What Is Left to Parody of American Evangelical Christianity?

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

I started writing parody book release blog posts on each April Fool’s day to have a laugh and maybe sell a few copies of my book Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life.

Back then, The Shack was the big thing. We didn’t know how simple and easy those days were! I didn’t want to make fun of the book, but I did want to parody the phenomenon of The Shack’s clash of a female representation of God with the toxic masculinity that runs rampant in many conservative churches.

I may have had a certain masculine reformed pastor in mind.

So I slapped it together, got some laughs, sold a few books, and received a warm note from the author of The Shack. It could have been worse.

Over a decade later, things are now so much worse than we could have ever imagined for American evangelical Christianity and for America in general.

Just to give a sample of what’s been going on in the American evangelical tribe…

We had a worship leader pulling publicity stunts during a deadly global pandemic.

Christians are complaining that sermons on the Beatitudes are woke.

“Thought-pieces” question whether we can have too much empathy.

Even the leader of the  “New Evangelical” brand is mired in accusations of behavior that sounds a lot like the old evangelicals.

And the can of gasoline on top of this raging dumpster fire is that far too many evangelical Christians continue to support a lawless, authoritarian bully who has been credibly accused of everything evangelical leaders told us an honorable man should NOT do to a woman.

For all of the good that American evangelicals can do and continue to do in the world, we also dramatically undermine our witness for the Good News that Jesus is King by enabling someone who is as anti-Christ as anyone that Tim Lahaye could cook up.

I can’t parody evangelical Christianity in a spirit of love, fun, or even humor right now—perhaps never again. Who can?

After a year of observing trends and news, what is there to laugh about in a movement that is so tragically polluted by political entanglements and enabling some of the worst lawless bullies in modern politics?

If there is nothing left to parody in this profoundly unhealthy movement, I also lack any incentive to spend time parodying it. In the wake of the 2016 election, I had an identity crisis as an evangelical involved in Christian publishing while a massive chunk of my tribe was enthralled with someone who supports everything I reject as a follower of Jesus.

Who could I write for?

I know I’m not alone in my views, but it felt like our Christian family was being torn apart.

As I withdrew from the evangelical movement to attend a welcoming and loving Episcopal Church, I also pulled back from the Christian publishing world. I still believe in everything I wrote, but I couldn’t find a place for myself in the niche of Christian publishing.

I’m proud that Flee, Be Silent, Pray: Ancient Prayers for Anxious Christians continues to help readers find space to pray each day. I’m sad that I struggled to promote Reconnect: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction during the pandemic because it’s a book that speaks to the challenges of the social media ecosystem that rewards bad behavior and divisiveness.

As I wrapped up my promotion of those projects, I couldn’t conceive a message to share with such a fragmented audience of American evangelicals. I also felt an urgent need to disconnect from the platform-obsessed publishing model that required more engagement on social media than my mental health could handle.

I have found peace in a day job that uses my researching and writing skills, while woodworking and oil pastels have become my creative outlets. I still edit and write here and there on the side.

I also wonder what we could draw from the desert fathers and mothers in this time of digital and political turmoil.

How can we remain apart from the madness of the times while still speaking prophetically and advocating for others with empathy?

Making a parody of American evangelical Christianity sure won’t help me do that. So, for now, I’m trying to figure out what will.

I’m reminded of the words of Abba Anthony: “A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’”

The madness has come. May God mercifully give us eyes to see our neighbors so that we can love and serve them well.

You can still check out my books if you want.

Can Jesus Help Us Sort Out Politics in America?

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

The too long, didn’t read version of this post is: Maybe.

There is no simple equivalent in America to the political scene at the time of Jesus. We have to make interpretive decisions, and the track record of the American church in politics is… well… really BAD.

Compared to the time of Jesus, we don’t (yet) have an absolute tyrant of a ruler who is worshipped as a god or who is actively exploiting our country as part of a colonial military occupation (although the plight of the American south under white supremacy’s authoritarian violence shouldn’t be overlooked).

In a broad sense, our political situation today is very different from the time of Jesus.

Political opposition to Rome at the time of Jesus was easily lumped together with revolution. Violent forms of execution, like crucifixion, took care of the political opposition.

The Roman occupation government aimed to enrich the Roman Empire and its fake god-king. Government wasn’t by the people, for the people. There were no boot-strapping Jewish shepherd boys who could rise through the Roman political ranks and one day get elected to political office to make life better for the poor farmers and fishermen.

We can try really hard to determine some kind of equivalence between the sayings of Jesus and the politics of our times, but there isn’t a simple one-to-one correspondence between the challenges of his time and our own. Even if we tried, we’d likely never stop debating it.

What were politics like for the Jewish people?

At the time of Jesus, the only options available for the average person were compromise with the pagan Roman occupying army, as a tax collector for instance, or disengagement, either by keeping your head down or relocating to the wilderness like the Essenes.

The Pharisees and Sadducees tried to chart a course of engagement and faithfulness that often led them to compromise of one sort or another.

Of course you could always try out disengagement from Rome and pair that with revolution, but that never ended well.

There wasn’t a fruitful way to have a positive influence in politics without deep compromise to a government that believed its ruler was a deity and that its armies could plunder the world for its glory. We shouldn’t be shocked that we can’t find a simple correlation to modern democracy at the time of Jesus!

What great “What if?” question of Jesus and politics

We are left asking how Jesus may have interacted if he lived in a time of representative democracy. Would he have used the tools of politics to advance his Kingdom agenda? Would he have abstained from all worldly tools altogether?

Perhaps we can at least create some common ground among fellow Christians before we get into the more challenging issues. At least, what should be common ground…

For instance, we should be able to confidently assert that God favors no one nation over another. America is not the new Israel. We may aspire to be “a” city on a hill for democracy (even if “aspire” is doing some heavy lifting), but we are not THE city on a hill.

We should also be able to assert that God does not favor one political party or movement over another. The correction to the corruption of merging Christianity with one political party isn’t to merge Christianity with an opposing political party.

That should be the easy part of discussing Christianity and politics. (NARRATOR: It’s not easy actually.)

Political parties advocate for specific policies and approaches to solving real or perceived problems. I’d say it should be hard for us to imagine Jesus adopting a partisan stance or throwing in his full support of one political party or another. Yet, I also can’t imagine Jesus being completely disengaged from the political process if his vote could count toward meaningful change that would end suffering or advance peace.

This is where we need to be careful with our bias and limitations. It’s likely that we all want Jesus to arrive at the same assessments of our times as our own.

It’s very hard to open ourselves up to the Jesus revealed in the Gospels and to let that Jesus challenge us in our present time.

Which political positions align with the values of Jesus?

We could begin by asking what Jesus cared about. Put simply, he spent a lot of time feeding and healing people while teaching about the coming Kingdom of God. Since we should all, hopefully, want the government to avoid preaching for us, let’s focus on the healing and feeding part of Jesus’ ministry.

These miracles weren’t the equivalent of a parade handing out snacks and candy for fun. Jesus was feeding people who were likely very hungry and food insecure to one degree or another.

If Jesus didn’t heal people, they were stuck with suffering. Can we imagine Jesus wanting it to be harder for someone to see a doctor, to deny life-saving medical care to a child, or to see a mother needlessly die because an insurer ruled she has a pre-existing condition?

Healthcare should be part of the pro-life discussion today, but we are left to fill in the considerable gaps from the time of Jesus. There was no equivalent to a modern healthcare system at the time of Jesus. Can you imagine the Romans investing in a network of hospitals serving the people they had conquered?

If anything, we can find a few more clues in the Old Testament where the rulers of Israel and Judah met with judgment from God because they hoarded wealth, underpaid their workers, and exploited the poor. Rather than using the resources of government for the benefit of their people, they used it for themselves.

Of course, it remains extremely challenging to apply the ideas of an ancient theocracy to a modern democracy, but some patterns emerge. When God could have instructed the kings of Israel and Judah to rule as they pleased, to keep taxes as low as possible, and to let private charities help the poor, we find quite the opposite. A righteous ruler is just, attentive to the needs of the people, and takes action to ensure equity and prosperity.

By the same token, we have to do some interpretative work to arrive at a Christian belief in creation care—not hard work, mind. This shouldn’t be a difficult position for Christians to adopt by connecting a few dots.

Clean drinking water, clean air to breathe, and preventing warming trends that cause severe weather events should be VERY easy positions for anyone to support, regardless of their faith. Political leaders and parties can be challenged to work toward caring for the environment without creating a conflict between “affordable energy” and mitigating climate change or keeping water clean.

We can’t make a one-to-one correspondence with the politics of Jesus and our own times, but we can at least see why this is such a challenging task. At the very least, there is an Old Testament precedent for using government to benefit the people, especially those who have the least, and to ensure justice.

When Jesus didn’t have viable political tools as his disposal, he at least took concrete steps to care for the material needs of others through healing and feeding them. If we have the means to ensure others are healthy and well-fed through the tool of a government created for the people and by the people, I can’t imagine passing up such an opportunity.

We shouldn’t need specific commands to discern in good faith what matters to God. We don’t need God to command us, “Thou shalt make sure everyone has clean drinking water.” If one political party is negligent when it comes to pollution or installing new water pipes, aren’t they in conflict with the most basic part of caring for our neighbors?

Do we have to talk about abortion politics? Uh… Yeah.

Arguments over a consistent pro-life ethic have become a stalemate over the years. I don’t know any Democrats who want “more” abortions to happen. They want women to be free from the government regulating their own medical decisions, and late term abortions are incredibly rare and often only to save the life of the mother.

I am sympathetic with Republicans who oppose abortion because I was once in their shoes. Arguments over when life begins ventures into the realm of science where preachers and theologians are out of their depth. If life begins at conception and 10%-20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage (80% happen within the first 10 weeks), then God has created conditions where a lot of babies are being killed.

This all fails to bring up the real fact that abortions have historically gone UP under Republican presidents and DOWN under Democrats regardless of the laws that are on the books. Is abortion politics about ACTUALLY reducing abortions or just getting certain laws passed.

With the complexity of abortion politics aside, “pro-life” encompasses more issues than abortion, and so it is absurd to call Democrats “pro-death” or baby killers. Neither party is flawless when it comes to pro-life issues. I can see where both sides come from, but I tend to be more critical of the Republican positions that I know so well from within.

Which political actions are antithetical to Jesus?

Here we have a much easier time coming up with standards that can help us judge political causes today. Bearing false witness is clearly prohibited, Satan is called the “father of lies,” so anyone who lies repeatedly, say someone who is fact-checked to have lied thousands of times on the record, does not align with the way of Jesus.

Of course “truth-telling” can be a hotly debated topic when propaganda and half-truths are fact checked. Yet, we can avoid the “all politicians lie” trope by examining who is relying on a false version of reality vs. who has occasionally bent the truth in a speech.

Bending the truth should not be tolerated, but it’s not remotely comparable to a politician who refuses to be fact-checked, lest his torrent of lies is exposed for what it is.

We could argue that honesty and character flaws matter more than anything else because it doesn’t matter what a candidate says if he/she is exposed as self-serving and dishonest. A candidate could say he’s pro-life and favors particular religious groups as long as that serves his political fortunes.

Will that person actually follow through? Could that person shift positions if there is a future advantage? He already tried to back away from the Pro-Life movement, in fact.

Vote for such a man at your own risk.

Ed Cyzewski's avatar

Author of Flee, Be Silent, Pray, Coffeehouse Theology, and other books.

Ed Cyzewski

It’s Time to Rethink the “Great Commission” and Missionary Guilt

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

After spending my formative years in the American evangelical tradition, I’ve had to face the lingering effects of what I’d call missionary guilt: never doing enough to make disciples.

Missionaries are often hailed by white evangelicals as the real heroes of the faith who have truly counted the cost, left everything behind, and done whatever it takes to follow Jesus. I would guess that many who didn’t become a missionary at least felt some missionary guilt.

Perhaps some missionaries feel missionary guilt for not being a good enough missionary!

Missionaries tend to command so much respect that I found I could often get an edge in an argument with my fellow evangelicals if I demonstrated that respected missionaries agreed with my point of view. Seeing the ministries of female missionaries also opened my eyes to the inexcusably bad arguments against women in pastoral roles.

This emphasis on missions and sharing the Gospel is tied in part with Jesus’ final words to his disciples. Matthew passed on what has become known as the Great Commission at the end of his Gospel:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Matthew 28:18-20, NRSV

What should we do with that command from Jesus? Does it mean that we should all become missionaries and feel guilt if we don’t?

My issue isn’t whether we should listen to the words of Jesus. We should ALWAYS listen to the words of Jesus. I’m asking whether we should rethink how we have interpreted and applied these particular words of Jesus to this particular moment.

It’s clear that quite a few of Jesus’ earliest followers thought they should go preach the message of Jesus all over the world. Then again, some of Jesus’ followers also stayed put to either teach or to serve others as deacons.

Even during the great missionary expansion of early Christianity, there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all application of making disciples of all nations.

I’ve also heard quite a few preachers and commentators note that the commission from Jesus has two parts to making disciples: baptize them and then teach them. In other words, Jesus didn’t ask us to merely convert people. He asked us to participate in the longer term, deeper work of discipleship that teaches people how to obey what Jesus taught.

This all is part of my larger project to rethink what it looks like to be a Christian after I cut ties with conservative evangelicalism and joined an Episcopal Church.

What does faithfulness look like if I’m not a missionary or if I’m not driven by the evangelical emphasis on evangelizing others?

Surely my religious practice as an Episcopal Christian involves more than attending church each Sunday and voting for Democrats each election. (That’s a joke, folks!)

For me, the crux of things is that I think people are better off if I they have an awareness of God’s love and make room each day for prayer, scripture, and obedience to the teachings of Jesus.

If more people treated each other according to the example set by Jesus, our world would be a better place.

Our lives would be better if we sought meaning and purpose through love and service in humble deference to God’s will and the upside down kingdom Jesus brought to earth.

In that sense, I haven’t changed in my desire to share the good news of God’s Kingdom coming to our world through the loving ministry, death, and Resurrection of Jesus. I want others to find the love and peace that comes from God and the meaning that comes through serving others.

Yet, all of the things I have described are practices and ways of living that call for my own commitment and complete embodiment in my own life. This isn’t a message that is just “preached” to others. It’s a path of discipleship that is learned and modeled through personal commitment to the risen Lord.  

There is a place for teaching others to follow the way of Jesus, but it remains a “way of living,” not just a way of thinking.

And that brings me back to the lingering power of “missionary guilt” that is so pervasive among evangelicals and former evangelicals. At least in my own experience, my guilt originated from feeling like I was never doing enough to “tell” others about Jesus.

At this moment in history, the majority of people are aware of Jesus. They could learn all about him if they desired. For most people, and just about everyone I meet in a typical day, there is no need for a preacher to show up and teach them the story of Jesus.

The majority of people today need to see what it looks like to be transformed by the power of the Spirit and a life dedicated to following the way of Jesus. You could say that there is now a different cost for the majority of Christians who are surrounded by people who know about Jesus but may not follow him.

The majority of Christians, especially those in my own North American context, don’t need to go and tell people about Jesus, but they do need to demonstrate what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

My own theory is that Christians in America have generally underestimated the damage done by Christians behaving badly. We don’t account for the many who have turned away from the church because we were perceived as uncaring toward the poor, racist, political partisans, cruel to immigrants, disparaging sexual identity, covering up sex abuse, blaming victims, imposing strict rules on others, and generally not caring for people more than our own theology and rules.

At a time when more people have either de-converted or said, “No thanks” when hearing about Jesus, the need isn’t for more information about our faith. Our message has been undermined by the conduct people have witnessed.

Whether their conclusions are fair or not, our calling is to go deeper into the way of discipleship, experiencing what it means for God to love us and how we may respond with love. Our hope today at a time of deconversion and disinterest is to show what it could look like to be shaped the presence of Jesus, the risen Lord who conquered death and evil.

Instead of worrying if we’ve done enough or measured up like a missionary “sold out” for Jesus, we can turn our gaze toward Jesus and ask where he may be leading us today.

Where is Jesus going? Where is he inviting us to meet him? Who is with him? How can we help?

Those are the kinds of questions that can help us replace our missionary guilt with discipleship hope. We have hope in the way of Jesus, and we trust that he will never leave or forsake us.

Jesus has called us to follow him, and if we ask him to show us the way forward, he will show us in one way or another. The way may not be the one we expect or would choose, but I’d wager that our commitment to the way will speak more to the de-converted or disinterested than the most forceful message a missionary could preach.

How Conservative Christians Snap and Turn to Atheism

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

I was far from the most conservative student at my nondenominational evangelical seminary.

Yet, I hit a point where I realized that my faith would crumble if I remained rooted in a conservative theological system that emphasized the boundary markers of knowledge, rigid morality, and a sense of duty or obligation over the life-changing power of Jesus through the Holy Spirit at the center of our faith.

Perhaps the more easy-going and fluid faith traditions on the Christian left could result in a bunch of lukewarm people who reduced their faith to punch card Christianity, but I could see the dangers on the conservative side that had a form of godliness while denying its power. It would have been all too easy to focus on theological concepts and controlling aspects of the faith that would have let me down in spectacular fashion.

I once had a pastor who often quipped about conservative Christians, “You either become a mystic or an atheist.”

It’s a hyperbole that would make plenty of conservative Christians break out in hives. They certainly don’t want to become atheists, but being mystics isn’t any great shakes for them either.

It’s easy to equate conservative Christianity with a drab Bible church presided over by an angry, sweating preacher in a cheap suit screaming about God’s judgment. We can also make the mistake of thinking Christian mystics are miserable religious fanatics sitting in a stone cell in a burlap sack as they lament their guilt and ponder the crucifixion in gory detail.

Neither of those options sounds appealing!

As quick as we are to dispel such stereotypes of conservative Christians and mystics, I have seen enough conservative Christians leave the faith because their theology and practices couldn’t sustain them. A bit of mysticism wouldn’t have hurt.

I’m in a season of life where I’m helping my kids become more aware of God so they can develop their own relationship with God. I am very much aware that I want their faith to be rooted in the mystery and presence of God in their lives that is based on God’s love and grace.

You could say it’s mysticism lite.

Although I am concerned about my kids turning their religious practice into a Sunday morning punch card system, I am perhaps more concerned about them being sucked into the rules and certainty of conservative Christianity that promises a lot of things it can’t deliver if they submit to its controlling systems that generate fear and anxiety.

This anxiety and disappointment hit me hard in my 20’s, and it hit quite a few others hard as well. In the early 2000’s, we were deconstructing, emerging, and endlessly critiquing the religious systems that promised neat and tidy religion in the face of life’s chaos and uncertainty.

I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t always deconstructing or critiquing in healthy ways, but they were honest and real based on what I was presented vs. what I experienced.

It’s the temptation of formulaic religion that turns our practices into an equation where doing certain things or believing certain things will lead to specific promised outcomes of peace, hope, joy, security, etc. This overlooks the unpredictable realities of life that defy simple explanations of God ordering everything in our lives to one specific purpose that ultimately brings us prosperity and peace.

Overly simple beliefs cause far more problems than they solve. At first, a seemingly airtight belief system may be extremely appealing, but over time, it can’t hold up in the daily grind of life and the highs and lows that can shake one’s faith loose.

Anyone can practice the simple spirituality of the Christian faith, but it’s not possible to easily explain the complexities of life or the mysteries of God. When we run into mystery, we can’t fill in the gaping voids of life with platitudes we could carve into a hunk of wood or paint onto a coaster.

I am sure there are many paths to atheism, but the one I am most familiar with is from the fragile certainty of airtight Christian conservatism to the seeming exhale of becoming an atheist. Curiously, some are able to become atheists with a sigh of relief that they are free from a life-sucking religious system. Others adopt a kind of fundamentalist/evangelical style atheism that is sure of itself and eager to convert others.

Whatever shape one’s atheism takes, I’ve seen enough of people getting crushed by rules, judgment, fear, and power struggles in the conservative end of American Christianity (most likely white American Christianity), to know we have a problem on our hands.

Our seeming strength of conviction and doctrinal rigidity often attempts to overcompensate for our barren branches that could be nourished by the vine and carry the fruits of the Spirit. Christians have Jesus at the center as our vine that sustains us, but we lose sight of our source of life when we turn our primary attention to maintaining boundaries like doctrinal particulars.

If Jesus is the center and we focus on him, then we will find new life and renewal that we can share with others. If our time is consumed by maintaining the rigid particulars that make up the boundaries of conservative Christianity, we’ll soon become exhausted by its combative, defensive siege mentality where a fragile faith cannot stand without our vigilance.

The vine and the branches is reduced to a theological concept, rather than a life-giving lesson from Jesus.

There are many other paths toward losing one’s faith, but I worry the most about this one because it is not understood by those most likely to go down it.

I imagine someone tuning a guitar by tightening the strings over and over again. No matter high the notes go, the solution is to turn the knobs tighter. It’s true that strings may need to be tightened sometimes, but there are moments when tension must be loosened as well.

At a certain point, people who are turned tighter and tighter with rigid doctrines are going to snap. When they do, the conservatives around them will often say, “They only snapped because they weren’t rigid enough!”

And so, they become more rigid once again, until another person snaps.

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.

What Do We Depend on If Jesus Isn’t Our Bread of Life?

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

If we reflect on what it could mean for Jesus to be the “bread of life,” it may help to try an exercise of opposites. 

What does it mean if Jesus isn’t my bread of life? 

Do I rely on other things as my bread? If so, then what are those things? 

Perhaps something as vague as “control over life circumstances” or “my own wisdom” could be the “bread” that I rely on to sustain my life. We could say things like entertainment, distraction, power, position, or productivity at work. Perhaps politics have become the “bread” of life for some Christians. 

If bread is something we rely on to sustain us in some way (mentally, spiritually, etc.), then our choice of bread is going to impact what we do, how we feel, and how sustainable life may seem. Bread is the essential thing that we can’t imagine skipping on a day to day basis. 

If the bread is removed, then everything else grinds to a halt. Without the energy and life provided by the bread, nothing else seems possible. 

Whether we think of Jesus as the bread we need to sustain us day in, day out, or a vine that provides continuous life from the soil, the message is one of dependence. If we hope to have the kind of life that Jesus came to give us and promised us, then we need to make space each day to receive him in the same way we make time to eat bread. 

There is something very simple about eating bread. Even a child as small as a one-year-old can figure it out. Perhaps I’m reading too much into things, but our spiritual practices can also follow along with this simplicity. 

Silent centering prayer is about as simple as it gets for a spiritual practice. Just remain still, let go of your thoughts, and center on a word or phrase that helps draw your attention back to God. That isn’t to say that centering prayer is “easy.” 

It’s not necessarily easy to pray at a time with so many distractions and disruptions. But it can be simple. And if we practice something simple long enough, then we can hope that it will eventually become easy. 

The same can be said for basic meditations on scripture that teach us to read slowly, to pause for reflection, to wonder, to ask questions about the passage, and to imagine ourselves even in the story. Simply imagining ourselves in the crowd with Jesus may seem even childlike in its simplicity, which is the point of it. 

Bread and grape vines are simple. Jesus meant for our spiritual life to depend on such simple things that are already within our reach. 

We can receive Jesus each day as our “bread” of life, even if we aren’t quite sure how exactly he sustains us and gives us “life.” By making space for him daily, we can begin to share in the life-changing mystery that Jesus offers us. 

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.

The Expertise Crisis of American Christianity

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

While I was working as a freelance editor primarily for Christian clients, a pastor set up a meeting to discuss his book project idea. He arranged a video call with several other people from his team, which was a first for me. I could see he meant business.

Most pastors, especially the male ones, come to me about publishing a book that’s based on a sermon series. The combined power of a few people patting them on the back, saying it was great, and the romanticism of publishing a book propelled them to reach out.

With that in mind, I was surprised when this pastor said he wanted to write a book on marriage. My first thought was, “Uh, oh.” My second thought was, “Well, let’s see where this goes.”

I started by asking if he had expertise in marriage counseling, such as specific training and dedicated experience in that area. He didn’t have that.

Realizing that he was not exactly enthusiastic about my question, I felt obliged to ask another question that he was even less enthusiastic about.

“Do you know an expert on marriage you could write the book with?”

The call didn’t last too much longer after that, and I never heard from him again.

I can’t blame this pastor for thinking he could write a book about marriage. The Christian system of expertise, whether in churches, publishing, or media in general, is deeply broken.

Pastors are expected to be experts on many different things, even though most of them only have a generalist Master of Divinity Degree. They can perhaps claim modest expertise when interpreting a collection of ancient documents that date back 2,000 years or more.

That’s hardly the sort of expertise called for when giving marriage advice.

And yet, pastors who are married and occasionally advise married couples based on a class or two in seminary may think that experience combined with their “authority” for interpreting the Bible makes the cut.

They presume they can apply the Bible to relationships today despite the challenges of applying ancient texts, that required head coverings for women and regulated slavery, to the modern world.  Congregations often accept anecdote driven advice based on ancient texts in sermons without batting an eye, so why would a book be any different?

In too many cases, books promoted by the Christian publishing industry aren’t any different from the anecdote-driven, suspect interpretations delivered on Sunday mornings. A pastor, who is regarded as an expert by a congregation, whether or not that is actually warranted, can slip right into the role of an expert in the publishing world provided he (it’s typically a he, at least) can demonstrate a large enough following to guarantee a good print run.

Sometimes, even this flimsy anecdote-driven expertise isn’t required if the author has a large enough platform.

Exhibit A for this would be Joshua Harris, the darling of the homeschooling movement and purity culture who wrote a wildly popular dating book without actually practicing the advice he gave in the book. The platform bestowed by conservative Christians guaranteed robust book sales, and thus no one worried about his lack of expertise or even his lack of any experience at all.

More recently, Elizabeth Elliot has been highly scrutinized for sharing dating and marriage advice while living in a controlling, emotionally abusive marriage. The tragedy of Elliot’s personal life was compounded by the ways she passed on terrible advice to women who were suffering in similar or worse relationships.

All the while, the Christian publishing and conference industry concerned itself only with her robust book and ticket sales. Did anyone pause to ask whether a former missionary with a murdered husband had the expertise required to guide young people in their dating choices, personal holiness, or marriages?

Elliot had a compelling story that was certainly worth telling, but she wasn’t an expert in dating or marriage. Yet, the Christian publishing and media industry leveraged her compelling story into a massive money-maker fueled by Elliot’s personal anecdotes and biblical interpretations.

Pastors and Christian authors can do many good things for us, but few are marriage, relationships, or dating experts. There are Christians who have dedicated themselves to these specific topics and are far more likely to give us valuable and useful advice.

These Christians with psychology or other related degrees may not have the generalist training in biblical interpretation that an MDiv provides a pastor. However, they won’t make the tragic mistake of turning their personal experiences into wider experiences for others to imitate. They can spot toxic relationship trends, real warning signs in a marriage, or healthy practices to nurture in a relationship.

Our expertise in American Christianity is often tied to position and social platform and relies heavily on anecdotes, (sometimes) a flimsy master’s degree, and (often) suspect biblical interpretations.

If I sound too harsh in calling this an expertise crisis, take note that the books by Elliot and Harris remain on sale to this day despite their expertise being shot full of holes. In American Christianity, profit and influence can fill in all the expertise a public figure lacks.

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.

Photo by NATHAN MULLET on Unsplash

We Know Less Than We Think, So Why Not Emphasize Love?

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

How often have I changed my mind about a religious belief I once considered essential?

I doubt that I could count that high. My shift from a regimented theology with an all-controlling God to a free-will-based world with a loving yet powerful God has been enough to make my head spin.

Don’t even get me started on leaving behind the rapture or how reading Jewish Apocalyptic literature changed how I read the book of Revelation.

It’s not that I’ve entirely changed religions here. I’ve always been a “Christian.” Yet, the type of Christian I am and the things I believe and prioritize have shifted enough that it feels like a completely different religion.

I shouldn’t be surprised by this. Trying to figure out a mysterious God sure gets tricky, and only my pride keeps me optimistically thinking, “OK, now I’ve got this figured out!”

I imagine that Jesus isn’t surprised either, and it feels like he tried to warn us that getting into the finer details of God would be a giant FAIL.

There were a few moments in seminary when I read dense theology books and wondered why Jesus told so many simple yet mysterious parables. Something didn’t feel quite right, even though I went along with the program.

When Jesus gave his disciples commands, he kept the list almost insultingly short. It’s as if he implied, “I know you’re in over your heads. Let’s keep this short and simple.”

Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.

With all that I have sought to learn and couldn’t, with all that I have changed my mind over, and with all that I thought I had figured out and didn’t, two straightforward commands have never changed.

Those two simple commands supposedly unlock the path toward every other act of obedience. In other words, it’s impossible to love your neighbor and break another commandment. If you have loved, you have been obedient.

So much has changed in what I believe and practice, but if I’m going to take Jesus seriously, it sure seems like these are marginal matters that hardly touch on what’s most important to him. Loving God and loving my neighbor stand firm in place regardless of what I do with the other parts of the Bible.  

If it’s guaranteed that I’m going to get quite a lot wrong about God and how I interpret the Bible. Even though I think I’m “less wrong” today than I was in the past, that hardly justifies placing the pursuit of answers over the pursuit of love.

If love is the greatest command, then I have a much simpler and more accurate way of measuring whether I’m living in the way of Jesus. Letting two simple commands guide my life can be humbling, and perhaps that’s why it’s sometimes so hard to get out of my own way and love.

There’s a good chance I have much more in common with those who believe differently and yet love generously. Maybe I should start acting like that’s true.

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

Jesus Heals What We Ignore

Posted on by Ed Cyzewski

The following sermon was shared on June 19, 2022 at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Murray, KY on Luke 8:26-39.

I have a confession to make to you. It’s not scandalous, but it’s the sort of thing that some may be ashamed to admit.

I assure you, I’m not ashamed in the least, even if some certainly would be.

Here it is: I’m a sucker for catch-phrase comedy. I can’t get enough of those predictable one-liners in comedy shows.

There are Arrested Development’s gold standards:

“I’ve made a teeny, tiny HUGE mistake.” And “There’s always money in the banana stand!”

There’s the catch-phrase parody from the more obscure Rickey Gervais comedy series Extras:

“Are you having a laugh?”

In dating myself a good bit, one of the best-known catch-phrase comedy one-liners from my childhood belongs to Saturday Night Live’s Church Lady skit where the church lady piously highlighted a quote, unquote “scandal” and then remarked with a smirk:

“Could it be… Satan?”

That parody of Christians highlights one of our culture’s two extremes regarding spiritual, especially demonic matters.

On the one hand, there are the Christians like the Church Lady who find Satan’s fingerprints on every temptation, trial, or setback.

Others deny any possibility of Satan’s influence in the world and tend to explain away demon possession in the Bible as misdiagnosed mental illness. Some commentary writers even go in this direction.

There are a lot of things in today’s reading that can make us uncomfortable, and perhaps demon possession is but one of several things on that list.

We can also talk about racism and nationalism, as well as valuing financial security more than people and God. We’ll get to them in a minute, but since this story hinges on what happens to a demon-possessed man, let’s talk about demon possession for a moment.

In a church like this, some of us likely grew up hearing a lot about demons, the devil’s schemes, influence, and even a hockey team called The New Jersey Devils. The devil came up a lot for us, and it’s safe to say that many of the actions, motives, and disruptions that Christians blamed on the devil or demons were more likely the result of living in a world where people have free will, people hurt each other, and sometimes bad things just happen.

It’s also likely that some of us grew up not hearing much about demons and the devil, or because we grew up hearing so many questionable assertions about them, we’ve started ignoring them. Must we think about demons and spiritual battles?

Because Jesus shows up in this land where he was not welcome to solve a problem that no one wanted to deal with, we must show up as well.

Here’s the thing about Jesus’ spiritual battles with demons in the Bible: we know them when we see them. Sure, we could come up with more scientifically palatable explanations for these passages, but today’s reading makes that feel like a stretch.

Maybe there are some occasions when someone comes under the influence of a demonic spirit, and the power of Jesus is required to intervene for their liberty.

A story from my college years comes to mind. During my Junior year at a Christian University, I served as a Discipleship Coordinator (or DC), organizing small groups and prayer meetings on my floor.

One of my fellow DC’s, I’ll call her Sonya, probably one of the most respected leaders among us, shared her testimony during one of our retreats, and it went in a direction that no one expected. A year or so back, Sonya had been hanging out with some of her friends and was in a terrible, angry mood.

As she grew more belligerent and confrontational with her friends, one guy, who had no experience with such things, sensed something terribly wrong with Sonya. He prayed for her, and at one point, he prayed in the name of Jesus for an evil spirit to leave her.

Now, this is when things get crazy.

Sonya says that this voice came from her that wasn’t her own. It was an incredibly loud, terrifying bellowing and screaming that went on for far too long. Her friends continued to pray for her, and eventually, she stopped screaming and felt at peace.

There is a world of difference between a situation like that and the person who attributes a personal difficulty to the devil or a pop culture song to “demonic influence.” Just as Sonya’s friend, who knew nothing of demon possession, recognized something wasn’t right and required prayer, Jesus could see that there was something in this Gerasene outcast that required his intervention.

More importantly for us, it’s striking to see just how terrified the demons were of Jesus. Even when just about everyone doubted Jesus, the demons correctly identified him as God’s Son! They expected to be tormented by him.

How odd it is that even though these demons tormented this man, Jesus didn’t torture the demons as they’d expected. I don’t know how they thought it would help them to relocate into a herd of pigs and jump off a cliff, but Jesus let them pick their poison. It’s a puzzling detail that only drives home just how unequal the demons are to Jesus.

They are the ones begging his permission to act. It’s not even a remotely close confrontation.

Shortly after the demons sent the pigs over the cliff, the man appears restored to his right mind, gets dressed, and quietly sits at the feet of Jesus. Maybe everything will be great now that Jesus has solved this big problem!

Unfortunately, by solving one problem, Jesus created another for the people in the Gerasenes region. It turned out that having the power to heal a man and kill a herd of pigs simultaneously makes you unpopular. Killing the pigs more or less canceled out the good deed for the people in this town.

The people had already written off this man. He was a problem they were only too willing to ignore. Sure, he posed a threat, but he wasn’t going around killing entire herds of pigs.

These weren’t pet pigs rented out for church events. They were a source of financial security for someone. They were putting food on the table. We may even imagine that the loss of this herd could have been a significant economic catastrophe for someone. It could be the equivalent of casting out a demon today, but then the demon sets someone’s small business on fire.

Time and time again, Jesus drives a wedge between us and our possessions and finances. He forces us to consider whether we value other people, even those who appear to be a beyond hope. Would we want Jesus to stick around if he set us back financially to the same extent while helping someone?

That’s an element to this story that haunts me perhaps even more than the demonic aspect.

And then, there are the racial and national elements to this story. Jesus was a Jew who considered pigs unclean. He landed in a Gentile area. So it’s not hard to imagine these Gentiles thinking, “Well, of course, this Jewish miracle worker will kill our pigs! What else will he take from us? He must hate our way of life.”

The fear generated through racism and nationalism that obscures the humanity of others poisons our ability to love. This was a highly charged racial and national moment. Just a few generations before this event, Greek rulers in Israel had banned worship at the temple and even killed many Jews who continued to follow their customs and laws. No love was lost between the Jewish people and their Greek neighbors in a Gentile region like this.

The Gerasenes likely rejected Jesus partly because they couldn’t help interpreting his actions through the limits of their racial and nationalist lenses.

Even the liberated man’s fate may hinge partly on the racial and nationalist elements in this story. This man had lived among tombs in a Gentile region with pigs all over the place. Those would have been three strikes against him, to say nothing of him being possessed by a demon. So, that’s four strikes.

This man had the perfect resume if you wanted to make someone appear cursed and unreliable to Jewish people. I wonder if Jesus expected the Jewish people to reject his testimony. No one in Israel, where Jesus planned to minister, would know if his story checked out. Could they trust him?

Yet, among this man’s Gerasene people, they could verify who he was. They had seen him and heard the stories from people they trusted. Even if some had lost a great deal financially and entertained suspicions of a Jewish miracle worker, no one could deny that this man had experienced a great miracle.

His testimony counted for something among his people as he gave glory to God and credited Jesus with his miracle. To the man’s credit, he obeyed Jesus, turning his story of trauma, pain, and rejection into a testimony of healing and restoration.

While God does not cause our pain and suffering, I have seen time and time again how those healed by God in a specific area of their lives have served others in meaningful ways by sharing their healing journeys with others.

In closing, this Gospel reading challenges us to consider our attachment to the status quo, financial security, and the convenience of ignoring the big problems around us. We can look at suffering people and ask what keeps us from showing compassion to them or believing that we can share spiritual or material relief with them.

It’s also noteworthy that today is June 19th, which is known as Juneteenth in America and is now a Federal holiday. It was the day in 1865 when word reached the enslaved people of Galveston, Texas, that the Civil War was over and slavery was abolished.

Even in a pervasively Christian region, enslavers turned away from the inconvenient prospect of emancipation. They put liberation off until Federal representatives and soldiers made reality beyond dispute.

Educators Opal Lee and DeForest Soaries write about Juneteenth in the Washington Post:

“From the start, this holiday inspired Black Americans to celebrate overcoming the injustices of the past and take steps to pursue a more just future. And if our national history proves anything, it’s this: The more people who get involved in that work, the faster and better it goes. Just look at the civil rights movement, which inspired and then transformed our nation.”

It’s always been tempting to turn a blind eye to the suffering around us and to avoid the hard work of liberation.

As we sit here and imagine ourselves sitting next to Jesus as he pulls away from the shores of the Gerasenes, I have a few questions for us to ponder. I encourage you to meditate on the one that speaks most directly to your heart:

What is Jesus telling us to stop ignoring today?

Where have our priorities distracted us from what Jesus would have us do?

How can we seek God’s healing in an area of hopelessness?

How could the undisputed power of Jesus over evil spirits give us greater peace and confidence?

These are just a few of the challenging questions today’s reading prompts. If reflecting on them leaves us feeling challenged or even uncomfortable, then we have likely given God’s Spirit something extremely useful in our lives that can also bring many blessings to others.

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.

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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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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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