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Everyone Doubts, but Everyone Is Also Forgiven and Loved

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

A sermon at St. John’s Episcopal Church on April 24, 2022.
John 20:19-31

I’m not an expert in church planting, but I’ve gone to seminary, sat through a few church leadership classes, and helped at a few churches over the years. I know two informal rules of church planting that should be common sense for all of us.

Now, let’s get our terms straight first. There’s a lead pastor or senior pastor who is in charge of the church plant. Then there’s a core group of committed volunteers known as a launch team who do a lot of the heavy lifting to help the lead pastor get the church started.

So, there’s a lead pastor and a launch team.

Here’s Rule # 1 for church planting.

Don’t get your launch team arrested. If someone arrests your launch team, they won’t help you launch your church. So don’t send your launch team to a place where they may be arrested.

Here’s Rule #2

If you’re the senior pastor of a new church plant, avoid being killed at all costs. If there’s no senior pastor, the launch team won’t know what to launch. They may just end up sitting around in a room with the doors locked.

Today’s Gospel reading shows Jesus breaking those two rules as his disciples hide in a locked room for about a week. The new church or community assembly that Jesus planted appeared to be withering right from the start.

What could the disciples do without Jesus present to guide them?

How many disciples would be killed or imprisoned by the religious leaders who proved themselves capable of heinous violence?

If we place ourselves in the sandals of the disciples in chapter 20, we would discover men and women feeling a wide range of emotions. Their lives and their hopes for the future have been turned upside down by the brutal execution of Jesus. Yet, they received incredible news from some women in their group that Jesus was alive.

Most, not all, of the disciples dismissed this as impossible, yet we can imagine that everyone hoped against impossible odds that Jesus could be alive.

The 3 Things Jesus Gave His Disciples

When Jesus showed up in the locked room, he shared three things with them, and I’m guessing they only wanted two out three.

First, Jesus offered peace to them. They were terrified of the Jewish leaders, and they didn’t know what to do next after seeing Jesus’ execution.

Although they rejoiced at the sight of Jesus, their fear remained. And we know that this fear had gripped them because even a week later, when Thomas showed up among them, they were still hanging around in the same house. They weren’t going anywhere or taking any chances.

That self-imposed cabin-fever was a problem because Jesus had specifically commissioned them to go into the world just as the Father had sent him into the world.

That commission is the second thing Jesus gave to his disciples, and it certainly wasn’t what they wanted to hear. They saw that the Jewish leaders were willing to work alongside the hated Romans to orchestrate the execution of an innocent holy man.

If the Father sent Jesus out to preach repentance and forgiveness only to be killed, what would happen to them if they were sent out on the same mission?

We may imagine the disciples saying at first, “Jesus! You’re here!!!” And then their enthusiasm wanes after hearing this commission, “Oh. Jesus… You’re here?”

The third thing Jesus gave to his disciples was the Holy Spirit, who is the promised means for their mission. Jesus promised the Holy Spirit in his longer discourse, which included prayers and promises, in John chapters 15-17.

It seems that Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit on his disciples in a way that would call to mind God breathing life into the first human. Perhaps we have a hint that Jesus is starting something brand new, a new creation, as he breathed the Holy Spirit on those gathered.

Commentary writers have a lot of different views on how to relate this filling of the Holy Spirit to the day of Pentecost as described in the Book of Acts. We could get into the finer points of the debate over what Jesus did here, but in my view, I can’t imagine anyone today arguing against another chance to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

At the very least, Jesus is telling his disciples, if not empowering his disciples, to complete his mission of being sent out to preach repentance to others.  Jesus made sure they could rely on the Holy Spirit to complete their mission. 

What Was Their Mission?

Now, it might be easy to read this passage and overlook what exactly Jesus was sending his disciples to do. What does it mean for them to be sent in the same way that the Father sent Jesus?

We get our clues from what Jesus says after filling them with the Holy Spirit: They are being sent to forgive sins so that people can be restored in their relationship with God and have life by believing in Jesus.

A little bit of a pause is warranted here because it’s very easy to read this passage in an unhelpful way. It has been interpreted poorly for centuries and there no doubt are Christians who have said awful things because of it.

First, commentary writers and scholars aren’t necessarily agreed on this point, but quite a few believe that a larger group of disciples were present for this conversation and commissioning.

This wasn’t a special power over sin only granted to the top apostles or leaders. Every Christian can share the gift of God’s forgiveness to others.

Second, there’s an unspoken point that needs to be spelled out after centuries of poor application. Jesus wants his disciples to forgive sins. He’s not giving them arbitrary power over sin for their own jollies.

This commission is important and high stakes. Jesus sacrificed his life in order to unite humanity with God. He forgave his executioners on the cross. It would have never crossed the minds of the disciples to withhold forgiveness as a power grab or way to manipulate others.

They were being sent to free people from their anger, pain, greed, violence, and selfishness. If they failed to go, then people would retain their sins.

Now, we would assume that having received the Holy Spirit and the commission from Jesus to go forgive sins, that the disciples would step forward in boldness. We would expect them to announce that Jesus has risen from the dead and conquered death, and all who believe in him can be forgiven, liberated from sin, and restored to communion with God.

Right?

Or they may stay put for a week and fail to convince even one of their own apostles that Jesus is alive.

The church planting plan isn’t off to a great start with their first attempt at a convert among themselves.

Thomas Goes Over the Top

The story of Jesus and Thomas is a bit of a low point in the Gospels where even an apostle of Jesus who had every advantage of sitting under Jesus doubted his Resurrection. Yet, the focus on Thomas’ doubt has always bothered me.

If I was going to make up a subtitle for each Gospel, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to write something like this:

Stories of Jesus Saving People Who Misunderstood and Doubted Him

The single strongest argument for the historical authenticity of the Gospels is the number of times the disciples look bad. They’re always doubting Jesus, misunderstanding Jesus, confused by Jesus, and sulking about with their tails between their legs. Jesus even called Peter “Satan” once!

The Resurrection accounts are filled with the disciples struggling with doubt and confusion. Matthew and Luke take care to mention the doubts of the disciples, which we tend to overlook because those doubts aren’t as dramatic as Thomas.

Thomas makes a demand for an even more miraculous experience than the rest of the disciples who saw the wounds of Jesus. He wanted to touch them!

Over the years, I have still felt that John was kind of outing his friend.

I’ve since changed my mind, though. The Gospels take care to document a lot of doubting disciples, and the story of Thomas at this particular moment is crucial for the disciples and for us today.

Thomas struggled to believe the people he trusted the most about the risen Jesus. Therefore, their mission to announce forgiveness of sins through the Risen Christ faced steep challenges.

This prompted Jesus to announce a special blessing for those who would believe in his Resurrection and forgiveness without seeing what they saw. John wanted future generations to know their mission is a tough ask, and they will most certainly need all of the help they can get from the Holy Spirit.

I don’t think the intention is to single out Thomas after a Gospel full of doubts and confusion. In fact, Thomas gives one of the most memorable affirmations of Jesus being God, saying “My Lord and my God.”

Thomas reminds us that we will need God’s help to share the hope of Jesus being alive and present to forgive sins.

Where Does This Story Leave Us?

Based on today’s Gospel reading, we may find that we have a few things in common with the disciples, even if we haven’t witnessed the events of Jesus’ death and Resurrection.

We too have had to deal with our doubts and failures.

We too have been forgiven by the risen Jesus and invited to share in new life through the Holy Spirit.

We have received the Holy Spirit or we can receive the Holy Spirit because of our relationship with Jesus.

Although we aren’t hiding from people who threaten our lives, we may still feel alienated by others and struggle to find much in common with them.

We may feel the burden of being called to help people find freedom and forgiveness in Christ if we don’t appear to have anything in common with them.

For some of us introverts, it’s very hard to talk to people. And it’s even harder to talk to people when we can’t see common ground.

I share those concerns, and here are a few things that may help.

For starters, I hope that you can take time this week to meditate on God’s love for you and the indwelling Spirit Jesus has breathed on you. Those are God’s gracious gifts that you could never earn or “prepare” for. You just have to receive them.

Then, I hope you take time to remember God’s love for you also extends to everyone. I love the snarky t-shirt that says, “Jesus loves you. Then again, he loves everybody.”

As snarky as that sounds, it’s actually true. Jesus loves you as a unique, wonderful person, but he also loves everyone. That love and grace is given to you for you benefit and for the benefit of others.

We don’t talk about sin because we are God’s appointed judges for this world. Jesus specifically said he didn’t come to judge. He came as a doctor who wanted to heal people.

As you think of how you can share the life and love of Jesus with others, consider ways you can help others heal. Don’t stand as the judge. Be a caring doctor who listens, prays, and supports people in their faith journeys.

If you ever worry that you’re not doing this right or that you don’t have what it takes, remember something from today’s passage. The risen Jesus appeared to his closest disciples, told them to go out and forgive sins, and then, they stayed put. Even one of Jesus’s own disciples doubted the testimony of his friends.

We have been given a high and holy calling to heal others by sharing about the love and grace of Jesus. But we shouldn’t forget that this mission started out as a fiasco that appeared doomed to failure.

Only the breath of God moving through ordinary people could help them continue a mission that depended on the power of God from day one.

Amen. 

Ed Cyzewski's avatar

Ed Cyzewski

I’m the author of Flee, Be Silent, Pray: Ancient Prayers for Anxious Christians, Reconnect: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction, and other books. I write about prayer and spiritual restoration at http://www.edcyzewski.com.

Check out Ed’s books about prayer, Christian living, and writing at Amazon:

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What Does It Look Like to Pray More Effectively?

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

I think we all want to figure out how to pray more effectively, but what exactly are we wishing for? We want our prayers to connect us with God, and we want to see positive outcomes when we pray for peace, strength, courage, safety, or healing.

Yet, does praying effectively mean seeing a direct correlation between praying for specific outcomes and then seeing God deliver them?

I spent a lot of time worrying that my prayers weren’t effective. I feared that God wasn’t real or that my faith was flawed because I didn’t see enough outcomes from my prayers.

Looking back, I got swept up in my expectations and desires for control or even for some kind of sign based on my prayers. I wanted to be legitimized or verified.

Curiously, Jesus often rebuked those who asked him for a sign. The people who couldn’t trust in his word or rest in God’s unseen presence were the ones who demanded verification proving Jesus was God.

When I wanted to prove that my prayers are effective, I made a similar mistake. The mystery of God had to be uncovered in order to give myself a sense of security.

Although I still try to “improve” my prayer practices and become more disciplined in my daily prayer routines, I don’t get wrapped up in the outcomes of my prayer. There isn’t really a way to measure the effectiveness of my prayers.

Perhaps the only measure of prayer’s effectiveness is whether I’m trusting in God or not.

Thomas Keating famously said that you can only fail at prayer if you get up and leave the room.

You are praying effectively as long as you are reaching out to a loving and present God.

You are praying effectively as long as you are resting in God and trusting in God.

You are praying effectively if you either lay down your burdens to the Lord or clear your mind so that God’s love is all that remains in your awareness.

It’s easy to turn prayer or Christian living into balance sheets or stock markets where growth and declines happen regularly. We want to be “growing” as Christians, but such progress isn’t easy to nail down.

It’s more helpful to think about whether you’re participating in prayer or not. Even if you don’t see clear outcomes or progress from your prayers, that isn’t a mark of failure or alienation from God.

Consider whether you have unrealistic expectations or whether you need some instruction in prayer, but prayer isn’t a simple matter of input and output with predictable results. We can beat ourselves up if our prayers don’t bring the same results we see attained by others.

I’ve had to balance extremes in my life.

I know I need to keep engaging in prayer, learning more about prayer, and growing in my practices that are always in need of refinement.

I also know that I can’t measure my progress in prayer or label certain prayers as “effective” based on my own criteria. Who can say with certainty what’s effective while praying to a present but mysterious God?

I hope to keep learning more about prayer, stretching my faith as I trust more completely in God, and practicing prayer in ways that help me experience God in new ways.

I will continue to make petitions for myself and for others, and I will wait on God in silent faith.

Yet, I also will avoid beating myself up over the “results” of my prayers. There are moments in the Bible when God responds with yes to a prayer request and times when God responds with no. Both prayers could be described as “effective” in the sense that they were shared intimately with God.

We won’t always know how to measure the effectiveness of prayer according to our own terms. Yet, if you can address God as your Father, a loving parent, then you are certainly well on your way according to the guidelines shared by Jesus.

Ed Cyzewski's avatar

Ed Cyzewski

I’m the author of Flee, Be Silent, Pray: Ancient Prayers for Anxious Christians, Reconnect: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction, and other books. I write about prayer and spiritual restoration at http://www.edcyzewski.com.
Books by Ed Cyzewski on prayer and Christian spirituality.

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Is There a Lot of Pain Behind Strong Political and Religious Opinions?

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

There’s a deep suspicion of the Federal government in my region of Kentucky, and as someone who came from the northeast, I didn’t understand it at first. Once I learned about the history of the region, some of that suspicion started to make sense.

When the Federal government formed the Tennessee Valley Authority in order to create jobs and affordable electricity in our area, the dammed up Cumberland River resulted in flooding that required the removal of several towns in the region now known as the Land Between the Lakes.

In addition, the Land Between the Lakes region was designated a recreation area, and the few remaining homes were purchased by the government so that residents could resettle.

Although there were some excellent benefits from this project, including extremely cheap electricity in a region that has struggled economically, homeowners in the Land Between the Lakes region alleged that the government undervalued their homes and then paid them less than the home’s value. In addition, several long time communities were unwilling to move from land that had been in their families for generations.

Such incidents hardly account for ALL of the suspicion of the Federal government in our area, but they surely don’t help. From what I can tell, the good of providing jobs and electricity was undermined by some extremely troubling exploitation of people who already didn’t have a lot of resources.

When I hear someone’s strong views about government overreach around here, I’m mindful that there’s some history that I haven’t lived through that could be influencing such perspectives.

I’d also qualify that by saying there’s a history in our region (and to the south) of resenting the government for liberating slaves and assuring the rights of black citizens. Such resentment should be understood, but it’s certainly not a belief that should be honored or accommodated.

Looking a bit more broadly, it’s fair to say that when someone is deeply committed to religious beliefs, political ideology, or a certain school of philosophy, there’s sometimes (if not often) a good bit of pain involved in that person’s story leading up to those strong beliefs.

Looking back at my own history, I am strongly opposed to the politicization of the Christian faith for the ends of any political cause, but those strong beliefs are driven in part by my disillusionment with Christianity being exploited by the religious right in America.

I know I’m hardly unique in that sense. It feels like well over half of the Christians I know in my age range share my disillusionment with politics co-opting the Christian message.

I’ve met plenty of Christians who were disillusioned by organized religion, especially Christian churches with strong pastoral figureheads, and all of them have a story of a leader abusing his (it’s almost always a man) position to the detriment of others.

People end up supporting political leaders, rejecting religious beliefs, swinging from one extreme to another, and engaging in who knows what else because of pain from their past.

Perhaps they can’t draw a straight line right away from their pain to their current convictions, but it sure seems like pain changes us and prompts us to make really big shifts that we’d otherwise resist. At the very least, our pain prompts us to make changes that we feel very strongly about.

I had some extremely negative experiences with Catholic priests who were quite dismissive of me and who were quite authoritarian in their use of power. They more or less said, “I’m the priest who represents the authority of the church, so your beliefs need to fall in line with what I’m saying.”

Such things were said with a smile that belied an assumption that I would surely take their view of things and merely fall in line. They never thought that I’d want to read the Bible and consider ideas outside of their own.

To this day I find the Catholic mass almost suffocating and unbearable. The last place I want to  be is under the authority of a priest, even in the course of leading a mass.

I can read Catholic writers because there’s a different dynamic present with an author and a reader. I can go to an Episcopal Church because our priest doesn’t claim a kind of unlimited and unquestionable religious authority that is linked to a Pope. It’s quite clear in my mind, but I’m sure it doesn’t make sense to everyone.

The common link between myself and those who are suspicious of government, religious leaders, organized religious groups, or politicians pandering to religious groups is a history of pain and disappointment.

It’s easy to judge people based on how they act today. I’ll admit that it would be much, much easier to dismiss someone who doesn’t make any sense to me or who holds views that I find wrong or even harmful.

Yet, such a dismissive spirit falls well short of how I’d want someone to handle my own pain from my past.

I also know I haven’t been as kind and gracious to some Catholics or politically driven Christians because of my own past.

We all want to be understood. We want our pain to be acknowledged and seen for what it is, even if it can make us a bit hard to handle at times.

Maybe if we can talk about our shared pain, we can even more toward a common healing where we can drop our defenses just a little bit so we can see how much we hold in common.

Ed Cyzewski's avatar

Ed Cyzewski

I’m the author of Flee, Be Silent, Pray: Ancient Prayers for Anxious Christians, Reconnect: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction, and other books. I write about prayer and spiritual restoration at http://www.edcyzewski.com.

Books by Ed Cyzewski

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My New Book: Inspired to Influence

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

AVAILABLE NOW! Inspired to Influence: An influencer’s boot camp to find your purpose, capture joy, create a life that counts, find spiritual satisfaction, and revolutionize your life* to become authentically and uniquely you just like me

Rise and grind, y’all!!!

It’s time for a book that finally delivers real talk AND tells it like it is on spiritual, physical, and emotional health.

Who else is doing that for you? Nobody. Just me.

If you’re a Christian, you obviously want to make the biggest splash possible and really turn some heads… for God, that is. But, here’s the thing…  

How will you win multitudes for God if you’re an underachieving, unambitious nobody with zero influence?

What sets the most effective, most purposeful, most fulfilled, happiest, and fittest Christians apart from the rest?

Influence.

If you want to make your mark for God, then you’re not going to move the needle as a nobody. It’s time to stop making excuses, to take control, to put on your big boy (or big girl) pants, and to hit the pavement with a complete overhaul of your meek and lowly life.

Inspired to Influence is your one stop guide to marketing yourself, living healthy, finding meaning, securing wealth, being joyful, and, most important of all, being holy in a way that turns heads and captures attention.

What good is your holiness doing anyone if you’re not capturing eyeballs?

How can your right hand influence your left hand if it’s not drawing attention to how awesome it is???

By leveraging all of the resources of the modern influencer movement, you can achieve more than you’d ever imagined possible… for God.

Listen up. Half efforts won’t cut it. THIS. WONT. BE. EASY. This is a gritty, down and dirty guide to a process that only yields results if you’re all in. If you don’t get results, then you weren’t all in.**

This simple approach that merges spiritual influence with worldly influence is so simple that anybody can do it (even a nobody), but only a few will find it.

ARE YOU ALL IN???

Then start using YOUR influence to multiply MY influence. Share these rocking memes on your social media channels and tag me (@edcyzewski) to let me know you’re ALL IN.

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When you gain influence, you’ll find real power in your name. The sky’s the limit… for God that is.

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Want to Learn More?

Sorry! You can’t. This is my annual April Fool’s Day joke. Visit my page of past jokes here.

Visit my Amazon page for all of my real book listings, including some big $.99 sales running on all of my independent books on prayer for April Fools Day. That’s not a joke.

My latest books, Flee, Be Silent, Pray and Reconnect: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction  won’t teach you much about influence, but they will teach you a thing or two about making time for prayer and developing a few helpful prayer practices.

You can also get 30% off the print or eBook versions of Flee, Be Silent, Pray and Reconnect at the Herald Press website when you use the code APRILFOOLS at checkout.

*The subtitle list was pulled directly from the Christian Living Bestseller subtitles on Amazon.

** Hat tip to the Maintenance Phase podcast for highlighting this influencer trick.

The Apostle Paul Would Have Loved Critical Race Theory

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski
Critical race theory for Christians in America

The future of early Christianity hinged in part on the merging of Jews and Gentiles into one people in Christ. A Gentile could be from Rome, Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, or another region, but all Gentiles were united in not being Jewish by race, religion, culture, and politics.

There was a lot more than race wrapped up in this division among different peoples, but there is no doubt that race was certainly part of the mix.

As the Apostle Paul left his post as a powerful religious zealot among the Jews, he became an ambassador to the Gentiles, pursuing a seemingly impossible task. He didn’t see one group dominating the other in a colonial sense. Rather, he sought to unite two very different groups as one new, equal people in Christ.

The regulations of the Jewish law no longer applied to the Law of the Spirit in Christ, but the wisdom and philosophy of the Gentiles also fell short. The history of both groups and their religious frameworks were essential for understanding both groups and for pursuing reconciliation under Christ.

In fact, the entire Christian idea of repentance hinges on an honest accounting of one’s past. Collective action of a group or system was also quite relevant beyond personal reckonings with sin.

Paul had to face the ways he had relied on his knowledge of the Jewish Law and his special place as a chosen member of God’s people before he could see the superiority of a new identity in Christ.

Gentiles had to face the ways that Christ’s foolishness overturned their wisdom and philosophy, not to mention their own sense of cultural superiority over groups like the Jews.

The impact of racial divisions and the underlying challenges of racism in the laws, practices, and institutions at the time of Paul simply couldn’t be overlooked when trying to create one people in Christ.

There is no escaping a phrase like Critical Race Theory in America today, especially in the political realm. Conservative media and politicians have generally emptied the term of any real meaning and stuffed it with every fear, reaction, and grievance of white American culture for the purposes of political activism.

We are living at a time when allegedly small government “conservatives” want to regulate what teachers can talk about in schools, to the point that they are willing to ban discussions of Critical Race Theory. It’s a shocking overreach of the government, especially for people who supposedly dislike an overreaching government.

Even worse, the mere attempt to ban discussions of Critical Race Theory is based entirely on bad faith, unserious misrepresentations of what it is. If such conservative politicians actually presented the reality of Critical Race Theory, their Christian constituents would be forced to reckon with a very uncomfortable reality: Critical Race Theory rightly identifies many of the systemic sins in America.

If white American Christians aspire to live with their black brothers and sisters as one people in Christ, there is a lot more to reconcile than personal racism or racist attitudes in one’s family history. There are systems and cultural histories in America that have afflicted black people in ways that white people would find intolerable.

Mind you, there are enough white Americans who find merely talking about the suffering of black people in America intolerable. Can you imagine what these white Americans would do if they had to face actual discrimination and systemic injustice.

The uncomfortable truth for white American Christians is that a Christian like Paul would have likely loved Critical Race Theory. It succinctly and quite accurately labels the structural sins that black Americans face.

In the hope of cutting through some of the fog and misunderstanding of our times, let’s pause to consider what Critical Race Theory actually is. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s website:

Critical Race Theory, or CRT, is an academic and legal framework that denotes that systemic racism is part of American society — from education and housing to employment and healthcare. Critical Race Theory recognizes that racism is more than the result of individual bias and prejudice. It is embedded in laws, policies and institutions that uphold and reproduce racial inequalities. According to CRT, societal issues like Black Americans’ higher mortality rate, outsized exposure to police violence, the school-to-prison pipeline, denial of affordable housing, and the rates of the death of Black women in childbirth are not unrelated anomalies.

Let’s ask ourselves a few frank questions.

  • Is it God’s dream for anyone to receive inferior education based on the color of their skin?
  • Is it God’s dream for anyone to be denied the purchase of a home based on the color of their skin, as has happened often with red lining in cities?
  • Is it God’s dream for anyone to be denied a job, higher wage, or promotion based on the color of their skin?
  • Is it God’s dream for anyone to suffer higher infant mortality rates due to inadequate healthcare?
  • Is it God’s dream for anyone to suffer harsher treatment from the police or legal system based on the color of their skin?

I can’t imagine anyone affirming these afflictions as good, and there is no denying the fact that these things have happened regularly in America for generations and still continue in some communities. Sometimes even worse things happen based on the color of someone’s skin.

For Paul, who sought to join different races together as one people in Christ and who believed that confession precedes repentance, I can imagine him finding CRT’s clear articulation of cultural and systemic sins quite helpful.

It’s awfully hard to be unified with people who deny your pain and who can’t comprehend your personal story. Critical Race Theory is one tool we can use to simply articulate the pain of a group of people in America who are God’s beloved children and who have an equal share with every other race in God’s Kingdom.

It’s not controversial to say that God’s Kingdom includes all races. However, it is unfortunately controversial to say that some races have suffered and are suffering a great deal more than some others. To deny the suffering of black Americans by turning Critical Race Theory into a political punching bag only drives enormous wedges among God’s people.

Acknowledging the suffering of black Americans at the hands of some in white America isn’t anti-white or reverse racism. This is an opportunity for knowledge and wisdom, to learn and to grow so that we can repent of the systems that have caused a lot of suffering.

The goal of someone like Paul wasn’t to drag down or diminish the Jews or Gentiles. He simply critiqued where the two cultures got stuff wrong and identified how their cultural assumptions about race prevented them from becoming one people in Christ.

I don’t believe it’s God’s dream to tear anyone down. God doesn’t want us to hate our race. Such unfounded fears have been drummed up in bad faith and prevent us from acknowledging the pain of others.

We have an opportunity today to pursue the joining of different races together as one people in Christ in a way that both acknowledges the failures and the pain of the past and elevates everyone to an equal position as beloved children of God. Acknowledging the truth of our past through a tool like Critical Race Theory can help us get there.

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Of Course I Love Jesus. He Looks Exactly Like Me

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

Would I love Jesus if he didn’t look exactly like me?

That’s a tough question. I’ve been studying the Bible and praying for as long as I can remember, and I’ve shifted my beliefs several times. Each shift in my beliefs was an attempt to draw closer to a faithful view and imitation of Jesus.

I wouldn’t believe what I do if I didn’t think it was in keeping with the “authentic” Jesus. Even if my everyday life of work and family life is quite different from the itinerant preaching and miracle-working of Jesus, I do attempt to incorporate his teachings into my daily decisions and practices–at least as much as I imagine possible.

Even if I’d be the first person to poke some holes in my inconsistencies or the ways I fall short, I’m not the only person trying to follow Jesus in modern life who imagines that Jesus more or less approves of what I’m doing. I’m not perfect, but who is?

Considering things on the whole, it’s safe to say that I either consciously or unconsciously believe that I’m on the same page as Jesus.

Am I?

Well… I hope so. But it does make me wonder how comfortable I have become in my beliefs and how resistant I may be to shaking them up.

We can cherry pick verses all day about how Jesus was either more loving and gracious than we imagine or more critical and jarring than we imagine. It sure felt like the Gospels are just one story after another of people learning that God’s priorities and ways of doing things are very different from our own.

For the people who were challenged by Jesus, it wasn’t a sure thing that they would follow him. They had a physical Jesus standing right in front of them. There was no ambiguity back then.

Today, we study, pray, and trust the Holy Spirit to guide us toward the right way to live, but that doesn’t guarantee that sometimes we’ll shape Jesus into our own image. A Jesus who looks like us is a lot easier to follow and to love.

If my self-constructed illusion of Jesus gets challenged, would I stick around? I think so. I hope so. Yet, the Gospels also have plenty of stories of optimistic faith that faltered when under pressure.

A safeguard for today is to continue discerning if my faith rests in a Jesus who is God-incarnate or a Jesus who is me-incarnate. One clue may be whether I find Jesus really easy to love.

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Jesus Loves You, But Then He Also Loves Everybody

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

I can’t remember when I first saw a t-shirt with this message: Jesus Loves You, But Then He Also Loves Everybody.

I’d like to say it was down the Jersey shore on vacation with my family because that’s such a quintessential New Jersey thing to say. Perhaps my teenage years in south Jersey help explain why I loved it so much.

Although I didn’t love that message enough to shell out twenty bucks for the shirt.

As cutting as that shirt aims to be, I find it refreshingly accurate and especially appropriate for our times.

Individualism, self-centered consumption, and personal branding are running rampant at a time when you can document your every meal, shoe choice, parenting decision, exercise accomplishment, and half-formed thought on social media. Our divided politics, white society’s mishandling of racism, and our failure to protect God’s creation all revolve around elevated notions of certain groups being God’s chosen, special people who are entitled to special blessings and provisions to meet their every need.

It’s not the worst thing to assert that we aren’t as special as we think.

Consider the potential benefits of American Christians (especially white American Christians) tempering our “chosen” status with the simple fact that we aren’t superior to anyone because everyone is beloved by God.

We still get to be loved by God. We haven’t lost anything really. We just aren’t as unique as we imagined. Any superiority was an illusion to begin with.

How many problems arise because we have lost sight of God’s image in others?

How much harder would it be to direct hate or disdain or indifference toward others if we remembered they are loved deeply by God?

Saying that Jesus loves you, but then he loves everybody reminds us of the incredible gift of God’s love we have been given without raising us above anyone else.

God’s love doesn’t generate supremacy. God’s love generates empathy and equality.

I can see that glaring mistake in my own life and in the story of Christianity in America. We’ve been too quick to make God’s love into an exclusive selection that gives us power and influence we were never offered.

A little bit of New Jersey’s cutting sarcasm can be a real gift for us today, provided we direct the sarcasm at ourselves.

I can say, “Jesus loves me, but then he also loves everybody.”

That is comforting and even liberating because it puts me in my place, both in a positive, affirming sense and in a humbling, realistic clap back.

Perhaps the greatest scandal I have faced in examining this statement is the fact that I’ve believed God’s love for me simply wasn’t good enough. I needed to be loved by God and also somehow more chosen or superior to others.

The good news is that God’s reign is here right now, and the God who longs to restore our world loves each of us without reservation as beloved children. There’s no need to long for anything more.

A Christian Writer’s Regrets and What He’d Change

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

My career in Christian publishing is a bit like a ministry, but it’s also a bit like a business, which can make for difficult decisions about what feels true to my calling and what looks viable and sustainable. It’s no doubt a walk by faith, but it also calls for frequent reflection, assessment, and prayerful course adjustments.

I’ve been far from perfect in my decisions, and honestly there are times when a decision that appeared to be a mistake actually opened up a door later on. So within a year or two of this post going live, I may have a completely different take on some of my regrets!

Yet, each year I take stock of what I’ve done over the past 12 months and what I hope to do for the next 12 months.

I’m regularly journaling about whatever is on my mind, and oftentimes I jot notes about shifts in focus or direction for my writing.

While reading other books, I take notice of what works and what doesn’t work for me, and I try to blend those lessons with my own writing style.

All of that is to say, I think a lot about the direction and focus of my writing career as a Christian author. In no particular order, I wanted to share a few of the most important changes I’ve made or wish I had made.

I wish I’d written more in the first person about my own struggles and ideas rather than writing “should” posts that were preachy and critical of others.

As the format of this post seeks to embody right from the start, I wish I’d focused primarily on my own struggles and thoughts rather than targeting others or institutions. Mind you, there were times that were absolutely appropriate to address an issue or a person, but that should have been the exception for my format.

I started blogging at a time of wider discontent with the church, so I easily slipped into a critical posture in my posts as I picked apart all of the stuff that was wrong with the church. Having said that, I don’t think I was necessarily wrong with my assessment of things, but my approach was unhelpful and alienating.

If I had written more about my personal issues, challenges, and experiences, it would have provided a better format for discussing the pressing issues of the time and could have been more productive.

If I had written more about my personal issues, challenges, and experiences, it would have provided a better format for discussing the pressing issues of the time and could have been more productive.

I wish I’d spent more time thinking about the big picture of my writing career and where I’d like to end up in the long term.

During a conversation with my agent after the publication of my second book, he asked me, “Where do you want to be in five years?”

I had no idea what to say to that. I mean, I wanted to publish more books, right? But I didn’t really know enough about what kinds of books or what else I’d do with my time. There’s a lot more involved in book publishing than publishing books, and thinking about the longer term trajectory of my career could have helped me make better choices at the beginning.

I wish I’d spent a lot less time on social media.

I got into Christian publishing and writing in general when social media held out promises of bringing us together and making everything easy and better.

There were plenty of Christian authors in my circles who were really dynamic and engaging on social media. They were wired to thrive in that format.

I was not. Something about it never clicked for me, and it was a huge challenge to try to model my use of social media after people who were very different from me. I’m much happier just being myself, and I wish I had just been myself a lot sooner.

Now we know that social media is actually driving enormous wedges between us, making it easier to spread agitating nonsense, and is great for making memes go viral but not so much for selling books reliably.

I wasted too much time on social media. Any more time than five minutes a day was too much time. When I see hopeful authors on social media begging for more followers at the behest of an agent so they can impress a publisher, I’m sad on behalf of that author. A lot of disappointment and wasted time is coming their way.

I wish I’d kept my morning habit of waking up and writing at least 500 words before the start of the day. I used to post on my blog almost every day AND work on my book projects in the morning before my day job or during my lunch break.

My morning writing habit fell apart when I learned I was supposed to promote my writing and books on social media, so I started going on there first thing in the morning. Besides, it was fun to see what my friends were up to.

That early morning writing discipline is a hard one to bring back during this season of my life with small kids who can make mornings hard to plan sometimes. Even when I try to set boundaries around my social media use and even block it, I FEEL the draw of social media’s slot machine dopamine hit in comparison to the slow satisfaction of writing in the flow.

Even when I try to set boundaries around my social media use and even block it, I FEEL the draw of social media’s slot machine dopamine hit in comparison to the slow satisfaction of writing in the flow.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get past the temptation of social media in the morning, but I’m determined to make writing my top priority again first thing in the morning when my brain is ready to roll.

I wish I’d focused more on developing expertise in the things I cared about the most rather than the things I thought the church needed the most.

Having gone to seminary and bailing out on ministry in a church, writing became my plan B because it should have been Plan A from the start.

Yet, I had a brain crammed with ideas about theology and ministry. I saw challenges and stuff that was needed, so I started writing about it. But I made the mistake of focusing on what I knew about before asking if I was passionate about it.

After attending a bunch of theology conferences and feeling completely out of place, I realized that I could write about theology, but it wasn’t my passion. I have always been wired more for prayer, contemplation, and practical Christian living issues. It has been far more joyful and sustainable to write about the things I care about the most.

If Coffeehouse Theology was my attempt to write about what the church needed (and I still love that book and stand by its message), Flee, Be Silent, Pray is my book that embodies my passion and my story. I still feel that if I only published Flee, Be Silent, Pray, I would be completely satisfied by my career as an author. I will always write, but I don’t know if I can ever contribute something to the world that captures my passions quite like that book.

I wish I’d better understood what it takes to sell books and then planned my career accordingly.

Anyone can write a book, but not everyone can sell what they write. I had a lot to learn about audiences, an author’s expertise, how to write for an audience’s urgent pain points, and how to find the audience who is going to read my books. I still feel like I have a lot to learn–not to mention that book marketing continues to evolve every year.

The publishing industry has changed a lot since I first started out in 2006 and 2007 with Coffeehouse Theology. I’m sure some of the marketing stuff I’d read about back then would still work today, but now the marketing and publishing landscape is very different with email marketing, social media marketing, and other advertising platforms such as BookBub and Amazon’s ad ecosystem.

Selling books is hard work, but I definitely had the most success on my own, managing the marketing for my independent books.

While I’m grateful for the commercial publishers I’ve worked with and am proud of the work I’ve produced alongside some incredible editors, I’m also coming to terms with how ill-suited I am for commercial publishing. I often wonder if I should have invested more into independent publishing when I first tried it in 2010.

That’s all I’ve got for now. The comments are open for two weeks (closing comments limits spam) if you’d like to share your own regrets or do-overs with writing or whatever else.

I have compiled most of my thoughts about Christians and publishing in my book Write without Crushing Your Soul: Sustainable Publishing and Freelancing. It’s often $4.99 on Kindle.

Ed Cyzewski's avatar

About the Author…

Ed Cyzewski

I’m the author of Flee, Be Silent, Pray: Ancient Prayers for Anxious Christians, Reconnect: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction, and other books. I write about prayer and spiritual restoration at http://www.edcyzewski.com.

Are Christians Kind Because of Their Faith or in Spite of It?

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

Does my Christian faith make me a kinder, more loving, more compassionate person?

I’m not sure that my answer has always been, “Yes.”

I would hope that I could answer that question in the affirmative today, but it’s easy to see how many barriers get in the way of caring for others.

We have no shortage of barriers between ourselves and others, and sometimes it’s hard to recognize them, much less to rise above them.

I grew up in the conservative evangelical ecosystem in America. Many of my afternoons included a ton of conservative/Christian nationalist talk radio. The one thing I remember from that period of my life was a kind of fear, if not contempt of people who were different from me.

Sometimes that fear or contempt gave way to a kind of hostility or suspicion of people who held different views from my own.

In addition, I was fixated on having the right doctrine. Having the right answers meant a lot more than showing grace and kindness to others.

Of course it’s easy to be dogmatic or to hold others in contempt no matter what you believe. It’s not like one vein of the Christian faith has loving others figured out. I can only speak from what I’ve experienced, and I know this: A lot of my time as a Christian was invested in being right and fearing others.

It’s hard to reach out to others in love if you’re already protecting yourself from them. Of course this raises all sorts of questions about the ways Christians in America have failed to love their enemies, let alone those who are different from them. I was so busy fearing others that it never crossed my mind to love them.

When I look back at the times that I helped others, I honestly wonder how much of my action was motivated by a genuine, God-inspired love for them and how much of it was just a shared sense of humanity. Was I aware of how much God loved these people? Was my service to them rooted in love and concern or more of a sense of pity and compassion for their suffering?

I don’t have an easy answer here for myself.

Can we evaluate our own motivations or the motivations of others?

Can we recognize the difference that God’s love makes in our lives, let alone the way God’s love influences our kindness toward others?

What is driving us to help others? Is it the love of God. I hope so, but sometimes I wonder.

Do I live each day with a grounding awareness of God’s love?

Have I spent time each day attentive to the presence of God?

Or do I leave my mind to wander with distractions in sports, news, entertainment, or who knows what else?

I can’t imagine it would be helpful to hold all of my actions under a spotlight to determine whether they are rooted in love or rooted in something else. Motivations are challenging to untangle.

Maybe one place to begin is asking myself, “What am I aware of right now?”

Much like a daily Examen that aims to look for God’s presence and to increase one’s awareness of God, I can pause to consider what’s on my mind and what’s driving me to act.

Too many times in my life, I’ve been driven by things other than love. I made a lot of noise, but I’m not sure I always shared a lot of love. That isn’t too say I’ve been completely useless, but I wonder how I could have loved others better if I’d seen them through the clarity of God’s love rather than the fog of today’s distractions.

Why Is Stopping to Pray Agony Sometimes?

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

If Wayfair sold a sitting chair that comes with a seat belt or, better yet, a five-point belt system like a toddler seat, I’d drop it right into my shopping cart with hardly a second thought.

Perhaps my common sense would kick in and overrule such an impulsive move, but some mornings, it’s so hard to sit in my chair to pray that a belt system sure seems like it would help. It takes an act of will to keep myself glued down, mind clear, and intentions directed toward God.

Why is prayer so agonizing sometimes?

There is something to be said of developing habits and discipline. I know that prayer isn’t anywhere near as difficult as it used to be.

There is also something to be said for mental health or other conditions of the mind. I know that some people have a much harder time focusing and single-tasking than others, and there is no shame or judgment for them.

Speaking only for myself, I can’t overlook the place of activity as a preferred state of being. Zipping from one thing to another while keeping a tally of what’s been done and what needs to be done all while nurturing a lingering feeling of “overwhelm” makes a seatbelted sitting chair sound awfully practical when it’s time to pray.

What motivates us to keep in motion? First of all, I don’t know if I can even recognize the negative side of being in motion. Oftentimes I’m moving from one good or neutral thing to another. It’s not like my day is piled high with vices or aimless distractions–although we all know that our phones can suck up plenty of time.

Second, I likely overvalue the benefit of the items on the running list that weighs down my mind but makes my feet light. I’m not even sure what exactly I hope to gain by getting so much done, but somehow these things gain an oversized importance.

Finally, I wonder if I can’t quite imagine the good that could come from silent prayer, sitting still in God’s presence, or interceding for others. At this point in my prayer practice, it’s not hard to make myself sit down at a regular time to pray (things haven’t always been that way!), but it remains quite hard to settle my mind sometimes.

The agony of sitting still during prayer means that I’m often too focused on getting one more thing (and then one more thing after that) done. I have overvalued the benefit of my own activity and undervalued the benefit of being present for God in a quiet moment.

There isn’t an easy fix for such agonizing moments during prayer. Perhaps the best solution I’ve found is knowing that I can endure the desire to bounce out of my seat, to remember such restlessness is often for a season, and that moments of greater peace and attentiveness to prayer are possible.

The solution I crave deep in my soul, the thing that keeps me on edge and ready to leap to my feet, isn’t going to come from surrender to my restless impulses.

Restoration will come on the other side of the agony of stillness (which really isn’t agony at all) where my mind grows in daily, even momentary awareness of God.

Attention to the presence of Jesus can shape our minds and direct our actions rather than letting the roller coaster of each day take control. Even today, Jesus can speak, “Peace, be still,” to our ever moving, ever shifting bodies.