Tag Archives: faith

Easter 2026

Posted on by

Last night’s Easter Vigil service here at Our Savior was, as always, extraordinary. For one, most of the service occurs in the dark. No lights. Only candles. Until a particular moment. Then, there’s nothing quite like having gone nearly nine weeks without speaking the word “Alleluia,” as is the tradition for the churches embracing the better traditions, when suddenly, after the Gospel Proclamation “Christ is risen!”, all of the lights come on in a blaring flash as the congregation shouts, “He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!”

It’s a splendid moment, to be sure, adorned with Christian hymnody, as the congregation continues directly—powerfully—into the Hymn of Praise, singing, “This is the feast of victory for our God!”

And yet, what is it that makes the moment so arresting? I think part of it is located in the Church’s historic wisdom, in the sense that worshippers are meant to experience the very real contrast between darkness and light. And maybe even mourning silence and jubilant song. It’s so startling that it’s hard to ignore.

Although I suppose it isn’t just these contrasts. I think, in the Church’s wisdom, she grew to understand, through the centuries, the weight of what was carried during the days before the Resurrection vigil. That first Alleluia, after weeks of somber reflection, doesn’t return cheaply. It’s not like it’s merely added back into the service. We certainly don’t just stumble upon it. It has literally been buried—intentionally silenced—because the Church has spent her time walking in solemnity with Christ to the cross. In that moment when the lights come on, and the Christians shout “Alleluia,” we understand that the absence has done its work. It has trained the heart to actually sense the cost of our redemption.

In other words, even during the Easter celebration, we don’t lose sight of what sits at the heart of our confession. Good Friday lingers behind every note. The echo of the hammer, the finality of “It is finished,” the stillness of a tomb sealed and guarded—all of it locks arms with the Easter proclamation. Which, again, I’m guessing, is precisely why the joy is not thin, nor is it merely sentimental. It’s a sense, maybe even a microscopic taste, of joy that has passed through death and come out the other side carrying something indestructible. When the lights blaze on, and the Alleluias return, they do so as defiance to sin, death, and all of hell’s battalions.

Jesus won. They lost. There’s the proof—a living, breathing Jesus. My Jesus. Alleluia!

I won’t speak for the folks who attend our Easter Vigil service, but for me, it’s not some sort of reenactment or merely a highly liturgical remembrance. It’s more of a participation. I’m not even a spectator to what I’m seeing. I’m a direct recipient of the Resurrection’s ongoing reality. Because of Christ’s Easter victory, sin not only lost, but it can never have the last word. Death and hell not only lost, but they no longer have a final claim on me—on any believer! The grave was not the end of the story for Christ, and therefore it isn’t for those who are in Him.

I suppose that’s why the joy feels almost too large for the room where it all happened last night. And if you’ve ever been to Our Savior in Hartland, it’s a big, wonderful space. Still, no matter how many are in attendance at the Vigil, the joy spills over into the kind of thunderous song I’m willing to bet leaves the devil without question. When the Vigil bunch starts singing, the old evil foe knows for certain that his house has been ransacked, that what was lost has been found, and more than found—redeemed and restored.

Admittedly, when it comes to the emotion of it all, there’s no earthly Good Friday or Easter service that will match the scale of what Christ accomplished. And after looking back at everything I just wrote, I should be careful to mention one more thing—something I already made a point of clarifying during the Good Friday Tre Ore service.

Keep in mind, no matter the century, the goal of genuine Christian worship has never been about making you feel something. At least, not worship born from a biblical understanding. That’s partly because genuine Christian worship doesn’t begin with you—with what you do for God. It approaches God with empty hands extended, knowing there’s nothing we can bring into worship that He needs, but instead, we need everything He can give.

I like how Rev. Dr. Norman Nagel explained it in the Introduction to Lutheran Worship, the LCMS’s hymnal prior to Lutheran Service Book. He wrote so crisply: “Our Lord speaks, and we listen. His Word bestows what it says. Faith that is born from what is heard acknowledges the gifts received with eager thankfulness and praise. … Saying back to Him what He has said to us, we repeat what is most true and sure. … The rhythm of our worship is from Him to us, and then from us back to Him. He gives His gifts, and together we receive and extol them” (LW, p. 6).

Unfortunately, many churches have it the other way around, inevitably falling into a trap. And when they do, they lose sight of something important. The goal of worship is always to deliver something: Christ for you, crucified and risen! This happens through a Law and Gospel message that establishes the need and then delivers the means to overcome it! They’re means that are placed into ears by the preached Word, and into our mouths by the Lord’s very body and blood, given and shed for the forgiveness of sins.

When this is our understanding of worship, that it’s about God serving us, rather than the other way around—not from the moment’s emotion, but from the divine means; not from what we bring into the space, but from what He gives objectively, concretely, outside of us—when this is the understanding, Christian joy holds. It holds even when the lights go out again, we get into our cars and drive home, and the alleluias fade into the ordinary days that follow Easter’s exceptional festivities.

And so, with that, I pray the Lord’s blessings upon you and yours as you celebrate this wonderful day. May it be for you a day of days, one that fills you to the brim with Christ’s merciful love. It was a hard-fought fight. But it wasn’t hopeless. Again, there He is. He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Good Friday 2026

Posted on by

Here at Our Savior in Hartland, we spend Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday, and Holy Wednesday making our way through John 12:20-50. The context of the reading is Palm Sunday. It’s the Lord’s immediate beginnings in the temple after He entered the city to fast-fleeting fanfare. He’s there teaching.

We handle the reading in sections. Monday considers verses 20-36. Tuesday, we hear 37-43. On Wednesday, we digest 44-50. I’ve been doing it this way for a while. It works, if only because the Lord’s words here are wonderfully bottomless. And their point? His truest glory. His death on the cross for sinners.

Right now, I’m thinking about Tuesday’s reading. It ended with John telling us, almost in passing, that “many even of the authorities believed in Him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God” (vv. 42-43).

As a pastor, those words are familiar. I’m not trying to be negative. However, the plain truth is that there is a kind of belief that teeters dangerously at the edge of unbelief. John more or less describes it as the kind that never quite finds its voice, but instead, stays hidden. His words are a passing indictment of something that’s far more dangerous than we may realize.

Most often, we might assume things like open hostility to God’s Word or flat-out rebellion against this or that are the real dangers leading to unbelief. Maybe they’re the worst of the bunch. But they’re not the only pavers on the path to destruction. Some are much subtler. Here, John references the deadly nature of self-preserving hesitation. He describes the kind of faith that remains hidden because it’ll cost too much if it’s seen.

Today is Good Friday. Good Friday presses directly into that space. That’s because, regardless of those in the churches who’d prefer to keep the crucifixes hidden because they seem offensive, the fact is, the cross doesn’t allow for a private allegiance. It doesn’t leave room for a faith that exists only in the interior life, safely insulated from consequence. The crucifixion of Jesus was public. It was out in the open and very public.

That’s right where it belonged, making it, in every sense of the word, costly.

I think that’s the real reason some churches, even some here in my neighborhood, shrink from displaying crosses in their buildings—and why they jump from Palm Sunday straight to Easter, without even the slightest glance toward Good Friday. It’s not that they don’t believe. I won’t go that far. John was clear. They did believe. Something in them knew and recognized the Savior. Something in them was drawn to Him. But belief—the kind refusing to confess the glory Jesus had been describing all along—it began to bend. It began to accommodate. It learned how to survive without ever having to embrace Christ entirely. It might not be unbelief, but it’s really darn close.

“They loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.”

That’s the fault line right there. And it should sound familiar. It describes competing loves, and we all know that sensation. Jesus warned against this in the Sermon on the Mount. He preached, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other” (Matthew 6:24).

But what does this look like in a practical sense? I already mentioned the churches near me that have openly expressed disdain for displaying crosses, one in particular having been quoted in a local newspaper a few years back. For the rest of us, the reasons are not far removed. Christ takes a back seat to the desire to be thought well of. He’s pushed aside by the instinct to remain inside the popular circle. We do quiet calculations that weigh what faithfulness might cost against what acceptance provides. And when those scales tip—even just a little—keeping quiet about our faith in Jesus begins to feel reasonable, or in certain circumstances, maybe even necessary.

“If they know, I’ll never get the promotion.”

Good Friday weeps over this reasoning even as it refuses to let it stand. Because on this day, the One in whom they believed is no longer teaching in parables or confounding His critics in the temple courts. He’s lifted up in the open. He’s stripped of all dignity before the crowds. He’s nailed to wood while the masses mock Him. He’s cast entirely from everyone and everything. He’s openly and publicly rejected by every man-made structure this world uses to define belonging. Indeed, it is as Isaiah foretold: “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).

I know it couldn’t have been an easy scene. Of course some people hid their eyes from it. But that doesn’t change the fact that the crucifixion of Jesus was the “hour for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23), and that according to that hour, as Jesus continued, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (v. 32). John explains, “He said this to show by what kind of death He was going to die” (v. 33).

The Christian Church has no more important day than today. Yes, the Resurrection is crucial. But in a sense, it’s proof of today’s significance. The crucifixion of Jesus is the moment of moments for the Christian faith. It’s where the Son of God exacted what was necessary for your salvation. And in that moment, every believer, open or hidden, is forced to reckon with something the world will never embrace. Behold what the Christian faith finds so beautiful! The death of God’s Son for me!

The devil hates everything about the crucifixion, most importantly, what it earned for us. He’d love for it to become something we avoid, interpreting it as little more than jewelry-worthy while, at the same time, convincing us to prefer a version of faith that never disrupts our place in the world.

As is often the case, the Bible provides real-life examples so we know better. John 12 is just such an example. Some of the Jewish authorities believed, but they stopped short of faith’s confession. And in stopping short, they forfeited something essential. Because faith that never speaks or moves or risks anything—it almost always conforms to the very pressures it fears. It becomes quiet enough to coexist. It remains safe enough to go unnoticed and, as a result, steps away from Christ’s insistence that believers have been recreated by faith as salt of the earth and lights in the world. Christ would have us as recognizable conduits—a means for the unbelieving world to see and meet Him and, ultimately, give glory to the Father in heaven (Matthew 5:13-16).

Good Friday stands entirely against the kind of belief John described—the kind that’s weak enough to disappear in every crowd. Again, John doesn’t scold it in his account. He simply presents it as a dangerous reality that we shouldn’t ignore, if only because the One preaching in the temple at that moment didn’t remain hidden to preserve His standing. He didn’t adjust His mission to avoid trouble. He embraced the hour of true glory—His death for sinners. And lest you doubt what I’ve said about the hour of His glorification being His death, read our Lord’s passionate announcement in verse 27: “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour.”

I suppose part of my point this morning is to invite you to step a little closer to the Lord’s hour. Go to church today. Make time—not as a formality, or as an obligation squeezed into an already crowded day—but as a deliberate act of open alignment. Ask your boss. Invite a friend. Make time and go to the place where so many others in your church family are going, a place where the cross is not background noise, but the central reality of the faith we are to live before others each and every day.

Today—especially today—go! Refuse to remain at a distance from what stands at the center of history. The intense Gospel rendering of this day strips away the lesser things you’re prone to holding onto, even the ridiculously simple things like the need for approval, the fear of exclusion, or the quiet compromises you’ve made to keep everything around you safely intact.

Let Good Friday interrupt you and give you something better. Let it press on you. Let it ask more of you than is comfortable. Let it show you more than what you’re willing to see.

If you don’t have a church home, or your church does not offer Good Friday services, I’m sorry. Rest assured, you’re welcome to join us here at Our Savior in Hartland. Our first Good Friday service, Tre Ore, is at 1:00 PM. The next, Tenebrae, is at 6:30 PM. I’m preaching at the 1:00 service. Our headmaster, Pastor Scheer, so graciously offered to help by preaching at the 6:30 PM service. Attending either or both, I promise you’ll be blessed with all that’s necessary for a faith that can stretch its legs beyond the borders of anything this world might call belonging.

But Then I Actually Thought About It…

Posted on by

Saint Paul is the one who wrote, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15). The “foremost” of this saying applies to all, if only we’re willing to admit it. I can certainly share how easily it applied to me recently. I’m not afraid to tell you. I just preached a few weeks ago that repentance without confession is still sin in hiding.

This is my repentance coming out into the open.

Essentially, I was scrolling through Facebook. I noticed a photo, someone’s selfie with a friend. It was just a simple photo. Both in its frame were smiling widely, clearly enjoying the moment together. But the one taking the photo had something in his teeth. It wasn’t overwhelmingly obvious. However, it was noticeable enough to me. And so, now, my confession.

My first instinct was to chuckle and say to myself, “You might want to check your teeth before posting selfies.” And that, friends, is how easy it was for me to fall short.

I suppose the only upside to the response is that I restrained the urge to post what I was thinking. I could’ve done it. I could’ve justified it, too, believing I’d be preserving them from further ridicule, maybe giving them a chance to swap the photo with something else. It would have been easy enough to wiggle into that perspective.

But then, I actually thought about it. I didn’t just react. I thought. And the more I did, the more I looked at the image. And the more I looked at the image, the more obvious something else became. These two people weren’t posting a dental advertisement. They were sharing a moment of joy between them. They captured an image of friendship. And while I was busy capturing the flaw, they were busy demonstrating something so much better.

This is my sin. Not yours. Still, the overarching realization that occurred sheds light on the times in which we live. We live in a culture that has nudged us toward noticing the wrong thing first. Social media rewards it. News cycles feed off of it. Someone makes a mistake, says a clumsy word, posts an imperfect photo, and instantly, the comments fill with negative criticism. Everyone becomes a certified inspector of someone else’s flaws or understanding. Everyone becomes an expert in pointing out what someone didn’t get right or should have done better.

I’ve said it a thousand times that this is one of the worst parts about writing for public consumption. There’s always someone waiting in the wings to take what was meant for good and convert it into something dreadful. They’re lurking there, not to correct or improve what I’ve said, but to tear it down—to tear me down. It is almost reflexive now. People see before they think. They condemn before they understand. They correct before considering whether the correction is actually even necessary.

And sometimes the thing they miss is the very thing that mattered most in the first place.

I think that’s just one more reason why the season of Lent is so necessary. It’s not only about penitent postures relative to sin and, ultimately, the grace of our Savior who took those sins into and upon Himself, to free us from their decaying bondage. It’s also about the promised recalibration born from that wonderful Gospel. Lent, compared to all other Church seasons, is one where the Lord gently exposes the habits of the heart we barely notice anymore. Unfortunately, it seems far too many seem disinterested in Lent, even as it’s perfect for a social media world. It reveals the small reflexes of pride, the quiet hunger to appear clever, the subtle impulse to correct others rather than rejoice with them.

Lent slows us down long enough to actually see through the lens of the Gospel in some incredibly practical ways. Relative to the photo I mentioned, and as I hinted at before, social media prompts us to be clever when maybe we should be quiet and think. It prompts us for praise when what would better suit us is humble and thoughtful restraint. The good in the photo was obvious when I did that—when I stopped looking for the flaw and remembered my own failings. Now, through that lens, it was better seen as two friends enjoying life together. It was a small, happy moment, entirely undeserving of the conflict and criticism and outrage that social media demands we iterate over every ridiculous little thing.

And the thing is, I left that moment feeling better. That’s because faith’s choice is always so much better. Faith knew the better response in that situation was not to point out the speck in the guy’s teeth. The better response was simply to smile and be glad that joy still exists. Indeed, that’s one of the quiet disciplines of Lent. It’s a season for learning to see again. It helps us to see our own hearts honestly. It helps us to look upon our neighbors with charity. It absolutely helps us to see the good gifts of God that we too easily overlook when we are busy inspecting imperfections.

That said, you and I both know that the world already has enough critics. What it needs more are people who can bring the joy of Christ’s wonderful love into the darkness. And so, we do. We do it strengthened by faith’s humble repentance. We recognize that we, like Saint Paul, are the foremost of sinners in need of grace. Through that penitent lens, the landscape of God’s grace—all the undeserving joys He provides day in and day out—becomes far more visible through this world’s fog than the things that might bring sorrow. That’s because the grace of God has a way of reordering our sight.

When the Gospel steadies the heart, the flaws that once seemed so urgent lose their power to dominate the moment. That’s what repentance does. It doesn’t simply make us feel sorry for sin. It teaches us to see rightly again. It reminds us that the greatest flaw in the picture was never the thing in the guy’s teeth. The greatest flaw was the pride in my own heart that was so ready to point out what was really no big deal at all.

And that is exactly why Saint Paul’s words remain so trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. Christ came into the world to save sinners. Not just the most scandalous among us. But sinners like me. Sinners like you, too. It’s far too easy for any and all of us to drift toward small cruelties we might otherwise excuse as harmless. Yet, Christ came for those, too. Even better, He came to bear the sins we barely notice and the sins we cannot forget.

Let my failure, no matter how insignificant it might seem, be today’s reminder.

Not Recording… But Recording

Posted on by

The following has been on my mind for some time. I’ve only just now felt the urge to parse my thoughts. Essentially, Jennifer and I were sitting together and watching a news report on the Nancy Guthrie case a few weeks ago when something relatively small (but actually not very small at all) slipped into the host’s conversation.

Nancy Guthrie’s Ring Doorbell footage was playing on the screen. The suspect was visible, moving about the Guthrie porch area, doing what he could to cover the camera’s lens and then break into the home. At one point, Dan Bongino joined the broadcast. Bongino is the former Deputy Director of the FBI. The host and Bongino both commented on the FBI’s impressive technological capacity, how the Bureau likely had the tools to use the video’s contents to identify and track down the suspect, even though his face was covered by a ski mask.

But then came the statement that bothered me.

The show’s host mentioned that, even though the Ring Doorbell camera was turned off and not recording, the FBI was able to obtain the footage we were watching at that very moment, which was, in fact, stored at Google. Nothing was added to the comment. There was no explanation. No clarification. The conversation simply moved on.

I immediately turned to Jennifer and said, “Did you hear that? The camera wasn’t recording, but somehow the FBI was able to acquire recorded footage from Google’s servers.”

That detail, while it seemed to matter very little to the host or Bongino, has not left me. We are told our devices are dormant until activated. We have a Google Home device that sits quietly on a cabinet near our dining area. It’s not supposed to listen unless prompted with what’s called a “wake word,” and it’s not supposed to record until that wake word is used and the command to record is given. It’s certainly not supposed to store audio without our consent. Still, notice the logic. To hear a “wake word,” it has to be listening—always.

And so, the FBI obtained uninterrupted video footage from a Google device that wasn’t awake.

How many times has the Thoma family joked about this sort of thing? More than I can count. It’s become something of a running gag in our house. For example, if the kids are horsing around, poking fun at each other, mock-threatening in that exaggerated, theatrical way siblings do, someone might laugh and say, “I’m gonna murder you.” They all laugh. And yet, almost instantly, one of them will add, “In Minecraft.”

It’s reflexive now. The joke, of course, is that our Google device is always listening. So, if an algorithm somewhere flags the word murder, we quickly clarify that no actual murder is about to take place, but rather someone is going to get revenge in the blocky video game universe of Minecraft. The kids laugh, but they also qualify. They tease, but they also amend the record. And that’s the curious part for me. Again, we’ve been assured the device isn’t listening. And yet, here we are, instinctively adding digital disclaimers at dinner, as though an invisible guest might be taking notes.

But we have good reason to believe it’s happening. Maybe you’ve had the same experiences we’ve had. There’ve been times when we were discussing something obscure during dinner or while sitting around the corner on the couch—talking about something oddly specific—and moments later, we discovered advertisements or suggested articles or videos related to that very topic appearing in our feeds. No one looked anything up on the internet during the original discussion. No one shared a video link by text. We simply spoke. Then, suddenly, strangely, there was the topic of our discussion in digital form on all our phones.

We laugh and say, “Big Brother’s listening.” Maybe he is.

This also has me wondering out loud that if a Ring camera can be “not recording” and yet still have retrievable footage stored somewhere, what exactly does “not recording” mean? Technology companies use careful language. My guess is that “recording” may not mean what ordinary people think it means. In other words, maybe it means something other than the typical layman’s understanding of “on” and “off.” Whatever the definition might be, the former Deputy Director of the FBI just told me that federal investigators can, in fact, access recordings from a device that’s not recording. And they can use it against you.

I suppose for me, the question in that moment became something more like, “What’s the price I’m willing to pay for convenience—or personal safety?” I like the fact that we have cameras around the outside of our home. Writing for public consumption has proven the cameras necessary. But I also like the convenience of seeing that a package was delivered while I’m away. I like being able to adjust the thermostat from an app. I like calling out into the thin air, “Hey, Google, what’s the weather going to be like today?” even though I live in Michigan and I can pretty much guarantee it’s going to be cold.

But for all the things I might appreciate about technology, convenience and personal safety are rarely free, especially in the modern home. The modern home hums with interactive devices. I was at Home Depot a week or so ago and passed by a refrigerator with an interactive screen bigger than my desktop computer’s two monitors combined. And so, I suppose the question changes a little. I should probably be asking whether we understand the scope of what we’ve invited into our homes.

Having said all this, I’m not sure where to go next. Although I suppose Lent is an appropriate season for asking these kinds of questions, especially that last one.

Lent is a season of examination. The examination most certainly could reach into our digital habits. But in the end, its reach isn’t technological. It’s spiritual. Lent is in place to help us slow down. We quiet the world’s noise. We take inventory. We ask what has quietly crept into the house of our hearts and what’s humming in the background of our souls.

Sure, we worry about devices that are always listening. We joke about invisible listeners, and we clarify our ribbing jokes with “in Minecraft,” just in case. But God’s Word reminds us that there is, in fact, One who truly hears every word and knows everything about us. Read Psalm 139 if you don’t believe me. The first twelve verses will tell you everything you need to know:

“O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you” (vv. 1-12).

What the Psalmist declared could be either terrifying or comforting. It’s terrifying if God is merely a cosmic surveillance system waiting to use our words against us—to capture us in wrongdoing and bring swift judgment. On the other hand, the Psalmist’s words are comforting if the One who hears and sees is also the One who went to the cross for every intentional or unintentional crime of thought, word, and deed we’ve ever committed (Matthew 12:36). In other words, the difference is the cross.

And that’s where Lent is taking us—to Good Friday’s holy massacre.

This world is an uneasy one. The assumption is that we’re being watched, not only by corporations and governments, but by sin, death, and the devil, forces far more formidable than the FBI. And yet, in the midst of these things, the Holy Spirit calls us by the Gospel to remember that we are seen fully by God—and loved and cared for still. The Lord who knows what is whispered in our dining rooms is the same Lord who bore our sin in His body on the cross. He does not need devices or algorithms to track us down. He certainly didn’t look upon His world with His first inclination being that it would only end in eternal imprisonment. His first response was love. His first response was rescue. His first response was to act. And so, He reached into this world personally. Through the person and work of Jesus Christ, God came down Himself.

Perhaps that’s the best direction to go with all of this. We fear unseen listeners in plastic devices sitting on shelves in our living spaces. And yet, the One who truly sees and hears us—the One who knows the worst that we are—was already there all along. Even better, He took upon Himself human flesh and joined us at the table. He wasn’t invisible. He was seen. He showed us just how much He cares. And now, through faith in His sacrifice—inevitably demonstrated through repentance, faith, and the amending of the sinful life—the verdict is declared to those who believe: Whatever you’ve done, it isn’t enough to condemn you. You are forgiven. And this happened in reality, not in Minecraft.

Shining Truth’s Light is Never a Bad Idea

Posted on by

Have you seen the image circulating online that attributes a shocking confession to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi? I have. When I saw it, I had to start searching. I wanted to know whether she really said it and, if so, what the context was.

The quotation was, “If we prosecute everyone in the Epstein files, the whole system collapses.” Again, I searched. There is absolutely no evidence that she ever said this. That matters, and it’s important to say so plainly. Things like this corrode trust, whether it comes from liberal or conservative sources.

That said, the idea embedded in the statement certainly does raise questions worth examining on their own terms. Suppose, purely hypothetically, everyone connected to wrongdoing in the Epstein files was teed up for prosecution. That most certainly would include a large number of people within powerful networks of influence. Personally, I say, get the tees and let’s get this party started. But what about the supposed system collapse? Is this spirit of concern similar to the government’s refusal to let General Motors go under back in 2008, insisting it was too big to fail, lest countless lives be destroyed? What would collapse actually look like or mean, and would it be a good or bad thing?

The point here is that the statement really does dig into a strata that’s deeper than any one person. The assumption is that it intersects with the very nature of institutions themselves. In other words, when people speak about the “system,” they rarely mean a single organization, like GM alone. They mean a web of relationships. They mean the Big Three and all the downstream suppliers. Relative to Epstein, they mean political structures, legal frameworks, media institutions, financial networks, and all the unseen relationships, good or bad, that link them all together.

In its purest sense, when acting according to its divine ordination, the “system” is in place to serve the citizenry (Romans 13:3-4). It preserves order and maintains justice. It makes sure that the courts function as they should. It ensures that laws are enforced. It keeps everyone, even the most powerful, within the same boundaries that encircle the rest of us.

But it’s pretty obvious that systems can drift. I’ve seen it firsthand, even as recently as yesterday. Over time, incentives change the nature of friendships. Goals become more valuable than truth. Narratives become more important than integrity. In some cases, the preservation of the system itself begins to take priority over the principles that justified its existence in the first place.

When that happens, the system is no longer doing what it was designed to do. It becomes less about society’s well-being and more of a self-protective, leapfrogging competition for individuals to reach the top of the food chain. In that type of system, it becomes necessary to shield wrongdoing, and the logic behind the shielding almost always becomes something like, “If we expose the wrongdoing, the damage will be too great, and the system will come undone.”

But this reasoning has hidden assumptions. In one sense, it assumes that the system, if only because it’s the best system the world has ever known, deserves to be maintained. In another sense, it assumes that if the system is allowed to continue, some wrongdoing is tolerable among those at the helm, so long as the machinery keeps running and the outward forms of stability remain intact.

I’m a huge fan of liberty, which means the first sense is immediately rejected. Indeed, the framework of our constitutional republic is the best system this world has ever seen, and it deserves to be maintained. It’s the second assumption that troubles me. It’s the one that quietly shifts the definition of justice from something principled to something negotiated. It suggests that not only are there thresholds of wrongdoing we are willing to overlook, but also categories of people who operate under softer rules, and that their preservation is somehow a higher good than truth (Deuteronomy 1:17 and James 2:1,9).

I mentioned a few weeks back that the reason my Ashes To Ashes book has resonated with so many is that, in a way, it understands the frustration among the citizenry when this becomes the accepted standard. This feeling absolutely meets with the Epstein files. Young girls were trafficked and abused by the seemingly untouchable among us. We’ve known this for years now. And still, not one person, other than Ghislaine Maxwell, has been brought to justice. There are names behind those redaction marks. Law enforcement knows who they are. But here we sit. Of course, some would say Prince Andrew was brought to justice. But it wasn’t for anything I just mentioned. He was charged with sharing government information with Epstein, even though all of it happened within the darker context of sexual deviancy with underage girls.

I’m not so sure a free society can long survive this obvious discrepancy. Liberty depends on trust that the law applies equally, that wrongdoing is answerable, and that justice is more than a slogan carved in stone above a courthouse door. The moment people begin to suspect that some are shielded while others are exposed, the real damage has already begun. The machinery may still run, the institutions may still stand, but the confidence that gives them legitimacy is starting to turn to ash. And once that foundation gives way, no system, no matter how carefully constructed, can stand for long.

As Americans, we’ve all learned the principle that justice must be impartial. If we didn’t learn it in school, then there’s a good chance we learned it in real time, or at a minimum, by watching a cop show. Either way, the point is that justice does not bend for the powerful while remaining hard and fast against the rest of us. When it does work that way, the plain truth is that justice ceases to be justice at all.

So, Pastor Thoma, what are you recommending?

Well, essentially, I guess what I’m saying is that I wonder how shining the light of truth on anything could ever be a bad idea. I don’t believe for one second that the system would collapse if all the redactions were removed. I’ve never known truth to collapse what’s good—and America’s system is just that. Instead, truth exposes what’s broken, making repair a possibility (Ephesians 5:13). That’s always a good thing. And so, my point. Whatever is broken in the system, if it’s truly worth preserving, the truth will find and make it possible to refine it, not destroy it. If parts of it cannot survive truth’s light, then perhaps those are the very parts that should not survive at all.

No matter who they are, bring the people in the Epstein files to justice. Period. America will be fine. In fact, America will be the better for it. Nothing good comes from protecting anyone from accountability. That should already make perfect sense to Christians. We know what God’s Law does. We know it’s an expression of His love (Hebrews 12:6 and Proverbs 3:11-12). He’s loving us when He says, “Don’t do that! It’s bad for you!” With God’s loving warning, the perpetrator is given the opportunity to repent and amend—to steer away from destruction’s cliff.

But what if God didn’t care enough to do this? In a practical sense, we all know that parent whose kid can do no wrong. No matter what the kid does, the parent always excuses the crime. That’s a kid who only ever gets worse. That’s a kid who’s destined to go over the cliff eventually.

I suppose societies aren’t so different. A society that excuses wrongdoing in the name of preserving itself is not preserving anything, except maybe its decay. A homeowner who kills all the cockroaches but turns a blind eye to the carpenter ants will eventually learn what that means. Decay, no matter how carefully managed, always ends in collapse.

Surely This Must Be Satire

Posted on by

I’ve seen a few letters circulating from local school districts about student walkouts protesting ICE. Beyond our own communities’ borders, there’ve been other stories and accompanying images about students pouring out of school buildings, holding signs, chanting slogans, and presenting themselves as voices for compassion and justice.

At first glance, these walkouts—misspelled signs and all—can seem admirable to some, maybe even virtuous. I’ve read plenty of comments from folks in various Linden forums praising the students for exercising their right to protest. That said, there are plenty of others in those forums tippety-tapping my thoughts, making it so I don’t have to write a single word. On my part, I’m not convinced a majority of the participating students actually understand or even care about the actual protest itself, if only because there are so many reports of kids joining them just to skip school. Some of the parents in one particular forum admitted as much, saying their kids flat out told them they see it as a way to take a day off.

Still, I’m sure some sincerely believe they are standing up for people being mistreated. But even with that, I’m in relative disagreement. Apart from the fact that the events in Minnesota gave birth to the walkouts—and it’s only after $9 billion in fraud was discovered in the Somali community, thereby serving as the perfect, all-encompassing distraction—the whole situation has been framed entirely by emotion. There isn’t a single thing about it that suggests actual thought. It has “knee-jerk” in its soul. And if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that people have always been drawn to causes framed in emotional language—most especially youth.

When I say emotional language, I mean just that. Even the forum commentary surrounding all of this was perpetually framed in simple emotional terms. It was stuff like compassion versus cruelty, inclusion versus exclusion, justice versus oppression. These are powerful categories, and they resonate emotionally. And yet, the reality of immigration policy, law enforcement, and perhaps most importantly, national sovereignty, is far more complex than a misspelled protest sign allows.

The plain fact is that a nation, like pretty much anything, cannot function without order. Laws exist not merely to punish but to create stability and fairness. When students walk out of school to protest the enforcement of existing laws, they might “feel” they are expressing compassion or inclusion. But what are they doing implicitly? They’re arguing that the law itself should be disregarded when its necessary enforcement becomes uncomfortable.

But again, all of that said, I remain unconvinced that most of the students participating in these protests are even capable of reaching that conclusion without some help, which I assume the teachers and administrators who appear to be egging them on are disinterested in providing. I read one comment from a teacher implying that it brings her joy to see her students embrace anything that stands against Donald Trump.

That’s not helping students think through complex issues. That’s not teaching. That’s propagandizing. That’s the imposition of ideology.

Now, I’m not saying all protests are inherently bad. I stopped shopping at Target when they started letting men use the women’s restrooms. When they corrected course, I returned. But what I am saying is that public demonstrations—the kinds with people holding signs and marching and shouting—they are, by design, built on emotion. There’s no room for discussion or reflection in such demonstrations. The loudest voices, the most extreme slogans, and the simplest narratives that can be repeated as mantras tend to dominate. All nuance disappears. The quiet but necessary work of examining—of learning, reasoning, and weighing competing ideas is replaced entirely by chanting and the inevitable social media applause.

Which makes student walkouts like these somewhat satirical.

First of all, a human brain isn’t even fully developed until the mid-twenties. There are plenty of studies about how cognitive capability is inhibited until that point. So, my point about these kids not understanding what they’re doing remains fixed. I suppose secondly, education is meant to form the mind. Assuming a school is actually doing this, when students leave classrooms to protest rather than study, they are, by default, putting aside the very tools they need to grow into thinkers who understand the world they hope to change.

Notice I prefaced by saying “assuming a school is actually doing this.” There’s a reason homeschooling and classical/parochial education are booming right now. The modern American education system seems incapable of fulfilling its charter, especially given the results. America’s scores, compared to those of other countries, prove we are no longer leaders of the intellectual pack. But we’ve mastered gender confusion. We’ve graduated to “2+2=4” being racist. We most certainly excel at woke, and we’ve become top-tier engineers of Marxism-inspired social justice.

I suppose this stirs the question of responsibility. Schools are not ideological training camps. At least they’re not supposed to be. I suppose in their mineral form, they’re institutions entrusted with preparing young people for adulthood. One of the most important skills students must develop is the ability to think critically and to act responsibly as adults. When a school’s leadership allows a walkout—or worse, fosters and praises it—at a minimum, it risks teaching that obligations and responsibilities can be set aside whenever a person feels like it. That is not a lesson that serves students well in the long run.

For example, if I, as a parent, allowed my daughter to skip school or basketball practice because she felt more like going shopping, I would be teaching her that commitments are conditional and responsibilities are negotiable. I’d be setting her up to fail as an adult.

In adult life, obligations rarely disappear simply because you’d rather be doing something else. Learning to weigh convictions, fulfill duties, and perhaps, as it meets with these walkouts, to choose appropriate times and means to make one’s voice heard is part of becoming a mature and responsible person. Regardless of whether we like it, the fact remains that schools share in the task of teaching that lesson.

I guess what I’m saying is that any student who walks out should be treated the same way any other student who leaves school without permission is treated. The absence should be marked unexcused, missed work should have to be made up according to school policy, and whatever ordinary disciplinary measures apply—detention or suspension or whatever—should be imposed consistently. Rule enforcement like this does not mean administrators are cruel or that students should be forbidden from having opinions. To believe otherwise is to let one’s emotions steer. The lesson is that rules are important, and they only mean something when they are applied evenly.

The unfortunate thing is that many schools wouldn’t even consider doing this. And why? Because they’d become living contradictions. From what I’ve read, it sure seems that a significant number of teachers and administrators want the kids to protest. They want them to embrace progressive ideologies and demonstrate adjacent behavior. Holding them to school policies, especially in this instance, risks accidentally teaching that law enforcement is, at its core, about the rule of law. A school cannot function if its rules are treated as suggestions, obeyed only when convenient, and ignored when they aren’t. By holding students accountable to the school’s own rules, educators would be demonstrating how a lawful system—whether a classroom, entire school, or much larger society—is actually supposed to work.

Concerning immigration laws and ICE’s enforcement of them, they risk accidentally teaching that a school—or nation—that does not enforce its laws should not expect to remain for long.

Two Kinds of Time

Posted on by

There are moments in my life when the world seems to divide itself into two kinds of time. There are times of noise. And by noise, I mean the ceaseless insistence that I give my attention to this or that thing. It feels like I live in that time most of my waking hours. But then there are times of silence. Those are moments for thinking. Well, maybe not just thinking. Maybe they’re more about paying attention to the right thing, and memory is one of attention-to-the-right-thing’s accessible wells.

Admittedly, these two kinds of time rarely coexist comfortably. One tends to drive out the other.

I didn’t watch the Super Bowl. I most certainly didn’t watch the halftime show. The great machinery of American sports moved on without me a very long time ago. And the thing is, I do not feel poorer for it. What may be a national ritual for pretty much everyone else has never really been a ritual for me. Call me a fuddy duddy. That’s fine. There was a time when I followed this stuff. And I’m not judging anyone who does. I’m just saying that I don’t have the time required for proper devotion.

“But the quarterback is the youngest to ever go to the Super Bowl,” someone might say. That’s completely lost on me. “But Bad Bunny is the halftime show, and he just won like fifty Grammys or something.” Yawn. All I know about him is that he doesn’t sing in English, which means I couldn’t sing along if I wanted to. And then there’s the plain weirdness of a guy known for performing in women’s clothing. Yeah. No thanks.

And then there’s Charlie.

For Charlie, Jennifer and I watched the TPUSA halftime tribute. The performances were not what I would normally choose. Modern country is not my native tongue musically any more than the seemingly talentless, autotuned, largely digitally-created pop anthems of the stadium might be. But the songs were not the point. The point was where I began—the noise versus memory. I miss Charlie. I wanted to watch what TPUSA put together, if only for him.

When the videos and images of Charlie played at the end of the TPSUA halftime show, the weight of his absence landed pretty squarely on me again. I know I said audibly to Jennifer, “I can’t believe he’s gone.” Probably more than once. I haven’t watched any videos of Charlie since his death. I’ve avoided them. But then, suddenly, I was watching him in clips. In that moment, it was hard to just keep him safely in the category of someone I once knew but is now gone. There he was, moving and smiling and pointing. For me, that was a flashback to my times with him—laughing, talking, leaning forward in conversation about something he insisted that I know and remember. Again, as I always have to clarify, we were not besties. But he was legitimately a friend.

There was my friend. Ugh. Life is by no means an abstraction. It’s motion and voice and presence. And then, all of a sudden, it’s little more than memory.

I’ve never been a fan of Kid Rock. Not really. I struggle to see how he can sit in an interview, every other word from his mouth being the f-word, and then stand on stage and sing of Jesus. That doesn’t make sense to me. That said, fewer and fewer people actually do make sense to me. Most seem like they’re barely hanging on in faith, so I suppose Kid Rock needs some space, too. Still, the Gospel changes people. We’re not who we were before it found us. We want to be better. That said, it pays to keep in mind that the person bringing the message doesn’t empower the message. As Saint Paul made clear, the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16). We don’t save people. God does. And He does it by His Gospel.

I only mention Kid Rock because of the song he sang. “Til You Can’t,” hit pretty hard, not for its added theology, but for the deeply human reality it presented. Again, it’s all motion and voice and presence, until it’s only a memory. That’s how I was feeling about Charlie when I saw those videos and images.

Beyond these things, from what others are saying, the contrast between what I watched and what I didn’t watch was unquestionable. One performance, as usual, was built to be a worldly spectacle, teaching spectators how to worship pleasure. I believe the halftime show I watched was built, not just to compete with or protest this, but for remembrance. And not just to remember Charlie, even though that’s what I spent most of the time doing. It was an attempt to remember what makes America worthy of our concern—and perhaps even our active participation—enough to stir us to lift a finger to help.

Either way, whatever you took from whichever you watched, I’m pretty sure the world has probably moved on to other things already, as it always does. Still, I took something unforgettable from it. I was able to remember a life that had touched mine. And I was able to find thirty-five minutes of cultural rest as an American who just wants to “cut my grass, feed my dogs, wear my boots,” as Lee Brice sang, and not hear the world preach another sermon about how I’m irredeemable, backward, or somehow shame-worthy for thinking a man can’t be a woman, or for loving what America used to be. I suppose, unlike Super Bowls of the past, I walked away from this one feeling better, not worse—like maybe we still have a chance. The viewership numbers coming out certainly seem to suggest the possibility. It seems that as many as 22 million of us feel this way.

Maybe that’s the real story. Maybe Charlie’s legacy organization did what he’d have wanted it to do. Maybe millions of ordinary people experienced something more than a time of noisy spectacle. Maybe they experienced a time of memory. Maybe they were given a moment to ponder what’s good.

If that’s what happened, then perhaps the world hasn’t moved on quite as much as it thinks it has.

I’ll Never Leave, Even When I Do

Posted on by

The only thing I have to share this morning is gratitude for the congregation I serve.

I’ll start by saying something that most who follow me already know. I despise Michigan’s climate. I despise the long gray months. Right about this time, rest assured, I’ve already lost all patience for the Michigan cold that seems to settle into my body, making it ache in far too many places. I just told Jennifer on Thursday morning that I despise the way winter in Michigan overstays its welcome, and that, for me, spring and summer feel more like rumors native Michiganders recall from ages past than experiences they actually have each year. Truly, if geography were the only factor for my presence here, I would have departed years ago for someplace warmer, brighter, and far less committed to seasonal suffering.

And yet, I will never leave. I say that knowing the paradoxical nature of the sentence, because I eventually will leave. You can count on it. But the thing is, even if I leave, I’ll never be gone. Not really. That’s because I love Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in Hartland, Michigan—the congregation I’ve been blessed to serve since the very beginning of my pastoral ministry. I’ve been the pastor here for almost twenty years now. Even after I eventually retire and find a little place in Florida (or wherever Jen agrees to settle) with a few nearby palm trees adorning a no-big-deal pool, this will remain my real home—the penultimate gathering of a family I love so very much. And I do mean penultimate. It’s second only to heaven.

I could spend all morning telling you why I feel this way. And you know I could, too. You know I’m a wordy guy. Trust me when I say that twenty years of service in this place have not gone by unnoticed. It’s a very “real” community in every sense of the term. It’s by no means a bunch of folks gathered around a religious product designed to scratch their itching ears (1 Timothy 4:3). It’s a living body—Christ’s body—made of real people bound together by Word and Sacrament ministry, and standing beside one another in both a common need and a common confession.

It might sound strange at first, but I love that this is a congregation that knows how to struggle. Trust me when I say that we’ve endured some really tough times. And regardless of those who’ve since departed our humble confines, offering dire predictions on the way out door, this congregation remains, and continues to do so, having never forfeited its soul.

That said, I can promise you, there are stories in these pews that could humble even the most fearless. They’re stories of extreme betrayal and massive loss. But they’re also ones that sing a perpetual song of hopefulness—of fortitude, and of repentance and faith. They’re the kinds of tales that cost something very real but were sung anyway.

That’s because life together here at Our Savior has never been about the absence of pain. It’s about Christ and His ever-present mercy. When that’s the heart of a congregation, its pulse can only ever remain steady. It can only ever keep a confident tempo through both comfort and discomfort.

When I see this in real time—when I’m really paying attention—I realize I’m seeing real Christians, not performing what they believe, but living it. And they’re doing so sincerely, without getting duped by some disrupter’s false narrative. I’m surrounded by people who really are looking for and trusting what’s true—trusting that God is at work, even when it seems like the evidence for continuing with Him in the work is pretty thin.

In fact, just recently, I was reminded of how visible that faithfulness actually is. Our Savior was harshly criticized online several weeks ago for the way our security team diligently protects this place. Let the reader understand. We have a school. We do not take unexpected presences and questionable actions lightly. And we will do what’s necessary to protect the innocent among us. Add to that, even more recently, we endured more online venom for what we believe, teach, and confess concerning our funeral practices. A non-member family was somewhat peeved that we would not accommodate each and every detail they required. We will help however we can. However, Our Savior in Hartland is not a religious fast-food restaurant. You cannot stop in to order up a baptism, wedding, funeral, or whatever. Again, let the reader understand.

Indeed, the world’s viciously ignorant comments can sting on occasion, even when you expect them. Nevertheless, these moments are always extraordinarily clarifying for me, if only because they remind me of something important.

A congregation that takes both truth and responsibility seriously is bound to draw criticism from a world that finds them offensive or inconvenient. And far from discouraging me, the hateful comments only deepened my gratitude as the pastor of a congregation willing to be misunderstood and thoroughly misrepresented by the world rather than be found unfaithful to its Savior. This congregation knows that caving to the culture is never the better choice. Holding to faithfulness is always best, even when it means being insulted, or, perhaps worse, being painted unfairly before onlookers.

I suppose from another perspective, I love this congregation because it has taught me what pastoral ministry actually is. Yes, the seminary is good for this, too. Peter Scaer wrote a piece last week about the cruciality of seminary training. He’s right, it’s essential. But it’s here in the trenches that you learn what being a pastor is really all about. You learn it alongside God’s people in hospital rooms and at kitchen tables. I just experienced this with a friend on Thursday, a member of this congregation I truly adore. Even as we rejoiced together in Word and Sacrament, we sat and talked about anything and everything before she left for a medical appointment. That’s what family does.

I love this congregation because it has allowed me into these spaces, and in doing so, they’ve shown me what it means to stand in the stead and by the command of Christ more clearly than any book or classroom ever could.

From that vantage point, I could never see my job here as some sort of professional assignment from the seminary placement office. Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, my alma mater, did a wonderful job in this regard. I was taught to know these moments are so much more. This is where I’ve been called. I belong to this place. And in that belonging, I have found not only my vocation—what God had in store for me long before I ever knew what I wanted for myself—but also a deep and enduring gratitude for the people who “are” the place in which I eventually ended up. They remind me each and every day of the week why the Church, even when it’s fumbling through life in general, will always be one of God’s most gentle and enduring gifts to the world.

I love Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in Hartland, Michigan. I love the people. I love being called their pastor. I love the work, even though, as I already said, it can get choppy. And I suppose by choppy, I mean personally challenging, too, even to the point of mental and emotional fracture. But again, I’m with family. That can happen in a family. Still, I can promise you that I love this place and the work the Lord entrusted to me here. He put me squarely in the middle of people who confess Christ—who show up when it would be easier to stay home, who know the seriousness of engaging with the surrounding world, and who keep praying and trusting through it all.

There is a kind of demonstrated holiness in that persistence, one that shows the ordinary rhythm of the Christian life.

That’s Our Savior in Hartland, Michigan. That’s my church. Well, not my church. She’s the Lord’s church. And I’m blessed to be a part of it. And as I said at the beginning, no matter where I exist physically, Our Savior in Hartland, Michigan, will always be my home. It will always be my family.

I suppose that’s my simplest confession this morning. Indeed, when it comes to the weather, I’d much rather live anywhere else but Michigan. And yet, I thank God for placing me here. This is where He wants me, and that’s more than enough for me to want to be here, too.

And if I may add one final word, especially for my fellow pastors who might read what I’ve written here. Feel free to say this kind of thing out loud to your own people on occasion. Don’t assume they already know it. Don’t wait for anniversaries or crises or your eventual retirement sermon. Tell them you love them right now. Tell them you’re grateful. Tell them what it means not only to be the one called to serve them, but what it means to stand alongside them in the same need for Word and Sacrament. Tell them you appreciate all the little moments that’ll never be remembered in detail just as much as the ones that’ll make your monthly newsletter’s front page. Certainly, it’s the pastor’s job to tell the people in his care that Christ loves them—and what a privilege it is! But it’s also a pretty great thing to tell them how much you love them, too. I’m guessing it probably matters more than most realize.

A Simple Definition

Posted on by

I shared something yesterday about Christian Nationalism. It was an attempt to describe what it actually is, rather than what some would prefer it to be. I stand by what I wrote because it was, essentially, a comparison that boiled the premise down to its mineral elements.

It did not take long, however, for the predictable distortions to appear. I’ve seen plenty more today. That, in itself, is revealing. It is a perpetual reminder that American Christendom has a longstanding weakness. It has the strange tendency to allow the surrounding culture to define the terms of its beliefs. Of course, the result is almost always misrepresentation that immediately becomes an assumed standard. In this case, it seems the world was allowed to frame the argument before the Christians really even knew what they were talking about.

Admittedly, when the Church engages the world, this tension is inevitable. The world does not approach the Church as a neutral observer. It reshapes and deliberately misrepresents what it sees. That is simply the nature of the relationship. The world isn’t hoping for the success of godliness. It wants its demise.

In this particular case, the world has placed Christian Nationalism beneath its own assumption. The assumption is that racism is an inherent characteristic of Christian Nationalism. But again, that assumption is imposed rather than demonstrated. It’s a stigma applied from the outside, and then treated as if it were part of the thing itself.

Again, I repeat, my brief explanation of Christian Nationalism stands, especially my reply to one post that it’s morally incoherent to defend Christianity as the highest or most humane moral ethic for governance while at the same time attempting to justify racism in any form. That’s because, even as an ethic for governance, Christianity cannot be apart from itself as some civilizational artifact. It’s an unbroken schematic that makes unalterable claims. One of its claims concerns the nature of the human person. All have fallen short of the glory of God. None is lesser or greater than another. All need a Savior. Christ is that Savior, and He gives life to all who believe in Him, regardless of tribe or nation. Racism stands in direct contradiction to this basic affirmation of Christianity.

But since it has already been brought up pretty much everywhere, there’s something Christians should probably be talking about, if only to secure the term’s proper definition. There are the Nick Fuenteses and the Corey Mahlers of the world. Everything has its fringe. And the fringe elements are rarely hard to explain. In this case, I’ll simply say that guys like Mahler and Fuentes have gained followings in part because they speak into a very real sense of dislocation, particularly among young white men. That concern shouldn’t be set aside lightly. But no one should assume that the racist result is built on moral credibility. The fact that a listener is wounded doesn’t mean that the diagnosis being offered to him is good, or that the remedy is even remotely Christian.

I think part of what we are witnessing is a failure of catechesis to meet with a genuine cultural disorder. I wrote in a reply yesterday that “many young men have been catechized for years to see themselves as the problem. They’ve been told by so many that they carry inherited guilt. And the only acceptable reconciliation so far has been that they apologize for existing, and that they confess their own Christian traditions as uniquely toxic. Eventually, some of them snap in the opposite direction. When every moral narrative tells you to hate yourself, the temptation is to find one that tells you to justify yourself at any cost, even if that narrative is crude, racialized, or overtly unchristian.”

Writing this, I was thinking of how almost every straight white man/husband in most commercials is a dunce. Conversely, wives are shown as having to endure their idiocy. Even further, all other races and creeds are framed with elegance and respect. This is just a sample among countless, all cultivating self-contempt among white men. And worst of all, it does this without any possibility of parole. There’s no escape. Ever. When relief is nowhere to be found in a cultural framework, it makes sense that some men would devolve into despair or defiance.

But here’s what Fuentes and Mahler get wrong, especially when they try to apply their racist views to Christianity. The Christian Faith isn’t designed to terminate in shame. It’s aimed toward forgiveness, restoration, and ultimately, a community—the body of Christ.

Now, lest we pile on these two alone, don’t forget that CRT and DEI do the same corrosive things, just from the other side. The problem isn’t even with calling out injustice or drawing attention to historical wrongs. There’s plenty of that in every nation’s history to go around. And that’s not something that the Christian ethic misses. The problem is that things like CRT and DEI redefine the person in the same way that godless Marxism does purposely. It categorizes in terms of group identity and inherited moral status, ultimately assigning guilt collectively rather than personally. When that happens, even if repentance were possible (which it isn’t in Marxism), it would be meaningless. That’s because forgiveness has already been replaced with perpetual reckoning, and reconciliation becomes impossible because the categories themselves are considered unalterable.

So, on one hand, one set of ideals is telling young men that they are permanently and inherently unforgivable because they are white and Christian. The other tells them that their resentment is a justifiable response to people who are doing what they’re doing because they’re somehow racially inferior. One condemns incessantly without mercy. The other vindicates an ungodly response. But neither offers a path back to a shared human community.

But again, the mineral definition of Christian Nationalism has nothing to do with any of this. For those in the Confessional Lutheran sphere keeping score, the following is my working definition. It’s my wording, yes. But it’s not necessarily my definition. It’s a summary of what emerged very early in Christian thought.

In short, Christian Nationalism, in its most basic sense, is the belief that a nation is best governed according to the moral ethic of Christianity, recognizing that public life is never morally neutral and that the Christian moral tradition has uniquely upheld human dignity, ordered liberty, and the common good without requiring the Church to rule the state or imposing a theocracy.

That’s it. You’ll see there’s no theory of race. There’s no call to justify resentment. There’s none of that. Because none of it belongs.

And so, I suppose the tragedy in all this is that some very loud voices at the extremes, for whatever reason, continue trying their hardest to make it nearly impossible to understand what Christian Nationalism is. Personally, after listening to Reverend David Ramirez discuss the issue on “The Gottestdienst Crowd,” I prefer where he lands. He’s no slouch concerning its deepest history, and so, he proves he understands it. And he should be commended for it. That said, so many in Christian, namely Lutheran, circles continue to define Christian Nationalism by its worst caricatures, while at the same time, the fringes insist on supplying those caricatures in abundance. Between those two things, clarity is lost, and what could be a fruitful discussion about something real collapses into arguments about things that have nothing to do with the premise itself.

If By That You Mean…

Posted on by

If by Christian Nationalism you actually mean dominionism—the belief that the Church should seize the machinery of the state because only Christians are called by God to rule in the civil sphere—then yes, you’re right. Christian Nationalism is bad, and it should be resisted. History proves this.

But if by Christian Nationalism you mean an ideology fixed on the premise that the best ethic for governing is the Christian one—because it is already more than proven by the moral architecture of Western civilization its better concern for human dignity, true equality before the law, the sanctity of life, religious and civil liberty—then no, Christian Nationalism is not the problem. In your unfortunate grappling with bad definitions, you are the problem.

By opposing Christian Nationalism, you think you’re opposing theocratic rule. At least that’s what people standing against Christian Nationalism want their listeners and readers to believe. Certainly sounds virtuous. It sounds like concern for preserving pluralism. E pluribus unum, and all that. But it’s actually selective secularism, which is soft tyranny, just with better branding.

I explained this in a roundabout way during my Sunday morning adult Bible study this past weekend. I don’t remember how (because we were talking about something else entirely), but the discussion drifted into America’s founding documents. I explained that the kind of opposition described above doesn’t actually remove moral authority from public life. It merely replaces the moral tradition at the heart of the documents with another, all while pretending to be neutral. The inevitable result is always to baptize its own ideology as better while treating the Christian claim as dangerous to pluralism. For them, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness get shackled if the Christian ethic is the truest heart of America’s founding. It means a man claiming to be a woman is unacceptable. It means traditional marriage—the foundation of family—remains the real building block of society. It means killing babies in the womb is to be despised rather than heralded as a right. Quite simply, it means a person cannot be or do anything they want without consequence, if only because there is a very real morality behind life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In the end, genuine Christian Nationalism is the defense of a sacred inheritance that makes life better, not worse. To oppose it is to oppose people who refuse to apologize for their nation’s foundations, people like me who will not stand idly by as America is scrubbed clean of Christian moral influence.

So, in short, America needs more Christian Nationalism, not less. You’ll certainly read as much in my new book from Fidelis Publishing, Christ Before Caesar: Faithful Public Witness in an Age of Retreat.

You can purchase the book at https://www.amazon.com/Christ-Before-Caesar-Faithful-Witness/dp/B0FFRGNHYQ/.