Tag Archives: word of god

Shining Truth’s Light is Never a Bad Idea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, Pastor Thoma, what are you recommending?

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

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

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

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

Surely This Must Be Satire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which makes student walkouts like these somewhat satirical.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time Travel in the Bible?

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I’m so incredibly exhausted by the world’s news cycles. Each new day brings a brand new insanity. So, here’s the thing. How about we just swim around in our own weirdness as Christians for a moment? Here’s what I mean.

For starters, I’m only late to this topic for those who follow the historic lectionary, which we do here at Our Savior. For everyone else in the liturgical community, the Transfiguration of Our Lord will likely be celebrated this Sunday. The next stop—Ash Wednesday.

I suppose another reason I say I’m late to this discussion is that after worship here at Our Savior three weeks ago, during the Adult Bible Study hour, I shared a thought I had while preaching on the text for Transfiguration Sunday from Matthew 17:1-9. Yes, it landed on me in the middle of the sermon. It didn’t make it into the sermon. But it certainly was rattling around in my brain. Essentially, I wondered whether it might be plausible that Moses and Elijah, the two patriarchs who stood and spoke with Jesus on the mountain, were actually stepping into that moment from moments in their own time.

I shared that thought with the adults in the Bible study. However, I never finished the thought. And so, this is it.

Typically, the moment Moses and Elijah arrive is interpreted as a visit from heaven. But the whole thing seems almost too dense for that simple deduction. I mean, if this is merely a visit from heaven, even just to serve as witnesses, why does the moment feel so heavy with the entire history of divine revelation? I know it’s not a good idea to form theological positions from speculation. However, I guess what I’m wondering about is not merely what happened, but how deep the event actually runs into the fabric of the Old Testament accounts. When Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus on the mountain, is something more taking place? Is time and space converging? Is it possible that when Moses and Elijah encountered God in the Old Testament, they were, in one or more of those moments, actually meeting with Christ in the Transfiguration moment? Is this something that—not merely theologically, but actually—is a binding moment that shows the simultaneous reaching backward and forward of redemptive history? Christianity teaches that such things are true. But is it being demonstrated in the Transfiguration?

I know it might sound like a huge waste of time to some. Still, the New Testament provides the necessary theological foundation for at least asking the question. Saint John writes pretty plainly, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:18). Christ Himself says, “Not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God” (John 6:46). And yet, the Old Testament repeatedly describes Moses, Elijah, and others as truly encountering God—speaking with Him, seeing His glory, standing in His presence. What’s more, the Church has historically resolved this tension by confessing that all visible manifestations of God in the Old Testament are manifestations of the pre-incarnate Son. In other words, whenever God shows Himself to anyone, Christ is the One they see. One of my favorite professors, Rev. Dr. Charles Gieschen, has written a crisp resource that leans into this kind of stuff. His book Angelomorphic Christology: Antecedents & Early Evidence, while thickly academic, is great fun.

In the meantime, these things place Moses’ experience on Sinai in an entirely new light—no pun intended. Exodus 33:11 tells us that “the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend,” and yet moments later, Moses is told that no one can see God’s face and live. The paradox only resolves if the One Moses encountered was truly divine, yet not the invisible Father in His fullness.

Something similar happens with Elijah’s encounter at Horeb. The prophet stands on the mountain as the Lord moves by, accompanied by wind, earthquake, and fire, yet is finally revealed as God speaking to Him in a quiet voice (1 Kings 19). The text uses the same language of divine self-disclosure found in Moses’ encounter—“the Lord passed by”—and, like Moses, Elijah returns from the mountain back into historical time, commissioned once again for his prophetic task of preaching a faithful Word. Like the scene with Moses, though happening at different times, this one includes the mountain, the divine glory, the overshadowing presence. Once again, the Transfiguration account begs the same question—if no one has seen the Father, who was Elijah encountering?

I don’t want to force anything into this. Eisegesis is dangerous. Still, the Transfiguration itself seems almost designed to invite a deeper investigation.

Another quick thing… Saint Luke’s version of the Transfiguration account tells us that Moses and Elijah speak with Jesus about His ἔξοδον—literally, His “exodus”—which He is about to accomplish at Jerusalem (Luke 9:31). First of all, the disciples weren’t invited into this discussion. He was talking to Moses and Elijah. Second, this isn’t casual vocabulary that Luke used. Moses’ entire ministry is defined by the Exodus. And Elijah stands at the head of the prophetic tradition that would proclaim what the Exodus was all about—calling Israel back to the covenant, confronting false worship, and insisting that the God who delivered His people is the same God who remains faithful to the end. And both Moses and Elijah are, right now, on the mountain with Jesus, talking about the fulfillment of everything they were commissioned to enact or proclaim.

Well, okay, one more quick thing. Did Jesus wink toward the possibility of the kind of collapse of linear time that I’m talking about when He said to the Pharisees in John 8:56, “Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” Not merely believed it, but that he saw it. I think Hebrews echoes this too when it says that the faithful of old did not receive the promise apart from us, because their perfection awaited Christ (Hebrews 11:39-40). Their story was never complete in their own time. It awaited His appearing.

In the end, is any of this provable in a strict sense? Nope. Not at all. Scripture never explicitly states that Moses was temporally present at the Transfiguration while also standing temporally on Sinai, or that Elijah consciously stepped into a future moment with Christ while at Horeb. But as I said, I thought about this right in the middle of my sermon on the Transfiguration, and this morning I decided to have a little fun with it, especially since I left it hanging during Bible study a few weeks ago.

I suppose, through all of this, regardless of the theological wandering, we did land on something the Bible establishes pretty firmly. It’s something that the dispensationalists may want to keep in mind. Essentially, all divine self-revelation is Christological, all theophany is mediated by the Son, and all redemptive moments converge in Him. Time in Scripture is not merely sequential. It’s centered—situated entirely in Jesus. You cannot be God’s people apart from Christ, who was, is, and will always be.

So, before the private messages start arriving, calling me crazy or saying I have too much time on my hands (which I absolutely don’t), I suppose the safest and most faithful way to close up shop on this is not in terms of literal time travel, but in terms of unveiled continuity. When Moses and Elijah encountered God in the Old Testament, they encountered Christ, though they did not yet know Him as Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, while Moses and Elijah were there at the Transfiguration, no matter where they came from, they weren’t visiting with someone or something new. They were visiting with the same One they’d been with during their own theophanies in their own time.

In that sense, even the Transfiguration becomes less about Moses and Elijah showing up, as if they’re appearing to the disciples alongside Jesus, and more about Jesus appearing as He is to and with Moses, Elijah, Peter, James, and John—with an element of enlisting the new guys into the same company that has always stood before Him, now finally seeing Him without the veil.

And so, however you feel about what I’ve written this morning, rest assured, it was a far better way to spend my morning than simmering in everything else going on in the world. Although the student walkouts deserve some consideration. Maybe I’ll be “unexhausted” enough to think about those things for my regular eNews message this Sunday.

I’ll Never Leave, Even When I Do

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will the Modern American Church Survive?

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It’s becoming harder to pretend that things out there aren’t coming apart at the seams. I mean, people are no longer joking about civil war. Some commentators and podcasters have already jumped ahead to predicting how such a war would end. Of course, the media continues doing its part to up the ante.

CNN admitted last week that it adjusted Alex Pretti’s image to make him look more attractive in order to stir sympathy for his death. CNN also had to backtrack after leaving out that Pretti had initiated a violent interaction with ICE a week earlier, resulting in broken ribs. In other words, federal agents already knew Pretti. They knew he was dangerous. And so, when he leaned into the officers that day, when he pushed into them, when he spit on them as they tried to get away from him and into their vehicles (as the videos show), and when he ultimately died in the scuffle, which was unfortunate—but it was no surprise to the agents that he was carrying a loaded weapon with two additional magazines. But the thing is, CNN knew all this stuff, too. And yet, they reported everything but these details. And CNN’s original narrative is still out there, gaining traction. All wars have their martyrs.

Other media outlets carried the “ICE is detaining children” headline as far as they could before eventually retracting it. And yet, it turns out the child in the widely circulated image had been abandoned by his illegal father, and his mother refused to claim him. Rather than simply sending the child back into the world alone—a world in which kids like him are almost always trafficked—he was kept in federal custody. He wasn’t locked in a cage. He was being protected, which is most certainly the government’s job when it comes to little ones left to a world of wolves. But again, the thing is, the news outlets knew this, and yet they elected to foster a completely different narrative, stoking embers and adding kindling to an already blue-hot climate. Add to this the irony of a progressive left that would butcher children in the womb while weeping over a child rescued from the wolves, but only because the rescuer wore an ICE uniform rather than an abortionist’s surgical gown.

And so, again, “civil war” is a term showing up in my feed more than I’d prefer. But what should any of us expect? So many are actively laboring to make the climate perfect for one.

Having said all this, civil war is not necessarily my chief concern. Yes, what’s happening culturally and politically is troubling. Still, I’m thinking ecclesially. I’m wondering if American Christianity would even survive such a thing, especially a conflict in which Christianity is a primary target for the opposition. The progressive left is already doing everything it can to snuff the faith (John 15:18-19). What would happen if that side were to win an armed conflict? I guess I’m just wondering out loud if anything in the modern faith is still fixed enough to be confessed in a way that would survive through such an event.

For the record, this weekly message goes out in various forms to about 7,000 folks worldwide. I don’t pretend to have a comprehensive map of global Christianity, and so, I don’t necessarily know the liturgical practices of most of the churches and people who may be reading this. But I do know my own church. And I know what kind of Christianity formed it.

Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hartland, Michigan, and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod with which we maintain fellowship, is creedal in nature. Creedal Christianity did not emerge from comfort. It was forged under pressure. It survived being surrounded by hostile empires, wars, internal heresies, and, most importantly, competing visions of who Jesus was allowed to be. Creedal Christianity is a faith maintained by precise statements—what we believe and what we don’t, why we do what we do, why we’re distinctly different from the world around us. Regardless of what the more fashionable Christian influencers may have told you, these things are not relics of an overly philosophical age. They are the Church’s collective memory, crystallized at the very points in history where the fires were hottest, where the culture was hell-bent on consuming and assimilating us, and where losing our identity would have meant losing Christ altogether.

While studying the Church’s creeds with the kids in confirmation over the years, I’ve often told them that confessional statements like the ecumenical creeds (the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds) are very important guardrails that protect our inheritance. What I mean is that by these confessional statements, the Church was essentially saying to the world, “We heard what you’ve said about Jesus, and we’re banning that interpretation from our midst forever.” They didn’t do that because the Church is allergic to questions, but because some interpretations—some answers to very important questions about God—can kill the faith (Galatians 1:6-9). The creeds exist precisely because the Church learned, often through blood, that not every version of Jesus is compatible with the Gospel.

For example, Arius, a bishop in Alexandria, came along offering a Jesus who was inspirational but not eternal. He insisted that Jesus was not God from eternity, but rather the first and greatest of God’s created beings. To be exalted, yes. But by no means divine in the sense that He is of the same substance as the Father. In reply, the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) gave birth to the Nicene Creed, which said, essentially, “Um, no. He is the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made….”

This response was not a modern branding exercise. It certainly didn’t come from thin air. It came from God’s Word (John 1:1-3, Colossians 2:9, and countless others). It was an important clarification made to preserve the one true faith that saves. I mean, what’s the point of confessing faith in Jesus—even being willing to die for Him—if the Jesus you confess is false? Creeds are in place precisely for this reason—to preserve a right confession of faith (1 John 2:22-23).

Even better, creedal Christianity never just remained on paper. Creedal Christianity was always ritualized Christianity. What the Church confessed with her mouth, she inevitably enacted with her body. I should pause here for a moment and admit that resistance to rites and ceremonies has always struck me as weird. Enacting what we believe is natural. We already do this instinctively in ordinary life. When people love one another, they don’t merely say it. They demonstrate it. They show up, they make vows, they give gifts, they mark anniversaries. When a nation believes in its sovereignty, it doesn’t just write a constitution, and then that’s it. It raises flags, sings anthems, swears oaths, and builds monuments that enshrine it. Belief naturally seeks embodiment. It inevitably embraces postures and practices that make the invisible visible. In the same way, the rites and ceremonies that emerged were the Church’s way of training the faithful to live inside the truth they confessed, week after week, year after year. It was a very natural way for the body and mind to remain in stride with what the heart confessed to be true (James 2:17).

When this kind of synchronization happens, the Christian faith becomes incredibly resistant to drift. Without them, almost anything can influence direction.

I suppose the thrust of my concern is that this is precisely what much of contemporary church culture has abandoned. Mainstream American Christendom seems to thrive on elasticity—on keeping Jesus just vague enough not to offend anyone and flexible enough to serve every demographic.

The irony in this is that it’s meant to promote growth. And yet, the American Church has been in free fall for decades. This free-floating, syrupy, confessionless, “deeds not creeds” landscape has not resulted in growth. It has resulted in massive erosion. But that’s what happens when your Jesus is more life coach than the eternal Son of God who comes again in glory to judge both the living and the dead (Acts 17:31).

Interestingly, even as creedal Christianity isn’t so much about growth as it is continuity, the early Church did grow—and quite rapidly. Why? Could it be because it refused what American Christianity is all too eager to embrace? The early Church did not survive persecution by becoming more appealing to Roman tastes. It survived by becoming more precise—more dogmatic, more confessional, and in my humble opinion, more liturgical. By its faith, life, and practices, it told the surrounding empires in no uncertain terms, in effect, “We will not adjust Christ to fit your world. You will have to adjust your world to Christ.”

Creedal Christianity can speak this way because it’s anchored in otherworldly things. It is, therefore, by design, capable of surviving this world’s storms. It doesn’t roll over when the challenges come. It can and does remain fixed in place even as everything else tries to pull it apart.

I know I’ve already gone on long enough. I’m guessing the skimmers left five minutes ago. For those who stayed to the end, I suppose I’ll circle back to where I started.

I’ll just say, again, that civil war is not my chief concern. Empires rise and fall. Cultures always burn themselves out eventually. Still, the real danger is not whether America fractures entirely. I’m just wondering if the American Church still possesses a faith sturdy enough to remain standing through it.

I don’t have this concern for creedal Christianity. It’ll survive. History has already more than proven that when and where the pressure mounted, a Church built on crisp confession remained immovable. Our Savior in Hartland is an heir to this hope-filled reality, and so, we enjoy that future. This is true because Christ did not promise His Church an easy path, but He did promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against the fixed Gospel confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matthew 16:16-18). That’s a creedal statement, and where such confessions remain, so does the Church and the Lord who preserves her.

Live and Let Live?

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Unsurprisingly, what I wrote about last Sunday played out similarly this past week when protestors stormed a church in Minneapolis, demanding that the Christians within embrace their obnoxious crusade against ICE. And when they didn’t, they were shouted down and shamed. Like rainbow armbands in sports—an ideological symbol being imposed in this or that form, all with the threat of punishment if refused—the demands placed on the Christians in that church followed the exact same pattern.

I hope New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is watching this stuff. These two scenarios—the athletes refusing to comply and the Christians in Minneapolis doing the same—while different on the surface, reveal the same underlying dynamic. The shunning common to both betrays collectivism’s innermost spirit. Mamdani did say he intended to replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. Well, we’re watching historic Marxist collectivism being paraded in real time.

Essentially, forcing anyone under threat of punishment to submit to ideologies and their symbols is a distinctly Marxist, and therefore a readily socialist, impulse. Mamdani is an avowed socialist. He believes that the “warmth of collectivism” is the subordination of the individual conscience to the demands of the collective, and it must be enforced not by persuasion but by institutional pressure. Marxist warmth, in practice, always comes with enforcement, because collectivism only works when dissent is treated as a problem to be punished.

Taking this a step further, what I’m really thinking about right now is the symbols themselves. What’s the harm in wearing a rainbow patch on your jersey? What’s the trouble with a church’s pastor raising a fist alongside protestors to stem trouble? What’s the trouble with driving a company car with a BLM or an ICE-out sticker on its bumper?

Well, for starters, the first thing I’ll say is that every movement in history revealed its true ambitions not first through laws, but through symbols. In that sense, symbols are rarely neutral. You know as well as I do that they train the eye and discipline the conscience. Symbols have a way of testing allegiance long before force is ever required. That’s why armbands, flags, and gestures matter, even before they are compulsory. They are never just a thing.

Since I’ve already sort of wandered near to what I was concerned about last Sunday, you’ll remember that rainbow armbands, jerseys, and other such things have been forced into soccer, basketball, volleyball, football, and so many other sports. When I say forced, I mean it. They’re always framed as harmless signs of “tolerance.” And yet, the countless stories of athlete after athlete being shunned or punished for refusing to wear one expose the deeper truth. Tolerance, by definition, allows dissent. But what we’ve witnessed is enforcement against dissent. Participation is no longer optional. If a person refuses, he or she becomes an example of moral failure and must be shamed accordingly. The only way forward for such a reprobate is total annihilation in the form of cancellation.

History teaches us to pay attention when ideological movements do this—especially when they migrate from persuasion to enforced uniformity. The comparison to past regimes is uncomfortable, but symbols worn on the arm (or, thinking back to COVID, maybe on one’s face) have long functioned as tools of social sorting. Everyone is identifiable. The ones wearing the symbols of compliance are safe. The ones without it are suspect. Again, the purpose is not merely expression but visibility.

But I think it gets even worse still.

I’ve long thought that the LGBTQ, Inc. movement’s use of a flag was bad news. The same goes for the BLM flag. This is true because flags never really originated as tools of personal expression. They were militaristic. They began as tribal identifiers—markers of people, allegiance, and territorial claim. They were carried by nations and armies not just to establish sovereignty, but often to impose that sovereignty’s will on others. Historically, when a flag was raised where another flag once flew, it signaled conquest—one culture replacing another, one authority displacing a rival. When I saw that Minnesota had changed its state flag, making it eerily similar to Somalia’s flag a few years ago, I wondered about displacement. When I started to hear about the billions in fraud orchestrated by the Somali community, to which the Minnesota government largely turned a blind eye, the flag’s redesign made a little more sense. It was a quiet announcement of who’s now in charge in the state.

Of course, in the modern age, flags have been repurposed for everything from corporations to clubs, but that does not erase their original meaning. A flag still signals a collective identity that believes its vision and mission, good or bad, must be announced and then carried into the world, and maybe in ways that will assure it finds a footing as the governing one. Even General Motors would love to see its flag being flown at a Ford building.

But what if it suddenly became a cultural expectation that Ford must fly GM’s flag? That would be extremely telling.

When a group’s flag moves from voluntary display to institutional expectation—on school walls, corporate labels, in movie and TV scripts, on government buildings and athletic uniforms, or wherever and whatever—it stops functioning as a gesture of tolerance and becomes an advancing army’s sovereign demand for submission instead. I spoke in terms of war in last week’s note. Indeed, when what I described starts happening, you know a very real conflict is underway. It’s no longer a debate, but instead, warfare is underway, and territories are being taken. The occupying nation now marks its seized lands. In these territories, dissent can only be treated as resistance.

I think this is a crucial distinction often obscured in public debate. And so, again, I think one of the best forms of resistance is to refuse to display the LGBTQ Inc. flag, which more and more people are choosing to do, especially among the youth—most assuredly among young men. In one sense, I think that’s happening because common sense is making somewhat of a comeback. On the other hand, “Not the Bee,” the Babylon Bee’s source for non-satirical news, reported a study suggesting Americans are pretty much sick of the LGBTQ, Inc. agenda. America has grown tired of the stuff being shoved down our throats day in and day out. The study noted that most Americans seem to have realized it was never about “live and let live.” It was always about something more. One line in the article stood out. It said, “[Young people] have been told they are ‘bigots’ if they believe [unnatural sexual relations are not okay] … but even if they tried not to be ‘bigots,’ they were told they were bigots anyway…” Maybe another way to think of this is to say, as I already did, that common sense is making a comeback. Common sense knows that a person can affirm human dignity while also rejecting ideological compulsion. The former is humane. The latter is totalitarian and dehumanizing.

From another perspective, I should return to that “live and let live” thought. It sure seems most ideologies seeking dominance began by insisting they merely wanted to be left alone, when that’s not at all what they really wanted. The eventual enforcement of their imposed symbols made it clear.

And so, I suppose the question before us is no longer about tolerance and treating people with respect. The question is whether any movement, however well-intentioned it claims to be, has the right to force individuals and institutions to accept its ideology publicly. The Minneapolis church and the shunned athletes sure seem to suggest that this question is no longer theoretical but is already being answered in practice. The moment you are required to display allegiance before you’re allowed to belong, you are no longer living in a free society. You are living under occupation.

A Temporary Disruption, Not A Pattern

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This weekend’s forecast is shaping up to be one for the record books. The temperatures are, right now, in the negatives, and we’ll remain in this state-sized walk-in freezer well into next week. That’s not an inviting thought. And some people wonder why I long for Florida. I was just joking with Jennifer about how the sky is an unobstructed blue today, adding that even the clouds have finally given up and gone south to the coast. The kind of cold we get here in Michigan makes a guy like me question every decision that requires opening the front door, let alone climbing into a car and driving just about anywhere.

That said, Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hartland has never once in its 71 years canceled a scheduled worship service. In my 27 years in this place, I’ve seen some pretty dreadful weather, resulting in attendance challenges in worship. During the snowpocalypse back in 2014 (at least, I think that was the year), there were a few services with only four or five of us in a nave that seats 500. Still, the doors were open, the lights were on, the heat was cranked, and the pulpit, lectern, and altar were occupied. Indeed, where two or three are gathered, the Lord said.

You should know that the anti-cancelation precedent was set long before me. And to the credit of Pastor Pies senior and Pastor Pies junior, it came well before heated garages, remote starters, and online everything. When I was called as the congregation’s pastor, I committed to maintaining the standard. It is a good practice. Nothing will get in the way of worship, so long as I’m here. Not even protestors (wink-wink).

Of course, this instinct is far older than Our Savior in Hartland. For two thousand years, Christians somehow managed to fill houses of worship in every imaginable climate, condition, and challenge. That’s because God’s people gather in His house, just as He mandates. And so, by the power of the Holy Spirit at work for faith, the Christians first instinct isn’t to ask, “What’s the minimum requirement for faithfulness?” We want to go. And we’re bothered when we can’t.

With that in mind, it is entirely understandable that church members, for one reason or another, may not always be able to make it to worship. When it comes to what we’re enduring right now, for the elderly, if they have no one to help them through the wintry mess, it may mean risking a slip-and-fall. For families with young children, it may mean battling the latest seasonal illness rampaging through the house. For those who serve in the civil sphere, it may mean being on duty precisely when the rest of us are free to gather. These are all real situations, not excuses.

But once again, we should also be honest about the cultural air we breathe. We live in an age that trains people to look for reasons not to show up—reasons to stay home, opt out, postpone, or substitute convenience for commitment. What once required devoted sacrifice is now measured against the comforts we might lose if we go. Over time, this forms some really bad habits that feel justified, and maybe even, in some cases, virtuous. COVID was an example. People felt they were being godly by mandating barriers between God and His people, even suggesting that those who stayed home from worship were the better, more loving Christians. What nonsense.

Now, before I stray from my original thought this frigid Friday afternoon, just know that faithfulness remains possible, even when there are genuine challenges that can keep us away—and this is precisely why the earlier point matters. The real danger is not necessarily that people sometimes cannot come. It’s that, over time, they forget how to be Christians who are genuinely bothered when they can’t come. They learn to see attendance as negligible.

So, how do we fight this forgetfulness?

Well, I say, when you cannot be here, have a plan for being faithful right where you are. For the LCMS Lutherans reading this, that doesn’t necessarily require online streaming. If you have your hymnal, you have pretty much everything you need. For example, just grab your Lutheran Service Book, gather the family in the living room—sickos and all—and open up to page 219, the Office of Matins. If your child attends our school, then I can promise they already know the service by heart. Even the preschoolers can sing through it, leading the way. And what joy it will be! It is a wonderful service just oozing with God’s Word. And that’s the point—to be fed, to receive the Word, to pray, to give thanks to God for His abundant mercies. What’s more, if you’re not participating in online giving, you can still set aside this week’s offering and place it in the plate next week, along with next week’s offering. In every way possible, let the absence be exactly what it is: temporary. Let it be a momentary disruption, not a new pattern.

I guess what I’m saying is that faith, by its very nature, has a goal. It longs to be with Jesus more, not less. And so, when a legitimate reason keeps it away, it abides in God’s promises nonetheless, all the while longing to return to the place where Christ has elected to administer His gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation through the verbal and visible Word—His wonderful Means of Grace!

I know it’s going to be really cold on Sunday. Still, I hope that if you’re going to venture out for anything this weekend, it’ll be to join your Christian family in worship.

A Strange But Obvious Imbalance

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This past Thursday morning, since our school was closed due to the snow, leaving both the church and school offices vacant for most of the morning, I sat in my office and did a little reading. I found myself chewing on a few stories about professional athletes in various parts of the world who’ve refused to wear team-sponsored rainbow armbands, jerseys, and such before, during, or after competition. The articles mentioned situations going back to 2018. Some of the athletes named gave no particular reason for refusing. Others insisted that competition should be about the sport, not political ideologies. Several noted religious objections.

Interestingly, one hundred percent of the Christians who refused, no matter the country, were reprimanded by their teams and ultimately labeled as bigots by activist organizations. The Muslims who refused, however, experienced no such reaction. In particular, two relatively recent stories stood out.

Back in 2024, Sam Morsy, the captain of Ipswich Town, a professional soccer team in England, refused to wear a rainbow armband. He cited Islam’s prohibition. Team leadership supported his position. LGBTQ Inc. did not push back. In that same year, Noussair Mazraoui, a player for Manchester United, refused to wear a team jacket specifically designed to show support for the LGBTQ community. Like Morsy, he cited Islam’s prohibition. The club ultimately scrapped the jackets entirely, so no one on the team had to wear one. Again, the usual suspects were relatively quiet in reply.

I suppose the first thing I’m inclined to say to the athletes who refused to comply is, “Bravo.” I say this regardless of their reasons. What they did required courage, if only because they gambled their own futures based on principle. Still, the obvious remains. Why were the Muslims able to escape public shaming, and the Christians were not? How is it that the Muslim players suffered very little harm to their careers, while the Christian athletes took significant hits?

Interesting, isn’t it, because what unfolded in most cases seemed to be a selective application of moral pressure. If you were a Christian, you were attacked. If you were a Muslim, you were left alone.

I don’t know about you, but the disparity exposes something altogether troubling to me. What appears to be being enforced is not some sort of universal moral standard, but it’s more of a power calculus. Christian beliefs are manhandled. Muslim beliefs, by contrast, are probed with gentleness. I doubt it’s because of some newfound respect for religion. It’s because of something else entirely.

At a minimum, it’s the fear of being considered Islamophobic. At most, it’s risk management. It’s an unspoken acknowledgement of the potential for violent extremism. I can only imagine what would happen if a crowd of LGBTQ activists went screeching through one of the more balkanized Muslim neighborhoods in London, calling out the religious community as shameful and unloving. You can get away with such things in Christian communities. But that’s because Christians don’t have a history of driving trucks through gatherings or blowing themselves up in the middle of crowds. And so, to demonize Christian athletes for their religious apprehensions but not the Muslim athletes has an air of risk management.

The irony in all of this, of course, is that such selective outrage undermines the very claims of diversity and tolerance and acceptance and fairness and inclusion and all the other buzz words that LGBTQ Inc. claims it desires. And yet, if conscience is only respected when it belongs to some and not others, then the movement isn’t being honest about its real agenda.

What all of this suggests—uncomfortably, but plainly—is that Christianity itself is the real target. But why? Because, in the end, as my friend Charlie Kirk so often insisted, the issue is not necessarily cultural or political but spiritual. In principle, there’s no need for LGBTQ Inc. to attack Islam. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Seen through that lens, the pattern starts to make a little more sense.

In any war, effort is always concentrated where the real enemy exists. You don’t waste resources battering positions that want the same things you do. You certainly don’t provoke like-minded forces that are stronger than you for fear they might fire back. You focus instead on the fronts that can open into the lands you want to conquer. Christianity occupies that space.

That’s why Christian conviction draws the real fire. It really is the last major moral framework in the West that openly challenges the reigning cultural orthodoxy while refusing to play by its rules of power and intimidation. And perhaps what makes it so appetizing is that Christianity has no doctrine that encourages or glorifies violence, insisting that by killing others, the divine is pleased enough to reward the killer.

That said, violence is sometimes thrust upon Christians. When it is, we have every right to self-defense, which could lead to a persecutor’s messy end. Still, we do not seek it out. We do not believe God rewards us when we kill others. We live as Saint Paul insisted: “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18). Knowing this about us marks us as relatively low risk but potentially high reward. And so, from there, the assumption is that once the Christian front collapses, the rest of the cultural terrain will fall into line on its own. Beyond that, what replaces Christianity is almost beside the point. Who cares, so long as Christ and His followers are crushed. That’s a spiritual agenda, more so than anything else.

But here’s the thing. The Lord wondered rhetorically, “When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). And yet, even as the Church might not grow but shrink, Christ promised that the Gospel would never be conquered, and the gates of hell would never prevail against the Church (Matthew 16:18). Christianity will stand to the End of Days. Those promises reframe everything. They remind us that the pressures being applied right now are by no means new, nor are they unexpected. The Bible has not hidden from believers that faithfulness would be costly, that allegiance to Christ would eventually put us at odds with whatever spirit happens to rule the present age. That said, what is new is the packaging. Right now, it seems the ruling spirit looks like activists jackbooting to the tune of tolerance and inclusion while finding every conceivable way to justify Christian exclusion and moral coercion.

Nevertheless, whatever the persecution—regardless of its form or the generation in which it’s being exacted—none of it changes the Christian trajectory. The Christian response is not panic or retreat. It’s certainly not bitterness or rage. It’s courage—quiet, steady, and unyielding courage—rooted in the confidence that Christ will have the last word, whether the persecuting crowd approves of that word or not.

Faithfulness has never meant safety. But it has always meant trust. Empowered by the Holy Spirit for such trust, we can go into any challenge with the otherworldly capability to confess Christ clearly and without hatred. What’s more, we can do this without fear because we know to whom we belong, and that He is worth the cost—or as the sign in front of our church here in Hartland reads at this very moment: “Christ is worth more than what you fear losing because of Him.”

Let Life Sound Like Life

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I did something unusual on the drive to my office this morning. After a minute or two of familiar music, I turned it off and drove the remaining twenty-three minutes in silence. Not necessarily quiet, but silence.

Actually, my actions may not have been entirely accidental. Yesterday, two things happened. First, a friend wrote a post about leaving social media. It made perfect sense to me because I have the same feelings fairly regularly. Second, as I always do, I led my congregation’s monthly Ladies Guild Bible study group here at Our Savior. It’s a fantastic group of ladies who are devoted to Christ and His Word. The topic of the study was peace—what it is, what it isn’t, and how, from a Christian perspective, it has little if anything to do with our circumstances. Admittedly, the study’s conversations stayed with me, too. And so, here’s what I mean.

I drive a black two-door Jeep Wrangler. I’ve driven several Wranglers in my lifetime. The one I have now has a hard top. It’s slightly lifted by about two inches. The tires are also a bit larger than stock. Anyone who’s driven a Jeep Wrangler knows they’re not necessarily serene vehicles. Put a soft top on it, which I’ve owned before, and “not necessarily serene” becomes a massive understatement. They become wind tunnels. Maybe the newer models aren’t so bad. But the ones I’ve known were never quiet. Even with a hard top, wind slips through where it can. The road hums. Things creak. At seventy miles an hour—at least that’s the pace I’m going to admit—the whole thing speaks in resonance and vibrations.

And yet, for one reason or another, this morning’s ride was rather peaceful by comparison to most.

Usually, all my Wrangler’s sounds are buried beneath something else—music, podcasts, and news clips from various sources. Apparently, I’m inclined to drown out the natural sound every day, and to do so as a matter of habit. But not this morning. Today was wind, asphalt, engine, motion, a Buick in the passing lane slowing everyone else’s pace, a truck hauling who knows what to who knows where, the rhythm of rain (that would eventually become snow) tapping against the windshield and being sent away for a few seconds by the wipers before returning. All of this was happening.

I don’t want to get too philosophical here. However, there is a lesson to be learned. There’s a lesson in everything, if only we’re willing to consider the possibility.

Concerning my morning drive, I wondered how much of life we miss because we’re always piping something else into it. We insulate ourselves from the ordinary textures of being alive. I get why we do it. Real life isn’t polished, and perhaps worse, it doesn’t flatter us. In that sense, the real world is noisy in ways we’d never willingly choose. I mean, who wants a life that rattles and hums, whether literally or figuratively? And so, for one reason or another, we do what we can to cover it up, choosing instead to curate our surroundings. I listen to music and such while driving to pass the time. But is passing the time always best? Well, when someone or something else is thinking for me, maybe not. But regardless of the reason, I suppose one of my concerns is that, when we pipe so much extra stuff into our lives, we risk losing our bearings. In other words, we risk forgetting where we are, what we’re supposed to be doing, and maybe even who we’re with because we’re always somewhere else listening to that somewhere else’s noise.

Does that make sense? Maybe not. Again, I don’t want to be too philosophical. In the end, I’ll simply say that sometimes it’s good to turn things off and unplug—not because the anticipated silence will be actual quiet, but because it’ll be an opportunity to let life sound like life. And by the way, regardless of how some might ultimately define peace, only Christians know what peace truly is when life is making a racket. But again, even in a superficial, everyday sense, even mortal peace doesn’t always come from hearing what we prefer. Sometimes it comes from hearing what’s been there all along. I suppose a Jeep Wrangler, absent all artificial sound, traveling noisily down US23, is sometimes just the place to learn that lesson.

Take Care You Aren’t the Bad Guy

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I am under no obligation to pretend Renee Good was morally virtuous. By all accounts, she lived in ways entirely contrary to what I believe actually is virtuous. I also get the sense that she and her “wife” delighted in provocation, which is why they said and did the things they did in the place they were. As such, I think such behavior played a role in the dreadful situation our nation is currently enduring. But even so, as a human being—as a Christian—regardless of any disagreements I might’ve had with Good had I known her personally, I would never want or cheer for her death. Why? Because Christians do not traffic in such things. We pursue life—even for those we believe are squandering it, even for those we don’t know, even for those with whom we disagree.

Indeed, what happened is terrible. That said, if you’re glad she died, if your first thought was, “Good riddance,” or perhaps more, you’re rooting for other protestors to die, then you are missing the mark entirely, and you’re playing right into the hands of those who actually do want things to get worse. What’s more, you’re pushing the ideological continents further apart, and you’re giving those on the other shore a very good reason to point the finger and say, “See! This is what your convictions produce!”

Stand against what you will. Side with whomever. But at least do so with integrity. Repent and resist the temptation to be glad about someone else’s harm (Matthew 5:44). It fosters devilry, brings only despair, and is one sure way to mark you as the bad guy, even if your position is the better one.