later, the separation is a little easier, but I still feel it.

Maybe to unpack this a little more, let me share something I might not normally share—a more intimate moment between Jennifer and me.

A few weeks ago, we were driving home from Rogers City, Michigan. We’d taken a few desperately needed days to get away from the demands of the pastoral life. As you might guess, it was one of those long drives that gives two people time to talk about everything and nothing. Somewhere along the way, our conversation turned to family, namely, to thanking God for His countless blessings given to us over the years.

I don’t remember precisely what prompted the thought, but at one point, I told Jennifer something I meant with every fiber of my being. I told her that if she were to die before I did, and someone—an angel maybe—suddenly showed up at my door with the genuine power to grant me ten more seconds with her, other than my faith in Jesus (because there’s nothing in this world worth surrendering my Lord), I’d give everything I own to have those seconds.

When I said everything, I meant everything. The house and everything in it. Whatever money I have. Every possession. Every earthly comfort. Every mental and motor skill. Everything. Again, my faith is the one exception. But everything else? Take it. In exchange for only ten seconds? Yes. I’d spend the rest of my life with absolutely nothing. And I’d accept the offer without even blinking.

I suppose someone out there reading this might consider it a foolish bargain. After all, what can anyone accomplish in ten seconds? I’d barely get a few words out before she’d be gone again. And then what? I’d have the rest of my days, except now I’d have nothing.

Trust me when I say that I understand the objection. Jen certainly gave hers. But I also understand the value of ten seconds when no more seconds are left. I was there when the doctor said there was nothing else they could do for my brother. I watched those nurses walk around his bed, removing tubes and turning off machines. If that were my lot with Jen, I’d already know each second’s gravity. Ten more seconds to see Jen smile again? Yes. Ten more seconds to hear her voice? Yes. Ten more seconds to hold her hand, feeling its warmth? Yes. Ten more seconds to tell her how much I love her, and to hear her say the same? Absolutely, yes.

Anyone who’s ever sat beside a hospital bed watching someone they love slip away, you know darn well what I mean by this.

I suppose this brings me back around to All Saints’ Day. There’s something worth considering here, especially for Christians.

In Psalm 90, we read a prayer attributed to Moses. Praying along, right in the middle of it, we ask, “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (v. 12). Unfortunately, even as Christians, we remain remarkably good at counting so much of what doesn’t matter. We count the things we own. We count our money. Our curriculum vitae gets longer and longer as we chalk up our various accomplishments. We run ourselves ragged trying to keep up with this or that task, each piling on the one before it. That’s why I left for Rogers City with Jen. I was at my wits’ end from the demands. I’d become a genie in a bottle for too many, and I needed to get away.

But that’s not the point. The point is that we waste enormous amounts of time worrying about and doing and calculating things that will have no value or standing where faith is actually taking us. Meanwhile, the moments God gives us with the people we love pass by, one after another, and we rarely stop to consider their value until they’re no longer with us.

As a pastor who’s sat beside plenty of people in their last moments—and will likely sit beside plenty more—I always leave those events feeling the very real weight of Psalm 90’s words. I realize those words were written for people. I realize numbering our days means admitting that they’re actually numbered in the first place. But then I go home and hug my wife and children. That’s because I was reminded, once again, that time itself is a gift from God, and that each tick of the clock is incredibly valuable, and I want to apply my heart “unto wisdom,” using each as best I can.

It seems to me that All Saints’ Day is at least one day on the Church’s calendar when this very important realization comes a little more into focus.

But still, if you’ll give me a few more moments of your time, there’s a little more I want to say.

Don’t forget that for Christians, applying one’s heart “unto wisdom” begins and ends with Christ. That’s why I said I’d give up anything and everything for Jen except my faith. For as valuable as those ten seconds with her would be, the Gospel promises infinitely more time. By the power of the Holy Spirit for faith in Christ’s death and resurrection, I’m promised a place where she is, and in that place, a life unbound by time (John 14:19). The ten seconds I would surrender are hardly worth comparing to the eternity Christ has already purchased and won for both of us.

So, let’s be clear about something. All Saints’ Day is not about worshipping or praying or talking to or putting any mortal human being we love above Christ. Well, Confessional Lutherans aren’t doing anything like that. We’re thanking God for sending His Son so our family and friends who trusted in Him could be present in the Church Triumphant—where we want to be, too! But until we’re reunited, All Saints’ Day comforts us with the truth that the grave and the separation it appears to impose have an expiration date, and that while we can’t see or talk to our loved ones, one day, that’ll change, and the tears we shed now will eventually be wiped away by the very hands that were pierced for us, just as the reading from Revelation 7 appointed for All Saints’ Day declares (v. 17).

In the meantime, we’re mindful of the time we have with the saints who are still with us. We have opportunities to love them, laugh with them, forgive them, be forgiven by them, embrace them, and tell them what they mean to us. We have time to put aside the distractions, even for a little while, and pay attention to the living blessings sitting across the dinner table or riding beside us in the car.

None of us knows how long we’ll have with them, which makes even ten seconds worth everything. But again, by faith, we know eternity’s value. And together in Christ, we know that when we’re eventually separated, a glorious reunion is in our future. Indeed, and amen! We’ll be with them again in an eternal time and place where clocks cannot tick, and words like “separation” or “sadness” or “goodbye” lose all their meaning.

Only One Anthem for Me

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As is always the case in mid-October, I’m required to attend an English District regional conference. It just wrapped up this past Wednesday in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The goal of the mandatory gathering is not only to handle regional business, but also to bring pastors and district leaders together for fellowship and learning.

Before I go in the direction I feel like going this morning, there are three contextual details you need to know. First, for those who don’t know what I mean by “English District,” you need to know that the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) is divided into districts, and some districts divide themselves into regions. But unlike the Michigan District or the Northern Illinois District, the English District is non-geographical and has congregations throughout the continental United States and Canada.

That’s the second thing you need to know, the Canada part. Essentially, when we gather for business in our various regions throughout the country, it sometimes includes Canadians. In fact, for the first time in our district’s history, our Bishop, Reverend Jefferey Miskus, is Canadian.

Third, and I could be wrong about this, but I think my particular regional conference is the one most of the Canadian pastors in the English District attend. Again, I could be wrong about that. Either way, it’s been our region’s practice before the first meal to pray and then to sing both the Canadian and American national anthems. And I suppose that’s where I want to go this morning.

On my part, I’ve always found this tradition interesting, especially since nearly everyone in the group sings both anthems. Notice I said “nearly everyone.” I don’t sing the Canadian anthem. I never have. I only sing the American national anthem. Of course, I stand respectfully for the Canadian anthem, but I leave any musical devotion to Canada to the Canadians.

My reason? I’m an American. I’m devoted to and love my country. Sure, I appreciate Canada. But when it comes down to it, I’m grateful to God for the extraordinary freedoms I’ve inherited on this side of the border, ones purchased and preserved at considerable cost by generations of Americans who came before me and knew liberty’s value.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have no trouble respecting another nation’s affection for its homeland. I’m glad they do, and I admire them for it. Still, patriotism isn’t just a word to me. It actually means something. It’s definitely more than a polite gesture of putting my hand over my heart and singing along with everyone else because that’s what we do before getting down to conference business. In truth, whether I’m at one of my daughter’s volleyball games or I’m at an English District conference, when I sing our national anthem, I’m very nearly moved to tears sometimes, especially in that moment we sing “our flag was still there,” which I’ll get back to in a second.

In the meantime, when I’m singing America’s national anthem, I’m making a declaration about my homeland. I’m acknowledging its foundation and history, and I’m saying it stands above all others as best.

And I’m devoted to it in all its bestness.

Now, for the easily offended among us, nothing I’ve said should convince you that I don’t like Canadians. The first proof of this is that during breakfast on the last day of the conference, having my choice of seating in the hotel dining area, I went and sat among a group of gathered Canadians, me being the lone American at the two tables. And why wouldn’t I sit there? They’re brothers in Christ. They’re good, godly folks serving our Lord faithfully.

That said, it didn’t take long for the international diplomacy to deteriorate.

I don’t remember how it came up, but someone revisited the fact that our district bishop, who, again, is Canadian, couldn’t attend the conference because he couldn’t get into the country. Somehow, his visa had been frozen, or something like that, and no one at either table seemed to know the reasons why. Through humor’s filter, the conversation turned to border policies, with at least one in the group noting that Americans apparently have a much easier time traveling back and forth between the two countries—which was to say, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that Canada is a much friendlier and more welcoming country than the U.S. and that its border policies were proof.

After that, someone graciously acknowledged that the United States is free to establish and enforce its own immigration policies. But then, almost immediately, another fellow remarked, again, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that Canadians sometimes forget that “Second Canada” has its own laws.

Second Canada. I’d never heard that descriptor before.

In all fairness, the comment was probably an involuntary response to Trump’s sometimes wacky commentary about annexing and renaming this or that part of North America’s geography. Still, the way it came out, it sure seemed like there might be a longstanding joke among our northern neighbors, one suggesting that the United States is considered a sort of southern annex, or maybe a lesser province in Canada, one requiring occasional supervision from its wiser, more sophisticated older brother.

I know it was just friendly ribbing. And I chuckled a little, of course. But my patriotism got the better of me, and since I’d been handed an opportunity, I decided to return the favor.

Having just experienced the anthems side-by-side a few days prior, I reminded them that our nations’ hymns tell very different stories about who’s more capable than the other, especially when it comes to big and little brother relationships. I didn’t say it in so many words. And yet, inherent to my jab was that Canada remains safe, if only because we’re their immediate neighbor, not the other way around. Indeed, it’s silly to think that anyone would avoid attacking the U.S. out of concern for Canada. We’re definitely the big brother in the relationship, not Canada.

Again, I didn’t say it so many words. But assuming the one who made the comment got the gist of my point, I did add a little extra sauce to the conversation, making it clear that I never have and I never will sing the Canadian national anthem, if only because ours sings of the visceral courage needed to be the big brother and theirs doesn’t. Had there been appropriate room for more, I would’ve given the history. I would’ve said that Francis Scott Key wrote our anthem after witnessing the British bombardment of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. I would’ve told them about what our anthem actually describes. It speaks of rockets streaking through darkness and bombs exploding over us during an attack. I might’ve posed the rhetorical question inherent to our nation’s hymn, which was whether the Americans had what it took to win the day, let alone survive, or whether the American flag would even be flying when morning came.

But the American anthem sings with great vigor, essentially, “There it is! The flag still stands.” Which also means the patriots defending that flag were still standing, too. In other words, yes, they had what it took. And lest anyone forget, listen to our anthem and know we still do.

In short, our anthem remembers a nation enduring the violence of war and emerging with its liberty intact. Its whole point is to remind every generation across the globe that freedom requires courage, vigilance, and occasionally, tremendous sacrifice.

Now, consider Canada’s anthem.

It’s a pleasant and flowery song. It speaks of patriotic love and glowing hearts. It even asks God to keep Canada glorious and free. That’s commendable, especially the reference to God. However, there’s a rather obvious difference between America’s and Canada’s anthems. Ours recalls the very real cost of defending liberty. Theirs merely celebrates the enjoyment of it.

Now, pitching that against some of Canada’s more recent political adventures, I actually did wonder aloud during one of the conference’s sessions just how much freedom our friends to the north are still enjoying, especially when the group recommended that we consider holding next year’s regional conference in Canada.

My vote? No way, if only because I like to say what needs saying, especially on social media. But the Canadian government has demonstrated an alarming willingness to go after guys who speak online as I do. Ironically, they restrict the very liberties they claim to celebrate in their anthem. Not to mention, I have friends in Canada, pastors, who’ve been arrested for faithfulness to Christ and His people. Look up Artur Pawlowski. And then look into his son. You’ll see.

Or maybe think back to the Canadian government’s treatment of the Freedom Convoy protesters in 2022. Heck, in January of this year, Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal finally affirmed that the government’s invocation of emergency powers was unlawful and infringed constitutional rights. And yet, almost paradoxically, the country’s speech laws—actual laws on the actual books—already permit certain restrictions that ultimately criminalize biblical fidelity, especially when it comes to life and human sexuality.

In other words, the Canadian government has decided which sincerely held convictions are acceptable for public expression and which ones are not. And as you might expect, it just so happens that Christian convictions have been deemed some of the most dangerous.

Of course, America has its own problems. We certainly have our share of politicians who’d gladly trade all our constitutional liberties for the same kind of governmental control that Canada demonstrates. There’s Talarico in Texas. Here in Michigan, we have folks like Abdul El-Sayed and Jocelyn Benson who are fully aligned with that kind of Marxist thinking.

Nevertheless, while the speech laws I described are on the books in Canada, they’re not on the books here in the United States. Our nation’s First Amendment has proven itself incredibly resilient in that regard. As it relates to the anthem discussion, our anthem reminds us that those protections aren’t just something we celebrate sentimentally, but they require continual defense in the here and now, lest they eventually become something protected and preserved through bloodshed.

Because patriots will shed their blood. That’s what lines like “through the perilous fight” and “gave proof through the night” and “the land of the free and the home of the brave” all mean. We’ll fight for liberty if we have to.

So maybe that answers the next logical question, which might be, “How did this even happen in Canada?”

Well, I have a theory, and it concerns another significant difference between the United States and Canada, which I think resonates in our anthem when we sing of battle.

We have a Second Amendment. Canada doesn’t. There’s no constitutionally protected right in Canada to keep and bear arms. Canadians can legally own certain firearms, but firearm ownership is treated as a regulated privilege rather than an essential constitutional right. In other words, the Canadian government grants the right and its permissions. In America, the Second Amendment acknowledges firearm ownership as a fundamental right that precedes any and all government permissions. It’s a right the government does not grant and cannot take away. Thankfully, our nation’s Founding Fathers understood that the First Amendment—the right to speak freely and worship according to conscience—means a whole lot more when the government knows its citizens retain the necessary means for defending their God-given rights.

Now, I’ve already wandered away from where I started. And honestly, I’m not entirely sure how to get back. So, I guess I’ll just steer away from where my reasons for not singing the Canadian anthem have led me and aim toward a conclusion. To do this, let me at least add one final thing. And know it’s something that’s far more important to remember than trading friendly collegial insults and anthems.

I’ll simply close by saying that the people sitting together at those two breakfast tables in Fort Wayne belong to Christ. We’re brothers fixed to the One who accomplished something infinitely greater than any of our country’s founding documents ever could. Christ reconciled us to God, ultimately making each one of us a citizen of a kingdom in which no earthly government will ever hold jurisdiction (Philippians 3:20).

And so, I guess what I’m saying is that regardless of our national allegiances, we claim one King, and He’s Christ, and that makes us patriots in service to a better spilled blood. Looking back at the discussion through that lens, for as brief as it really was, I can assure you there was no confusion among us in that regard. And that’s good.

Still, none of this means I’m going to start singing the Canadian national anthem when we’re together at our regional conference. Nope. Not going to do it.

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.