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Hold Fast to What’s True and Push Back

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Excommunication? Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

Now, back to Governor Healey.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Furnace

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Actor Neal McDonough will speak at our “The Body of Christ and the Public Square” conference this fall. I must say I’m genuinely excited to welcome someone who has spent decades working successfully in Hollywood without compromising his Christian faith or his conservative convictions.

Folks closest to me know I have long wanted our conference to feature someone active in the entertainment industry who can speak honestly about what it means to remain faithful while immersed in a world that, for the most part, is opposed to Christianity. I’ve said before that when it comes to persecuting the Christian faith, Hollywood shares a lot in common with Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace.

So far, as a writer who has bumped into Hollywood, my experience has been relatively good. That said, I’ve also learned from those in the know that it’ll take very little of my confessional Lutheranism or conservative leanings to see it come undone. The furnace’s flames are definitely there. They come through contracts, casting decisions, lost opportunities, ridicule, and the quiet warning that life would be easier if one would simply stop being so serious about what he believes. Interestingly, it seems the pressure is rarely presented as a demand to deny Christ outright. More often, it’s an invitation to sacrifice just enough to remain welcome.

That’s what makes Neal McDonough’s story so valuable. Of course, like everyone else in the world, he’s had his troubles. If I recall correctly, he struggled with alcoholism. However, unlike so many others in Hollywood, Neal hasn’t moved from marriage to marriage. He’s been married to his wife, Ruvé, for nearly twenty-three years. A strong marriage was essential to his survival. When he struggled, she was there. And he was there for her. With that, they’ve raised five children together, and he has been remarkably public about the boundaries he maintains to protect his marriage. Among them is his longstanding refusal to kiss another woman on screen who isn’t Ruvé, let alone participate in sex scenes.

Compared to so many others in Hollywood, he holds a hard line on things like that. One would think he’d be considered honorable for it. And yet, the decision has cost him.

Watch one of his interviews. Or read some of the articles about him—especially the ones that lean toward ridiculing him. You’ll learn that he has, indeed, been pushed aside, ultimately losing work, because he wouldn’t cross the lines his Christian conscience has drawn. He has also acknowledged that his personal restrictions probably explain why he has so often been cast as a villain rather than a leading man. It’s not that he couldn’t fit the role. It’s just that Hollywood doesn’t really care if the villain gets a leading lady. The villain is there for the audience to hate. The villain is only there to challenge the seemingly better man, the one who saves the girl, and then, as a reward, gets to sleep with her. Although I suspect most moviegoers don’t even pick up on that distinction. Most audiences have been conditioned beyond the ability to imagine a leading man who believes that sexual fidelity is as important as stopping the villain.

Now, think about that.

In an industry that celebrates nearly every imaginable boundary being broken, one of the truly rebellious acts by comparison is a husband refusing to pretend that his wedding vows have an “except while filming” clause.

Neal is probably right about such convictions having cost him roles, a whole lot of money, and the professional standing that comes with all of it. Still, he pushed through and remained in the industry. He didn’t retreat into silence. He certainly didn’t accept the premise that success required surrender. He found ways to work within his convictions, and the Lord has blessed him with A-list success.

Considering our forthcoming conference, that’s precisely the kind of encouragement our attendees need as we consider our own levels of engagement with the world around us.

For Neal—a man working in one of the most challenging fields for Christians—the answer has not been withdrawal. It hasn’t been accommodation, either. Thankfully, he knew the dangers of those actions early on. He knew that faithfulness often meant being called to enter difficult places without allowing those places to enter him. As it meets with our efforts, Neal will be a great addition to our lineup because our primary purpose is to teach that the public square doesn’t need Christians who have mastered the art of blending in. It needs Christians who know how to be who they are in Christ while holding the line.

Neal can help us understand what that looks like in a unique way, one that deals with real-world consequences. He can speak from the position of his career being at stake. He can talk about what it means to protect a marriage in a culture increasingly hostile to marital fidelity.

Again, Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace comes to mind. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego didn’t survive the heat because they found a way to compromise with it. They survived because, while refusing to bow to Nebuchadnezzar’s lies, the God in whom they’d placed all their trust preserved them. They didn’t know if He would act to preserve their earthly lives. They said as much before the guards threw them into the flames. Still, they knew God was faithful and that He would keep them for eternity. Trusting Him, they refused to compromise.

I often say that the Good Samaritan story is the account of our age. Perhaps the account of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is a better fit. Of course, most folks reading this will never stand on a Hollywood set. Most will never face a studio executive or watch opportunities disappear because of Christian or conservative conviction. As I said, I’m a little closer to these things lately, and at the same time, I’m fully prepared for it to unravel.  So far, so good. In the meantime, most of our furnaces look more like classrooms, businesses, courtrooms, congregations, family gatherings, and a host of other settings.

But the thing is, no matter the setting, the challenge and its temptations remain. Bow just a little. Keep your head down. Stay quiet. Chalk it up as wisdom when you compromise this or that part of the Christian faith. Convince yourself there’ll be time for faithfulness soon enough. Until then, let the danger pass.

I admire Neal. I’m glad he’ll be with us. He’s a crisp example that you don’t have to win the rooms you’re in. But faithfulness is essential while you’re in them.

As we prepare for this fall’s conference on October 3, my hope is that Neal’s words will encourage everyone in attendance to enter everyday life with courage. As it meets with Christian conviction, I can assure you that the world doesn’t need a quieter Church. It certainly doesn’t need a Church that spends itself to blend in, doing everything it can to look and act like the world around it.

The world needs a Church that’s holy—set apart and standing out as immovably distinct. Simply put, it needs the faithful Bride of Christ, a body of believers who know all too well that the furnace is already burning, and yet, regardless of the world’s threats, they have no intention of bending the knee in adoration to anyone but the divine Groom, Jesus Christ.

When Wolves Applaud the Shepherd

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I should probably start by saying that, even though I’ve never missed a Sunday in over a decade, I will not be providing this weekly eNews message for the next two Sundays while on vacation. I promise. My kids know what I mean when I say, “I promise.”

For me, a promise is binding. I will keep it, no matter what. They also know I won’t make a promise I can’t keep. Rest assured, I can keep this one, if only because I’m more tired, mentally and physically, than I’ve ever been before. I just need to rest.

That said, before I step away for a little while, there’s one thing I’ve been thinking about, especially as I’ve watched the LCMS presidential election unfold. Because I took a few hits for things I wrote, I think it’s at least worth the effort to extrapolate.

And to be clear, I do mean extrapolate, if only because some of the responses to what I posted last week became an exhibit of the very thing I’m about to describe. Some who read what I posted received my observations as accusations. Others went even further, somehow reducing my relatively simple premise to the claim that I was calling a particular candidate a liberal. I said no such thing. I never even assigned to the candidate the liberal ideology of those who happen to be cheering for his victory. What I actually did say had two parts. First, if the primary sales pitch for a candidate is that he’s not the other candidate, you have no real sales pitch. Second, various groups in the LCMS that openly oppose our doctrine and practice are indeed cheering for one candidate over another. I think that’s telling. Audiences are rarely accidental, and I think it deserves sober reflection rather than caricature.

For starters, whenever a person speaks, writes, teaches, preaches, posts, advocates, or whatever, he does far more than just send information into the ethereal spaces. He becomes an antenna of sorts. As an antenna, he creates a kind of signal that attracts listeners. People receive that signal. In the process, some are corrected by it. Some are comforted by it. Considering the responses to some of my posts, I know firsthand that some are provoked by it. This happens because a single signal has multiple frequencies. It also happens because people are working with certain types of receivers, all attuned by their own ideologies. Therefore, even as different kinds of people receive the same signal and tune in, categories based on frequency ultimately form. People might receive the signal and hear a friendly frequency, leading them to appreciate it. Others might receive it and recognize threat. Naturally, those who appreciate it typically stay for more. Those who despise it don’t. Unless, of course, their goal is merely to troll.

That said, among the listeners who stay because they like it, another category has likely developed—and this gets closer to the concern I shared last week about judging a candidate based on those hoping for his victory. When a candidate runs for public office, some people may be drawn to his signal because they hear a frequency that sounds like permission.

Again, every message gathers a congregation. That’s true in the pulpit, in politics, and pretty much in every public something or other that asks people to listen. What’s more, those who write or speak or act for public consumption know that their message never travels alone. It carries these frequencies in its tone and style and emphasis.

Now, I am not at all willing to say that every listener actually understands any given message perfectly. In fact, with the steady decline in reading and listening comprehension, I think that understanding is only getting worse. Still, crowds are always mixed. Even our Lord had both sincere and confused hearers. He had opportunists and enemies, too—all standing in the same crowds. It’s no surprise then that God’s Word urges us to pay attention to who is being drawn to our message as a “friendly.” We should know and understand what they think they heard and why they keep coming back for more. I mean, Saint Paul warned Timothy that people do not merely choose teachers because of information. They choose teachers because of appetite—because something in the teacher’s message grants them permission. They gravitate toward messages that allow them to keep their passions unaltered, or even give them a foothold (2 Timothy 4:3).

I don’t know about you, but that matters a great deal to me. It should matter to everyone participating in an election process. If the prideful consistently hear unintended permission in a candidate’s message, then he should examine the message. Maybe it’s there. If the sexually confused, or those pressing for Church practices that reach beyond biblical boundaries, if these folks keep claiming a candidate’s words as home territory, wisdom requires more than simply saying, “They misunderstood me.” Wisdom asks what they heard. Wisdom stirs a person to ask, “What frequencies am I emitting?”

I learned a long time ago that the folks who inevitably hate or cheer for me will always be the footnotes in my life that explain me. People will look back and know what I stood for by those two categories.

And the thing is, God’s Word already urges listeners (and speakers) to keep this in mind, and it does so without apology. Saint John says, “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1). Our Lord said relatively plainly, “You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16). Saint Paul wrote, “Bad company ruins good morals” (1 Corinthians 15:33). Saint Jude warned that certain men “crept in unnoticed” and turned the holy message of grace into sensuality (Jude 4).

A point inherent to these texts is that the Lord and His apostles never treated a resulting audience as irrelevant. The kind of people drawn to a message mattered to them. That’s because they knew that false teaching, just like faithful teaching, creates a climate, and climates grow certain kinds of crops.

This is especially important, in a distinctly human sense, because messages contain more than propositions. They also contain posture. Or maybe “nuance” is the better word. I don’t know. Either way, I’ve learned over the years that two people can quote the same Bible verse, and then, by lathering it with nuance, aim it in completely opposite directions. Nuance is never neutral. It’s a frequency in the signal. Again, I made this point in last week’s posts, and the basic response from the opponents was, “Whoever criticizes a person for the audience they attract misunderstands that person.” Well, I suppose sometimes critics are unfair in this regard. But could it be that it’s actually possible to see smoke and know a fire is nearby? Is it possible to see a whole bunch of people cheering for a particular candidate and know by their praises something about the candidate’s potential trajectory?

As it meets with the Church, when the wolves applaud a potential shepherd, the sheep are obligated to at least ask why.

Of course, someone is likely thinking right now that a person in the public sphere cannot control every supporter who gravitates toward them. This is true. But he can control what he rewards and rebukes relative to his message. He can control what he refuses to excuse. He can say, “If you heard support for Marxist social justice, you didn’t hear it from me.” He can say, “If you heard license for practices beyond God’s Word, you didn’t hear it from me. Repent.” He can say, “If you came here to baptize your anthropocentric worship ideologies with my message, you came to the wrong font.”

In that sense, I dare say that a candidate’s silence in those moments is another frequency in the signal.

The Church—especially the Church—should be more than capable of admitting this premise. It’s really not that complicated, if only because we already go about our daily lives picking and choosing things in this way—knowing what to embrace and what to avoid by who we see embracing or avoiding it. In this case, I think it gets complicated when this relatively normal filter is obscured by ideological capture—when we’ve already invested so much of ourselves into a message, a person, a movement, or whatever that we can no longer bear to examine any of it honestly.

If anything, this filter matters most where the Gospel is being preached, if only because, naturally, sinners will always be found nearby. Indeed, Christ came to save sinners, and so the presence of sinners, by itself, proves nothing against the Gospel message. I’ll preach that very message this morning in worship here at Our Savior. Still, the question even those in my own church should be asking is whether the message is one that’s gathering sinners to repentance and faith, or whether sinners are hearing in the message a sanctuary for the beliefs, desires, and loyalties that Christ calls them to surrender.

This is to say, words have gravity, and our audiences ultimately tell on us.

Maybe one of the best ways through these things is to ask listeners what they actually like about what they’re hearing—what attracted them. Or even better, we could ask listeners what they think the message allows them to keep. And then, most importantly, we should ask whether Christ is being proclaimed clearly enough for every sinner to know what must die and where real life is found.

That question matters more than any election, any candidate, or any passing controversy. Because when the Church speaks, the goal is never merely to gather a crowd, but to make sure the voice being heard is Christ’s.

Charlie Is A Martyr

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It pretty much goes without saying that many Christians grow uneasy when the conversation turns to politics. They hear words like life, marriage, family, manhood, womanhood, religious liberty, and natural law, and they instinctively hesitate. Why is this?

I give speeches about this on occasion. I do so because, unfortunately, Christians have been incessantly told these are political issues. Perhaps worse, their pastors were trained to think of them that way, too. Admittedly, while I don’t remember a single lesson in Two Kingdoms theology at the seminary, I do remember being told to avoid talking politics with my people. And so, for many years, I didn’t, which meant I naturally avoided any topic labeled as political. The ill-fated result was a type of absolute separationism that the Founding Fathers did not intend. Still, somehow the Church was convinced to leave the state to its dealings and the Church to hers. Indeed, we churchmen have far more important things to do—Word and Sacrament things. Local, state, and federal policy is none of our business.

Are you sure about that?

I suppose there’s a reasonable measure of piety to be found in the concern, if only because the Christian pulpit should never become a place where the Gospel is reduced to an election strategy. I certainly didn’t endure seminary training to become little more than an appendage of Washington, Lansing, or any other earthly capital.

So, I suppose in one sense, I agree with the concern. Still, the piety as defined is incredibly incomplete.

Life in the parish has taught me a few things. For starters, I’ve learned that the devil is quite happy to be in charge of deciding what belongs in whatever category. He convinces a husband that watching porn doesn’t equate to cheating on his wife. He convinces a believer that he can still call himself a Christian while refusing to attend worship. Yeah, okay. Similarly, in this instance, Satan is more than pleased to slap the label “political” onto something if, by doing so, that means the Church will steer clear of it, if only because the label marks its object as out of bounds. I’ve been told by countless Christians that the topic of abortion is political. I’ve been told by just as many that marriage laws and LGBTQ Inc.’s efforts are civil issues—political issues—and therefore, none of the Church’s business. I’ve had fingers wagged at me for saying from the pulpit that transgender surgery for children is ungodly child-mutilation, and that to insert that into a sermon was political.

The devil is also quite content to corral us into using only Bible-y words. He’s more than happy to let us talk about peace and forgiveness and love for the neighbor in the abstract while the unborn child is treated as disposable—while marriage is completely redefined, families are destroyed, and children are handed over to ideologies that teach them to despise the bodies God gave them. The devil is quite pleased to have us speak in generalities from the pulpits and in Bible studies about God’s beautiful creation while male and female are legislated into costumes, religious liberty is recast as bigotry, and natural law is openly mocked as though that same beautiful creation has no say whatsoever.

So yes, call them political issues if you want. I suppose, at a minimum, doing so helps a person see where the fight is actually taking place. It helps you see that life is debated in legislatures. It shows you that marriage is being defined by the courts, and that family is being shaped by school boards and bureaucracies. It reveals that religious liberty is currently being defended or surrendered through public pressure, leading to ungodly statutes lathered in dreadful policies that persecute rather than preserve. Natural law is suffering the same. Have you noticed how it’s essentially being buried under a mountain of slogans?

Quite frankly, the devil prefers these topics to be fixed in the political sphere. The kingdom of the left—the civil government—is the one place where human beings can be forced to submit under threat. It’s in the kingdom of the left where humans can either formalize reality or rebel against it.

I learned years ago to narrow my eyes at anyone who equates biblical fidelity with political speech. That’s because I’ve since learned that many, even in the Church—especially in the Church—have it backward.

The first thing to keep in mind is that politics was second to the discussion. Christ was here first. With that, I’m willing to say that almost every major cultural issue in our world today is already Christological in nature, especially the ones I already mentioned. They do not belong first to politics. They belong to Christ. That means they belong to the Church. That also means the world cannot tell us when, where, and how we ought to speak of or engage with them. We own them.

The topic of life belongs to us because Christ is the Author of life, the One in whom was life and through whom all things were made (John 1:3-4, Acts 3:15). Marriage belongs to us because God’s Word makes clear that Christ is the epicenter of its mystery from the beginning (Ephesians 5:25-32). He is the Bridegroom. We are the bride. Family belongs to us because Christ has revealed God as Father and has made us His children through Baptism (Matthew 6:9, Galatians 3:26-27, and Ephesians 3:14-15). Manhood belongs to us because of Christ’s incarnation. He is the eternal Word made flesh and is the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (John 1:14, 1 Timothy 2:5, and Hebrews 2:14-17). Womanhood belongs to us for the same reason. Christ took upon Himself flesh from the Virgin Mary and honored motherhood in the economy of salvation (Luke 1:30-35, 42-43 and Galatians 4:4). Religious liberty belongs to us because Christ alone is Lord of the Christian conscience, and we must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29, Romans 14:4, and 1 Corinthians 7:23). Natural law—which pretty much touches everything in the entire world—belongs to us because all things were created through Christ and for Christ (Romans 11:36). Not only that, but the law written on the heart still bears witness to the Creator’s order (Romans 2:14-15 and Colossians 1:16-17).

Having said this, and considering recent rumblings in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod as it heads into convention this summer, I should add that this is also where the objection to calling Charlie Kirk a martyr begins to come undone.

Some Christians insist he died as a result of political speech. Some will go still further and say it was divisive political speech, maybe even bigoted. And then, like clockwork, they’ll regurgitate some of the more popular fabrications. For example, even though he regularly had black female guests as experts on his show and as speakers at TPUSA events, some quote him as saying, “Black women do not have the processing power to be taken seriously.” He never said that. Ever. The line is an outright invention, and yet it keeps getting passed around, if only because it does exactly what his enemies need it to do. As another example, people say he called LGBTQ people a “contagion.” He didn’t call anyone a contagion. But he did point to reliable statistics, referring to the rising numbers of gay and transgender children as demonstrating “social contagion” metrics, and from there, he warned against the increased ideological capture of children through the rejection of God’s natural law and the deliberate confusion of the body God gives.

Ultimately, fabricated quotations, mangled summaries, and phrases ripped from context will never define anyone, most especially Charlie. He was a crisp speaker, arguing from the lordship of Christ over all things. To his enemies, he was horrifyingly effective. Therefore, it became necessary to recast Charlie’s perspectives into “racism,” “hatred,” or “bigotry.”

But Christians know better. We know the real point is what he actually confessed and why he confessed it, not what his opponents needed him to have confessed in order to despise him. Ultimately, Charlie engaged every topic as a Christian, openly insisting that his listeners first understand faith in Christ as his point of origin in every discussion or debate. In other words, he did everything as an emissary of Jesus. He observed each and every topic through the lens of the Gospel, and then went straight into public conversation as one who already knew Christ owned any topic he chose to confront.

If a Christian is killed because he publicly confessed Christ’s claim over life, the body, marriage, the home, conscience, liberty, the order God has written into creation, and all the extraneous points extending from these things, simply calling it political speech just doesn’t work. If anything, it merely proves how successful the devil’s tactics have been. It shows how deeply politics has trespassed onto the Church’s property—onto holy ground.

In the end, the simplest point here is that heaven gives no permission to the Church to surrender these things. Caesar may regulate them. Courts will distort them. Activists from every strange perspective will weaponize them. Political parties of every persuasion will almost certainly exploit them. Still, they’re the Church’s property. The Church owns them all. She has received them from the hand of God, and with that, she goes forth into the world as their guardian, being sure to hold the government to its ordination relative to them.

I will always enter the public square without apology. Even as a pastor, I belong there. Of course, I don’t go there because politics is my ultimate. I go there because Christ is.

So, again, call all these things political if you want. But just remember what politics is actually doing. It’s merely trying to handle what Christ already owns.

Stopping Short of the Line

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For the record, and regardless of your preferred method of information reception, I’m going to do what I do every Sunday morning. I’m going to start tapping away at the keyboard until I’m done. And when I’m finished, I’ll find an image that fits the eventual message, copy and paste the text into the media streams that normally deliver it for me, and then go about preparing for the rest of my day, which promises to be long.

Admittedly, I do have an agenda this morning. Perhaps the previous paragraph is already a noticeable wink toward it. But first, something I see more often than I prefer.

Every now and then, I pull up to a stoplight and find myself behind or beside someone who has stopped a car length from the line. For some reason, it happens a lot at the light at the end of the off-ramp from southbound US-23 onto M-59. People approach that light, sometimes stopping fifteen or twenty feet from where the front bumper belongs, leaving a stretch of perfectly usable pavement in front of them. A.J. Hurley was at my home on Friday evening. Over a whisky and cigar, I shared with him how frustrated I get when I see this, especially when every second matters at particular intersections—and that’s an intersection that matters, the light being relatively short. Twenty feet makes a difference there.

But no matter the light, the practice makes no sense to me.

That said, I assume there may be explanations for the behavior. What those explanations are, I don’t know. Perhaps those drivers have depth-perception issues. Or maybe they’re simply overly cautious, having been rear-ended and shoved into oncoming traffic at some point in the past.

Whatever the reason, it doesn’t change the fact that the whole point of the line is to tell you where to stop your car. It’s the appointed place. It’s where the law, the road, and everybody else’s expectations meet. And I would think it’s more dangerous when someone ignores that normal expectation. The person behind you might expect you to stop in the appointed place. If you stop a car and a half length before it, you’re more likely to get rear-ended.

I drive a two-door Jeep Wrangler, which is relatively short. Admittedly, I’ve sometimes been tempted to simply pull around (even going onto the median if necessary) to park in that unused space. I’ve confessed this sinful inclination to my wife. Rest assured, I’ve never done it. I’ve only imagined it. Plenty of sins have had long and satisfying lives in my imagination while being denied a body in the real world. I’m grateful when the Holy Spirit keeps them there.

Even so, the thought arrives because it feels like a ridiculous, almost rude, waste of space. It feels as though someone came all the way to the place where the decision needed to be made and then refused to complete the approach.

This is right about the time in my writing when the skimmers start getting irritated.

I know this because some people don’t like that I tell stories in my writing. They hear an opening about lines at traffic lights and immediately want to know why I have not already made the point. They would prefer the thesis statement in the first sentence, the conclusion in the second, and the whole thing finished before the coffee cools. They want the truth in a line. Even better, a meme.

I understand the instinct. We live in a skimming age. We skim headlines. We skim articles. We skim emails. We skim the terms and conditions when we buy a car. We do the same in our mobile phone contracts, pretending to accept responsibly. We skim because there is too much to read, too much to answer, too much to carry, and too much demanding our attention.

So, in other words, skimming has become sort of a survival skill.

Again, I get it. Still, skimming has a cost. A skimmer gets the icing. A reader gets the cake. A reader can savor the truth, having received it by patience, observation, memory, humor, discomfort, recognition, and whatever other tool the writer employs in his narrative. A reader is brought to and led through the ordinary world until the ordinary world gives up something worth seeing—and then a reader understands that worth.

That’s why I often begin with the everyday things. I begin with the odd driver at the stoplight because the odd driver at the stoplight might be relatable to you. It might even be you. I begin with the useless gap in traffic because the senseless gap in traffic might become a way of seeing the senseless gaps in your own life. I begin with something small because small things have a way of carrying larger truths.

And this is where I would expect Christians to be more tolerant of the method, because Jesus Himself taught this way.

The Lord certainly spoke plainly. He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). He said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). He said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). There were times when the truth came directly.

And yet, again and again, Jesus taught by making people listen and watch something happen. He told them about a man beaten and left half dead on the road, while religious men passed by and a Samaritan stopped to show mercy (Luke 10:25-37). He told them about a younger son who wasted his inheritance, a father who ran to welcome the lost boy home, and an older son who resented that father’s grace (Luke 15:11-32). He told them about a sower scattering seed on the path, the rocks, the thorns, and the good soil (Matthew 13:1-23). He told them about a Pharisee and a tax collector who went up to the temple to pray, and the one who went home justified was the one beating his breast and begging for mercy (Luke 18:9-14).

Jesus could have summarized each lesson in a sentence. He could have reduced the Prodigal Son to a doctrinal claim and the Pharisee and tax collector to a warning against spiritual pride. Instead, He made His hearers walk through the scene. He brought them into what today’s skimmers would call irrelevant details, making them stand on the road, in the field, at the house, near the temple, beside the wounded man, beside the angry brother, beside the seed that failed, beside the sinner who had nothing to offer except a quiet plea for mercy in darkness’s corner.

But here’s the thing. Like it or not, a story slows us down. Yes, it requires our time. But in the same way Jesus understood, a story is sometimes the only thing that gets past the gate we set up to protect ourselves from confronting something we might otherwise avoid. It gets past our efforts to avoid being corrected. A story lets us nod along until we suddenly realize we have been implicated. Nathan understood this when he came to David with the story of a rich man, a poor man, and a beloved little lamb. David burned with anger against the man in the story, and then Nathan said, “You are the man” (2 Samuel 12:1-7). The story is what Nathan used to help lead David across the distance he’d placed between himself and truth.

In that sense, here’s where the story of the stoplight can make each of us stop and think. The driver who stops a car length from the line has become, in my mind, a small parable of stopping short. He’s near the appointed place—the location he should be occupying. He can see the line. Everyone else can see the line. The whole intersection is arranged around the expectation that he will move to the line. And yet he sits back from it.

We all live this way on occasion in normal, everyday life.

We know we’ve done wrong, and yet, we stop short of saying it out loud. We come near to forgiving someone but stop short, preferring instead to continue rehearsing the details of the person’s offense. We see our talents and treasure and understand faithful stewardship, but we stop short of actually engaging in it. We confess God’s Word as the sole source for faith, life, and practice, but then stop short of letting that be true in our lives.

We leave gaps in so many places. For whatever reason or excuse, we sit back from the line. Meanwhile, the place of faithfulness sits in front of us, visible and empty.

Again, the skimmer, if still with us, is reading and thinking all of this could’ve been stated simply and plainly. The reader—who also happens to be the deeper thinker—knows why the stoplight story helped. And yes, this is absolutely true. Neuroscientists have long understood that readers are this world’s critical thinkers. That’s because genuine understanding that leads to betterment is a process that takes time. On the flip side, a skimmer’s chief tool is not his brain, but rather, his eyes. They use what some neuroscientists have labeled the “F” pattern of reading, which means a skimmer scans a line, then another, before scrolling down, hoping to find a word that attracts their attention. Then the process starts again. A line. Another line. Then scroll. The point is that, by default, skimmers look for things that already make sense to them. That inhibits a skimmer’s ability to grow beyond the self-protective boundaries I described earlier.

But again, readers are engaged in a longer, slower process that expands—and actually strengthens—their cognitive abilities. They’re the ones who can see the driver sitting back from the line and recognize themselves. I dare say, they’re the ones who, once they’ve felt my temptation to drive up and onto a median to pull my Jeep into the gap, can understand how the Holy Spirit fights the flesh in even the simplest moments.

That’s the benefit of storytelling. It does more than state the truth. It gives the truth room to approach. It lets the hearer live with the matter for a while. It gives the conscience time to wake up. It teaches without sounding like a scolding lecture, even when the teaching finally becomes sharp.

Jesus knew all of this before neuroscience was even a thing. That’s because He knows us. He knows that we can defend ourselves against a single sentence or meme. He knows that a story can lead us to the line before we realize where we’ve been going.

So, I will keep noticing the cars that stop too far back at red lights. I will probably keep wondering why they do it. By God’s grace, I hope to continue resisting the urge to drive my Jeep onto the median and dropping into the gap to make a point.

I’ll also keep writing this way, regardless of anyone’s criticism, if only because the world is full of little parables. Some are found in vineyards and fields. Some are found beside wounded men on roads between Jerusalem and Jericho. Some are even found at a traffic light, where someone has come toward the line and stopped short.

Again, a reader will understand. A skimmer will be irritated, and most likely, have already moved on. But if he stayed, perhaps the next time he sees that empty space at the light, he’ll think about the places where he has done the same. And for me, that’ll always be worth the extra paragraphs.

Duty Remains

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For the past thirteen years, I’ve led a monthly worship service at a care facility in Brighton. This past Tuesday, when I arrived, the room we normally use was already occupied. Before frustration could get the best of me, if only because the activities manager is no stranger to leaving me off the schedule by mistake, I returned to the front desk to ask what was happening. The woman there had a flash of memory, recalling that the facility manager was leading orientation for a group of new hires—and it would last all day.

Well, okay. So, where do I go? And who will ensure that the regular attendees can find me?

Not to worry. We sorted it out. But just a quick word about something I noticed before moving into a new space.

The room where we normally gather is set up like a movie theater. It is by no means massive, but it is large enough that distance can make a difference. When I looked in, the manager was leading the session from a chair near the front of the room, almost in the corner. The new employees were all sitting in random chairs in the very back row.

I found it both strange and humorous. She wasn’t showing a video. The projector wasn’t on, so there was no screen they needed to see from that angle. There was no obvious reason to be that far away. They had simply chosen to sit as far from the person in charge as possible. And the manager hadn’t asked them to move closer, which means they remained at least thirty feet from her while she spoke. Not to mention, they were divided by multiple rows of empty chairs. I joked with the woman at the front desk that the new hires must all be Lutherans. An elderly woman beside me volleyed that they could just as well be Baptists.

I suppose I really can’t point my finger at the people in that room. Anyone who has led a meeting or something similar has seen some version of this before. In truth, I already understand it from the participant’s perspective. Whenever I attend any sort of gathering, whether it’s a class, a conference, or whatever, I always sit in the back—and I usually sit at the end of the row. I can tell you why I do it.

Although maybe I shouldn’t. Well, I guess it’s okay.

For starters, I never quite feel like I fit in. When that’s the case, I remain on the outskirts. Second, in such gatherings, I’m more inclined to listen and learn than contribute. I can accomplish that goal well enough from a distance. Third, I don’t like people sitting behind me. I want to see everyone and everything that’s happening, especially when the gathering is informational.

All of this is to say that I’m wired to prefer participation with an escape route. I’m present, but carefully so.

So, why tell you this? On the same day that I noticed the strangeness of the orientation meeting, primary elections were held. Some things that happened after certain races were called reminded me of what I saw in the orientation meeting.

One of the more notable results from Tuesday’s primaries was that Thomas Massie lost his seat. When the results came in, social media lit up with folks upset by this, and understandably so. Regardless of how Massie is often painted by his friends or foes (and I expect plenty to pounce when they read this), he has, on the one hand, been one of the few in Washington willing to speak plainly about government spending, foreign entanglements, and the bipartisan machinery that always seems to move in the same direction, no matter who claims to be driving it. And yet, he has taken up positions that made plenty of conservatives uneasy, especially when his instincts for restraint were too much like indifference toward very real evils in the world. Add to this that he received official endorsements from groups like Code Pink, not to mention regular applause from extreme corners of the left that spend most of their time opposing nearly everything a Christian guy like me believes. For me, that made the picture less tidy than the outrage suggested.

Part of the point was that for Massie, there was plenty to admire and plenty to question. But is that not true of most who step into public life?

The point here is neither to accept nor reject Massie. I liked some of his positions. I didn’t like others. What interested me was the response from some Christians after his loss. Their disappointment became immediate resignation. Some renounced engagement in the public square altogether. Their conclusion seemed to be that Massie’s loss proved the whole enterprise was pointless. These are often the same people who warn that Trump supporters behave like cultists, as though political loyalty has swallowed up all logic and common sense. And yet, the moment their preferred candidate/leader lost, their strict devotion led to a complete recantation of political engagement altogether. That, too, is a kind of cultish response. The justification, in their minds, was that the system is obviously too corrupt, so contending in the public square is nothing but a huge waste of time.

I get the frustration. Trust me when I say that I share it on occasion. For the record, I should add I’ve never held official membership in a political party. And I never will. I hold membership in the body of Christ, and as such, my life in the public square extends from that membership. This naturally means my vote goes to the people who most closely align with the will of God as He has revealed it in His Word.

That said, I’ve been participating in elections for 36 years and have never once voted for a Democrat. My vote is always Republican. That’s because the Republican platform, and therefore most of its candidates, is still the most palatable to Christianity. The Democrat platform and its candidates are the furthest thing from anything godly in our public life. And the thing is, they really don’t even hide it. They are openly opposed to nearly everything Christianity holds sacred. That is simply where things stand. The Democrat party supports and perpetuates abortion, sexual confusion, the mutilation of children, hostility toward the natural family, and a long list of things the Bible plainly condemns.

So, what does this mean? Well, for one, a Christian doesn’t need to pretend both parties are morally equivalent in order to sound thoughtful. They are not morally equivalent. I remember back in 2021, the efforts of the Satanic Church in Texas were touted by Democrats as the best hope for stopping the Heartbeat Bill. With that, to say that in a two-party system, the Democrat Party is the one Satan aligns with best, leaving only the Republican Party as the viable choice, is by no means to endorse the Republican Party as righteous. It’s simply being honest about the choices actually before us. In every election, we are dealing with sinners, platforms, priorities, and consequences. Sometimes the choices are deeply imperfect. Sometimes one side is plainly committed to evils Christians are duty-bound to resist. When that is the case, pretending the difference is negligible is not wisdom. At best, it’s an excuse to keep one’s hands clean. Or maybe something worse, a cultish tantrum dressed up as sophistication.

At the same time, I think Christians need to remember that political faithfulness is not the same thing as political triumph. We are called to confess the truth, to love our neighbor, to defend the weak, to restrain evil where we can, and to act according to God’s Word. We are not promised that every candidate we prefer most will win. We are not promised that every righteous cause will prevail in our lifetime. We are not even promised that our efforts will be, or even appear to be, effective.

That’s where the back row at the orientation comes to mind.

I’ll admit, it is tempting to move to the back row of the public square. It’s tempting to stay technically present while keeping as much distance as possible from the discomfort of engagement—even leaving an escape route. I won’t even begin to tell you how often I consider that approach. In the back row, we can watch. We can complain. We can mutter about how bad everything has become. We can say that politics is dirty, which is true enough. We can say that the system is broken, which is also true enough. And then, when things don’t go our way, we can congratulate ourselves for being above it all.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the people who despise God’s moral and natural law will continue using the machinery of government to erase all of it, all to the inevitable harm of our society.

I’m sorry to have to break it to you, but Christians are not permitted to retreat to the seat at the end of the last row. We are citizens of heaven (Philippians 3:20), and because of that, we are called to be the preeminent citizens on earth, and we do it from a seat in the center. We already know that Caesar is not Lord. But we also know that Caesar still has a sword. Here in America, we have a say in who the Caesar will be. That means we’re also responsible when the sword is used in ways that are opposite to its divine ordination—when it’s used to protect evil and punish good. No matter its use, a Christian cannot simply shrug and pretend politics has nothing to do with him.

Again, I get it. A lost primary is discouraging. It may even be clarifying. It may show us how deep certain loyalties run, how powerful certain interests are, and how easily voters can be moved by money, pressure, and personality. My point is that one election result does not release any of us from duty.

Faithfulness remains faithfulness when the results go the wrong way. Courage remains courage when our candidate loses. The unborn still need defenders. Children still need protection from predatory ideologies. Families still need advocates. Churches still need the freedom to speak, teach, gather, and serve.

Your neighbors, whether they realize it or not, still need Christians who understand that Godly citizenship does not disappear from public life the moment we experience a political setback.

I’ll always choose the back row in any physical gathering. But never in the public square. The back row in the public square may feel safer. It may even feel wiser and more virtuous for a while. But Christians have not been called to sit as far away as possible while the keynote speaker works to convince the room to hate God. We engage. We stay in the mix, letting our voices be heard and our efforts be seen.

In short, we endure.

We do so without illusions and without despair. As I already said, we may lose sometimes. We may actually lose more than we win. It was Jesus who asked His disciples rhetorically, “When the son of man returns, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). Of course, the answer to that question is yes. But the point is not lost on other categories beneath Christ’s rule, which is every category. The point is that things may get worse. But again, the results do not release us from responsibility. We are called to faithfulness. That’s it. No one in the divine spheres will ask any of us if we were applauded for our successes. But as the scriptures declare rather plainly, “it is required of stewards that they be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2). That’s the measure. The Lord has placed us here, in this moment, with these neighbors, these duties, these votes, these voices, and these opportunities.

So, we refuse the back row and take the seats that belong to us. From right in the middle of all of it, we speak the truth. We defend what is good. We resist what is evil. We serve our neighbor. We pray. We vote. We endure, even when it seems pointless. We endure even when our guy loses.

Ashtray On An Airplane? Bypass My PIN?

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The Thoma family is counting down the days until our annual Florida vacation. It’s a little over a month away. For the record: I. Can’t. Wait.

For me, it is a time of refreshment like none other, even though I’m no fan of traveling. If someone ever perfects teleportation, I’ll be first in line to invest. Step into a pod, hit a button, and step out beside a palm tree? Here, take my money.

On second thought, I just contradicted a formal Thoma decree. Florida’s distance is part of the point. Years ago, we decided as a family that vacations needed to happen somewhere far enough away that any return for a pastoral emergency would be impossible. Traverse City was too close. Florida isn’t. Once we’re in Florida, we’re there until the return flight.

Ah, the return flight. That’s the post-vacation moment God uses to help me brace for the real world. Indeed, the world shrinks around me. For example, I remember a brief conversation I had with Jen during the flight home last year. During the flight, I went to use the lavatory. I returned having noticed one of sin’s subtle fingerprints on the plane: the ashtray built into the lavatory’s folding door.

There it was in that tiny room behind the cockpit of our giant compression chamber with wings.

Before the flight even began, as the stewardess did her best to smile while demonstrating emergency instructions that no one cared to know, a voice came over the loudspeaker stating very plainly that Federal law prohibits smoking. Not to mention, there are a whole bunch of signs everywhere, most of them illuminated, telling you that smoking is prohibited. Then there are the smoke detectors above all our heads, alarms ready to scream.

Still, there’s the ridiculous ashtray tucked into the bathroom door.

There must be a practical reason for it. The only thing I can think of is that the airlines, perhaps without meaning to, have built a tiny doctrine of original sin into the lavatory door. They know people break rules. If someone is foolish enough to light up, the airline would rather the cigarette be put out in an ashtray than dropped into a trash bin full of paper towels. So, maybe the ashtray is proof of the Bible’s credibility. The airline, like the Bible, knows human beings are self-centered, addicted, defiant, and occasionally dangerous. An ashtray in an airplane makes no sense until you remember the doctrine of original sin. Then it makes perfect sense.

Come to think of it, I noticed something similar this past week while getting gas..

Essentially, no matter which gas station I use, when I pay with my debit card at the pump, there’s always an option to bypass my PIN. The same thing happens at most grocery stores. But the card has a PIN for a reason. It’s supposed to protect against unauthorized use. The whole point of the PIN is to prove that the person holding the card has knowledge only the cardholder would have. Still, if someone stole my card, he could pull into a gas station, swipe it at the pump, bypass the PIN, fill his tank, and drive away.

Unlike the ashtray, I can’t think of an explanation for this one. I only remember standing there with the nozzle in my hand, staring at the ridiculous GSTV commercial about giving the COVID vaccine to babies, and thinking, “The ‘Bypass PIN’ option sort of feels like having a deadbolt on my front door with a button beside it that says ‘Skip Deadbolt.’”

I guess what I’m saying is that some things just don’t make sense, and yet they exist anyway. I suppose one reason for this is that we’ve more than made peace with contradiction. As a pastor, I’ve met plenty of folks who insist on principles and then give wiggle room to the wants or personal preferences that negate them entirely. Truth be told, I’m guilty of such things myself. We all are.

That said, it was demonstrated in full bloom here at Our Savior last Sunday.

A woman came forward during the Lord’s Supper. Because I’d never seen her before in my life, and because the Lord’s Supper is much more than a religious snack shared among generally spiritual people, I discreetly asked at the altar, as I always do, the appropriate questions relative to participation, and when she openly admitted to being apart from what we believe, teach, and confess, I offered her a blessing and asked for a little bit of her time to chat after worship so we could talk in more detail.

I understand that many Christians come from churches where the Lord’s Supper is offered openly to anyone who comes forward. In those settings, withholding it from someone at the altar may seem unthinkable, and I understand why someone formed by that practice would be bothered. Not angry. Bothered. Still, 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 are especially important here. They teach us that Holy Communion is participation in Christ’s body and blood, and that those who commune together are also confessing something together. They also warn that eating and drinking without discernment is spiritually dangerous. That means the Lord’s Supper is never an open-ended religious gesture. It’s Christ’s gift, and because it’s Christ’s gift, pastors are called to steward it faithfully (1 Corinthians 4). That stewardship includes care for the person approaching the altar, care for the congregation gathered at the altar, and care for the confession being made at the altar.

So, again, before offering her a blessing, I asked to speak with her after worship. I did so gently. A conversation like that belongs somewhere better than a few whispered seconds at the rail. When she became angry, others nearby were gentle, too. No one tried to humiliate her. No one raised a voice at her. No one treated her with contempt. The goal was exactly what it should have been: kindness joined to faithfulness.

But she wasn’t having any of it. In her mind, she was owed the Sacrament, regardless of any reason we might give for instruction toward altar unity first.

The result? After a scene at the altar, rather than returning to her seat by way of the side aisles with the rest, she went down the center aisle alone, if only to display her anger to everyone. At her pew, she lifted her hands and called out that she had been refused communion with her God, continuing to disrupt the reverence around her.

There’s a lot wrapped up in all of this. Some of it was anger. Some of it was embarrassment. I don’t doubt for one second that she felt wronged. But why? Well, at least in part because much of American Christianity has trained people to think of the Lord’s Supper this way. If someone has been taught that the altar should receive anyone who comes forward, then a pastor’s hesitation will almost certainly feel like offense. I understand that. Still, taking offense does not mean offense was actually given. The reality is that she walked into a church whose altar she didn’t know, whose doctrine and practice she didn’t know, and whose confession she had not yet learned, and then expected the altar to operate according to assumptions carried in from the outside.

It was as though a stranger walked into someone’s house at dinnertime, sat down at the table, objected to the menu, rebuked the host, and then announced to everyone present that she had been denied what was rightly hers because they would not rewrite the order of their home to accommodate her.

That sounds absurd in ordinary life. And yet, in American Christianity, it seems to happen all the time.

Open or closed communion is not necessarily the point here. Although I should at least say that the churches practicing open communion usually recognize some boundary, even if they draw it differently. Suppose a pastor knew beforehand that someone intended to receive the bread and wine only to throw them on the floor and trample them. I doubt many would actually say, “Well, if he comes forward, I have to commune him.” At that point, the issue would be obvious. The pastor would guard the Lord’s Supper against open contempt. My point is not that every case is that blatant. Most are not. My point is simply that once we admit the Lord’s Supper can be profaned, the pastoral question is no longer whether reverent boundaries may exist. The question is where those boundaries belong, and whether the pastor is willing to bear the burden of applying them faithfully.

I suppose another point here is that, on the other end of the exchange, too many have been trained to believe that individual sincerity outranks truth, desire outranks doctrine, and personal offense outweighs pastoral responsibility. We have been trained to think that anything with the name “Jesus” on it is automatically boundaryless. And if it does have boundaries—things a worshipping community may have in place to prevent profaning Christ—then those boundaries are automatically loveless and offensive. We have been trained to imagine the Church as a spiritual convenience store, open to everyone on each person’s preferred terms.

That’s like a “Bypass PIN” option at the gas pump. It makes very little sense to me, and yet, it exists anyway. A person can say, “This is communion with God,” and then become furious when the pastor takes seriously what God has said about His meal. A person can say, “This matters deeply,” and then refuse the very care that proves the Church actually agrees with the statement. In other words, we say the thing is serious, and then we resent the safeguards that seriousness requires, acting as though doctrines are rude whenever they slow us to self-inspection and the possibility that we could be wrong.

One of the biggest itches in my craw is that so many say they want churches to stand for something, only to be shocked when we do. But the thing is, they’re really only shocked because the stance affected them personally.

You should know, she took me up on the offer to chat after worship.

Most people who are unhappy with our practice usually go through the greeting line, tell me what a rotten person I am, and then leave. She stood off to the side and waited. I did my best to speak calmly about what God’s Word says, and why what I did was an act of care rather than cruelty.

But again, she was having none of it, thereby demonstrating one more contradiction.

She stayed to chat. But like so many in our culture who claim to want discussion, when the time came for it, the “Skip Dialogue” button was pressed, and she talked over me, doing her best to lather me in condemnation and insults. I barely got a few sentences out. Instead, I was tongue-lashed by someone who wanted order, so long as it was her order. She wanted a church with an altar, but that altar could not be misaligned with what she already believed about altars.

So, why am I telling you these things? Well, for starters, you should know this isn’t necessarily an unfamiliar experience. It does happen more than people know, just not necessarily to this degree. I suppose I’m also sharing it because, at a minimum, it’s time, once again, to remind folks that the Church is not a restaurant where the customer is always right. The pastor is not a waiter taking custom orders. Above all—and recognizing that other Christians order this differently—my Synod, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, believes the Lord’s Supper is sacred in a way that requires altar fellowship to be taken seriously. Sacred things require reverence, and reverence requires pastors and congregations to ground the Lord’s Supper in faithful practices born of God’s Word rather than in the increasingly common internet-assembled expectations of whoever happens to approach the altar.

This is where the theological lesson in all of this becomes unavoidable. We need to realize that sin does more than make people bad. It also makes us incoherent. It teaches us to demand gifts while rejecting the giver’s terms. It teaches us to call something holy while treating it like it isn’t. It teaches us to interpret pastoral care as hatred.

I think I just figured out why the PIN bypass option exists. Again, when you remember the nature of sin, these things make sense. The PIN bypass exists because the world wants what it wants. For businesses, in most cases, it’s profit. To get at your dollars, most businesses prefer convenience. Convenience often wins the argument before security even gets to speak. Scenes like the one that happened last Sunday prove the same thing. Any obstacle to personal preference is inconvenient. A person with this mindset will only ever see a pastor as hateful when he says, “I need to speak with you first, because what’s happening here is far too precious to be handled carelessly.”

Unfortunately, that’s the world we live in. It’s even more unfortunate that anger can rise so quickly when a pastor is trying to be pastoral. Still, the pastor’s task remains what it has always been. We preach Christ crucified. We call sinners to repentance. We give the gifts as Christ instituted them. We guard what He has entrusted to His Church. We speak gently when gentleness is possible, and we remain faithful even when gentleness is mistaken for hate. We do this because, in the end, we already know that the real contradiction at the heart of all this is, quite simply, us. Sinners want God near enough for comfort, but also far enough away to leave us in charge.

The thing is, the Christian Faith doesn’t actually allow that arrangement. Christ draws near on His terms. And because He is no divine pushover, letting anyone do whatever he or she wants with His things, He also doesn’t ordain undershepherds to accommodate terms other than what Christ has established. That’s not cruelty on Christ’s part. That’s not cruelty on the pastor’s part, either. That’s care. One would hope that even an atom-sized splinter of Christian humility would be enough to help any of us press “Pause” instead of “Bypass” before assuming that a church’s reverent boundary is an act of cruelty.

What Else Is There To Say?

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I did a quick calculation this morning. I’ve done the calculation before, if only to remember how long it’s been.

Essentially, I looked back into the folders where I keep all these Sunday morning eNews messages. The first folder is labeled “2015.” However, there really should be a 2014 folder, too, because there are five in there that belong to the previous year.

Doing the math, that means that this coming November, I’ll have maintained this weekly practice for twelve years straight, never once missing a Sunday, even during the Thoma family’s two-week vacation. Every year on vacation, I tell myself I’m not going to do it. But then I do, anyway.

Well, that changes this year. Yeah, right. But I mean it this time. Okay, let’s just wait and see.

This morning’s note is number 654. Again, looking at the date of the very first one, and then doing a little math, it seems I’ve written a good number more than a year allows. That’s because I’ve also been writing them for special days throughout the year. For example, I write something at Thanksgiving. I write one on Christmas Eve and then again on Christmas Day. Things like that. When there are national tragedies, I try to observe and then say something worthwhile—something that can nudge a reader toward Christ. We’ve had our fair share of those in the last twelve years.

The COVID years never seemed to run dry of one’s need to observe critically through the Gospel’s lens.

But whether or not anything I’ve ever scribbled has been worth anyone’s while, at some point along the way, these little jaunts became less an opportunity to communicate about a particular topic and more a habit. And by habit, I not only mean the nagging urge to type something, but also the urge to observe the world in a certain way and do what I can to bring others into that observation.

I’ve said it before. There’s always something going on. A person needs only to open his eyes and look around. We live in a world that is both wonderful and foolish all at the same time. How a person prefers to interpret what’s seen is another question altogether. I suppose in a sense, this weekly habit—my clinical need to lift the looking glass of God’s Word to my eyes, sweep the moment’s horizon, and then describe the details for public consumption—has been a way for my habit to shape the habits of others.

Habits—good ones—are necessary, especially when the world’s darker things impose. I suppose that’s one of the strange benefits of good habits. In a way, they carry us when we can’t carry ourselves. They’re there to help put things in order when chaos threatens the moment.

For example, here I am at 654. I’ve scanned the morning’s horizon. What did the world impose? What chaos loomed?

A seven-year-old girl, Athena Strand, was kidnapped and murdered in Texas by a FedEx driver, Tanner Horner, who came to her home with a delivery. He saw her, and when no one was looking, he took her.

The images from the delivery truck’s interior dash cam video are dreadful, even though the ones I’ve seen don’t show the murder itself. One in particular shows her on her knees behind him in the narrow space between the cab and the packages, small enough to be hidden there, looking over his shoulder with a face that still belonged to childhood. To me, she seems caught between confusion and trust, as though some part of her was still trying to understand whether this was strange or frightening, whether she had won an unexpected contest, and the prize was a ride in a FedEx truck, or she was actually being carried past the last safe moment of her life. Her hair, her posture, the helpless nearness to the man driving her away—it all makes the scene almost unbearable. He was taking her toward a dreadful end, and she was still too young to know how terrified she needed to be.

Horner was sentenced to death by lethal injection last week. This does not bother me. There will be time between the verdict and the needle for the kind of forgiveness that can preserve Horner through mortality and into immortality. Let’s hope that happens while understanding that such hope feels foreign to our human sense. And so, in the meantime, let the government’s sword be removed from its sheath and wielded as God has ordained (Romans 13:4), lest more monsters act on the urge to do what Horner has done.

Beyond these things, it’s stories like these that make commentary feel useless. What is there to say after all this? What sentence can bear the weight of a seven-year-old child taken while playing in her driveway? What moral observation can see clearly enough through the fog of a little girl being abducted, violated, strangled, and dumped like trash a few miles from the safety of her home? What polished paragraph can stand near her mother and father, people who’ve had to keep breathing in a world where their daughter no longer does?

Some people reach for words because silence feels a lot like surrender. Still, in certain circumstances, it feels as though human language fails us miserably because some evils are just too plain for explanation. Some things that happen don’t need analysis or interpretation. They need tears. They need the kind of groaning St. Paul says creation has been doing since the fall (Romans 8:22).

A little girl is dead. A family is shattered. A man has been condemned. And all the world’s surrounding talk feels tritely thin.

That said, I humbly suggest we let the habit carry us here. When we do—when the lens is lifted—we may not fully understand what happened, but we’ll at least see it clearly. If anything, we’ll get a sense of just how different the Christian faith is from the world’s sentiment. The Christian faith—established by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel—is incapable of pretending evil is smaller than it is. It certainly doesn’t try to convince the believer that every tragedy is secretly beautiful if we just look at it from the right angle. Personally, a little bit of crazy stirs in me when the best anyone can offer to moments like these is that everything happens for a reason.

Yeah, okay. That’s not helpful. But then again, the world is ridiculous that way.

The Word of God observes these things and calls them what they are. It sees death and calls it an enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26). It beholds murder and describes it as an act that screams to God from the ground (Genesis 4:10). It sees children and then warns against their harm, reminding ill-minded adults that their angels always see the face of the Father in heaven (Matthew 18:6 &10). It looks at dreadfulness and says God does not hold the guilty guiltless (Exodus 34:7 and Nahum 1:3).

And then, suddenly, right in the middle of all of it, it points us to a cross.

Why would it do this? Because the cross is where God shows us that He is serious about sin, death, and the devil’s awful and seemingly never-ending creativity (Hebrews 2:14-15 and 1 John 3:8). The cross doesn’t make evil less evil. It reveals how deep the evil goes. The Son of God is betrayed, mocked, beaten, condemned, and killed. Innocence is nailed to wood. The world does what the world does, and God takes all of it into Himself.

Then, on the third day, Jesus rises. That’s what matters most in situations like this. And only through the Gospel’s lens can this be seen. Only through Christ and His complete and perfect work, ultimately proven by His resurrection, can we take one more breath through moments that feel like all the earth’s oxygen suddenly dissipated into space. It has to matter in situations like this, or it doesn’t matter anywhere.

If Easter is only for clean grief and manageable sadness, it’s way too small. If the resurrection is as the world is minimally willing to consider it—a springtime metaphor—then it has nothing to say beside a child’s grave. Or, if Christ is raised merely to improve our mood, so that we can say things like, “Well, everything happens for a reason,” then He is useless in the face of real horrors.

But Christ is risen from the dead.

That means death doesn’t get the final word over Athena Strand. It doesn’t get the final word over the tears of her family. It doesn’t get the final word over the courtroom, the sentence, the headlines, or the long years of grief that remain after everyone else stops reading.

The final word belongs to the One who said, “Let the little children come to me” (Mark 10:14). It belongs to the One whose hands still bear the wounds of what human beings do to the innocent (John 20:27).

Admittedly, even those words don’t make the grief tidy. I can promise you that. I’ve never shared them at a funeral and seen all the tears suddenly dry up. But it doesn’t change the fact that they’re Gospel words, and only the Gospel truly soothes (whether or not we realize it) in moments of sadness and anger, and during times of rage. In fact, it’s the Gospel that gives  Christians permission to weep. The Lord sanctified our tears when He cried at Lazarus’s tomb (John 11:33-36). The Gospel reminds Christians that they are also allowed to want justice (Psalm 10:17-18 and Revelation 6:10). And while doing so, the Gospel calls for Christians to know they are more than permitted to cry out in the face of this world’s atrocities, “How long, O Lord?” (Psalm 13:1 and Revelation 6:10).

God gave us those words because He knew we’d need them. They’re meant to be spoken often. Indeed, they make for a good habit of words—the kind we need when it feels like there isn’t anything worth saying. Because often, there just isn’t.

And so, the Church’s habits emerge from God’s Word. We pray. We confess. We sing. We gather. We speak the Creed. We hear the Word. We eat and drink the body and blood of Christ. We bury our dead in hope. We say “Lord, have mercy” when there’s nothing left to say in the presence of grief.

Considering the story I shared, the only thing left worth saying is Lord, have mercy on Athena’s family. Lord, bring justice to the wicked. Lord, protect the little ones. Lord, grant us faith to hold fast to you, even as you hold fast to us. And Lord, please, come quickly (Revelation 22:20).

Jesus Is the Way Out

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I’ll just warn you before I even get started this morning that my eyes are already tired and my brain is already fried. For those who may or may not care, I have started writing the sequel to Ashes to Ashes. I’ve been working on it off and on since October of last year. But by “working on it,” I mean tapping at it in between a thousand other things.

At this point, I have twenty-five good chapters of what already feels like it’ll be forty or more by the time I’m done. But as I already hinted, to do any of the work necessary to the story at any other time of the year than during summer’s only slightly accommodating pace is to invite a kind of mental collapse I am less and less equipped to survive as I get older.

I’m sure the other pastors out there reading my words know exactly what I mean. Seemingly, billions of big and small demands of ordinary vocation take up the better part of whatever strength many of us have to give in any particular day. And by the time morning comes around again, there’s usually enough left in me to do the work in front of me, though rarely enough to disappear into another world and bring back pages from it.

Add to the calculus that I’m relatively new to the fiction genre. It certainly doesn’t come about as easily as stuff like this. With this, I don’t have to plan. I just have to type. And with that, I can do a lot in a short period of time. I can’t do that with a story. Well, I suppose I could. But I can assure you it wouldn’t be any good.

I’ve learned a thing or two along the way. For starters, I’m assuming most fiction writers know that no matter what their original ideas might be before starting, they’ll almost certainly change as the work unfolds. I’ve learned that a story has a way of revealing itself. I heard Joe Rogan talk about his best creativity occurring in an almost disconnected way, describing it as something that happens apart from his intentions, steered more so by a “muse.”

That may or may not be true. Well, whatever.

In my world, it just seems like the characters press forward, themes deepen, certain scenes, once their details start forming, they arrive carrying more weight than I actually anticipated. Some come to mind while driving or eating lunch. Some arrived while I was mowing the yard this weekend. Sometimes the ideas translate into more pages. Sometimes it means I wrote way too much and, even though I might like it, I have to delete it.

That’s where I am right now—when I have the time.

Again, for those who may or may not care, much like the first installment, this one is being built in part from a playlist of songs. I’ll likely include that playlist somewhere near the beginning in a preface. I’ve already included some quotations from a few at the beginning of a few chapters. I may or may not keep them there. Just like Ashes to Ashes, the songs I’m listening to now do more than provide background noise while I write. They help form the register of the story. This time around, most of them are rock songs, and they fit this particular novel because they capture the lead character’s inner turmoil while, in some cases, also giving a sense of the force and movement behind what he does. You don’t need me to tell you that a song—a combination of music and lyrics—can sometimes say in three or four minutes what it takes fifteen pages to tell. It can carry anger, grief, memory, longing, and self-destruction all at once.

One song in particular attached itself to the work early on. In fact, it landed on me a month or two after I finished Ashes to Ashes. It’s “Rise” by The Cult.

I love rock music. But in all honesty, I was never a fan of that band. Also, I didn’t necessarily intend to write a sequel. But then other things started happening—and then I happened upon that song—and Daniel Michaels’ return almost felt inevitable. If you listen to the song, especially its chorus, I think you’ll get a sense for the book’s faster pulse.

Imagine a man surrounded in an alley. He’s been tricked into the space by some very bad people. Still, he’s the only one who makes it out. The song will give you such a character in motion.

If you’re listening to the song while a familiarity with Reverend Daniel Michaels is wandering around in your brain, you’ll hear a terrible kind of resolve gathering into purpose. You’ll see that dark alley, and you’ll sense that he’s coming, and he can’t be stopped. Again, it’s the chorus that does it for me.

“It’s the way that you feel. It’s the truth in your eye. ’Cuz you’re up against the world, and still you rise.”

By themselves, the words don’t quite fill in the gaps. You need the music, too. When you get a chance, listen to the song, especially if you know the character. It’ll be a foretaste of the energy driving the action you can expect.

But there’s also something more than action in what you’re hearing. There’s a sense of determination. Listen for it. I suppose the determination part is what matters most to me. Where is a person’s determination aimed?

When a question like that is asked, the Christian understanding of humanity doesn’t permit shallow explanations. That’s because we know better than to divide sin from its potential. We know we’re not dealing with minor flaws and manageable wounds. We’re dealing with a diseased heart capable of the worst kinds of destruction. Once that truth is understood, a story moving through darkness cannot be treated as merely a tale of heroes and villains. The man at the center of the story may hate evil for the right reasons and still become entangled in evil by the way he deals with it.

Among other things, I’m interested in that. But not only that. I’m also interested in the possibility of a trajectory toward something better. I say “trajectory” because stories like this are rarely about clean transformations. While I’m not necessarily new to reading stories like this, again, I’m fairly new to creating them, and I’ve learned they’re about collision, pressure, realization, and maybe even mercy arriving where mercy seemed all but impossible. They’re about humanity falling far enough into the habitual nature of darkness that we wonder if there are any real roads back from it all.

As a person who also writes sermons for a living, it’s nearly impossible for me to do any of this without noticing God’s Word standing somewhere in the background. God’s Word names things truthfully. It exposes and accuses and strips away all excuses. It tells the truth about evil in the world and the truth about evil within the “self.” That’s God’s Law doing its thing. But that’s not all there is to God’s Word. The Gospel is there, too, and it does something the Law cannot do. It shows us Christ. And as it does, it forgives and restores. It raises those who are dead in their trespasses and sins to new life—no matter who they are or what they’ve done.

The Gospel gives us Jesus. He’s the road out.

I don’t mean to sound vain, but I think what makes what I’ve written a little better than the Hallmark Channel type Christian fiction stuff that’s out there is that I’m willing to let the Law do its work. I’m more willing to let sin appear in its fuller ugliness than the folks at Angel Studios. I’m not saying they’re necessarily wrong for what they’re doing. I’m just saying I don’t want to rush past the damage people do to one another and to themselves without the reader sensing humanity’s genuine need for rescue. At the same time, I want to tease out how the Gospel might address those scenarios in real time. Because that’s where we live—in real dreadfulness in real time.

That, to me, is where the real weight of the better stories lives. Human struggle means more when sin is treated seriously, and redemption means more when mercy reaches someone who has no clean way of rescuing himself.

As you can imagine, I’ve re-read Ashes to Ashes several times while working on all this, if only to maintain the world and its style. Admittedly, the first book already carried these tensions in seed form. This sequel pushes them further. The darkness is deeper here. The wounds have been around a lot longer. Plenty of other things have happened, giving Daniel’s condition more time to harden. He carries grief and guilt, and I suppose also a grim sense of obligation, and all of it presses him forward in ways that are destructive even though he’s convinced himself they are necessary. He’s trying to answer evil. He’s trying to set things right. He’s trying, in his own damaged way, to act against what should never have been allowed to flourish in the first place. And yet, there it is, in all its ugliness. And when Daniel sees it, sometimes it’s more like looking in a mirror than observing through a window.

But that’s not at all where I want this story to end. With that, I’ll use the word “trajectory” again. Daniel’s trajectory must be one of hope. People should sense hope’s presence.

What I mean is that the strength of any good character (if the character is being written within genuine humanity’s honest boundaries in mind) won’t rest in his ability to think his way back into decency through sheer force of will. If that’s where the character’s hope is located, there’d be very little reason for hope at all, whether fiction or nonfiction.

I suppose that’s where the author, who is also a pastor, can benefit the story most. I can keep these things in mind, remembering that real hope rests where it has always rested: in the mercy of God in Christ, who still speaks into dead places and calls them back to life.

In other words, if there is any road out for a man like Daniel Michaels, it’ll have to be given to him. It will have to come from outside of him. It will have to arrive as mercy does, undeserved and unearned, but real all the same. And it’ll be located firmly in Jesus.

And so, wherever any of this finally goes, and however dark some of its roads may become along the way, I hope it’ll be hard to miss that even for someone as wounded and lost as Daniel, redemption is never out of reach, not with Christ.

That’s enough rambling for today.