All Is Not Lost

Our plan was to backpack close to forty miles along the Colorado River on the rarely traveled Escalante Route in the Grand Canyon. 

But in one of the busiest national parks in the United States, even permits for the more remote routes are incredibly difficult to secure. After days of arduous back and forth, switching dates and negotiating where we would pitch our tents each night, we finally landed one of the most epic permits in the park. 

In my excitement, I shared this great news with my wife, who just stared at me blankly with no visible emotion on her face. 

“You do realize those dates are during Easter, right?” she asked, knowing exactly how I would answer.

“Um, no,” I sheepishly confessed.

These kinds of oversights are typical for me, though.

Like the time I left the car seat in the car and showed up at the airport terminal with Starbucks in hand, only to have my wife, baby in arms, ask where the car seat was. 

Like the time I left a week’s worth of breast milk at home when we went to my wife’s friend’s wedding in Florida with our newborn. I was supposed to be the one watching our daughter while my wife participated in all of the wedding activities.

You get the picture.

Life is full of inevitable disruptions and difficulties. 

Sometimes they are of our own doing. 

Other times, they are out of our control.

Like this season of the pandemic.

While we have made important and necessary sacrifices to protect the most vulnerable among us, there is no question that our isolation has created a sense of disruption, helplessness, and loss.

We have lost embraces to standing six feet apart.

We have lost the subtlety of a smile to face coverings.

We have lost the ease of conversations to dividers and shields.

We have lost plays and musicals and concerts, sporting events, parades and block parties, community social events, faith community gatherings, schools and classmates, work and coworkers, meals with extended families and friends.

We have lost the physical to the virtual, our natural rhythm to an unfamiliar beat.

And to compound our isolation, our sense of helplessness, and our loss of control during this time, we are fed nonstop media narratives that continue to polarize us, pit us against one another, and make us feel increasingly anxious and depressed. 

In a desperate attempt to find some semblance of community and connectedness in our isolation, we retreat to social media only to find more anger, division, and hostility, which leaves us even more fragmented and alone.

We are losing so much more than lives to this virus.

We are losing our humanity.

We are being broken down individually into isolated and fragmented parts that are increasingly anxious and angry. We are rapidly losing our sense of what it means to be a fully integrated, fully alive human being that works toward healthy relationships and community. And we can either continue down this hateful and antagonistic trajectory, feeding the beast until it consumes our souls and causes us to devolve into utter chaos, or we can draw a line in the sand and resolve to fight for our hearts and take back our humanity, finding a different, more life-giving way forward in the process.

But it has to begin with each one of us.

For there is no remedying the whole until the parts themselves find wholeness. 

As a people, we always have this mistaken idea that our help, our change, our salvation can only come from on high… from elected officials, from governments, from courts, from social organizations, from political action groups, and so on. 

But every wisdom tradition I have ever studied teaches us that our communities only change when we change individually. Our communities only find health when we find health individually. Our communities only become just, merciful, forgiving when we become just, merciful, and forgiving individually. And our communities only become whole and healed when we become whole and healed ourselves.

Jesus said that even a little yeast will permeate the entire batch of dough.

It is always the transformation of the smallest part that leads to the transformation of the whole.

While I grieve for those affected by the virus, I believe this season of loss is giving us an opportunity to look inward and evaluate who we are as individuals. 

Every construct upon which we have depended and that have held us up feebly like a crutch have been violently ripped away. Our endless rat races around life’s circumference have all ended abruptly. Our preoccupations prioritizing the exterior to the continual neglect of our interior have all ceased. 

We have never been more naked and exposed and vulnerable in our lifetime than right now. There are no metaphorical bushes behind which we can hide. We have been given an opportunity during this time of loss to honestly look inward and see ourselves and rediscover our inherent goodness and our shared humanity.

But what are we doing with this opportunity? Do we go through this unchanged and continue down this downward spiral together? Or, do we embrace this time of disruption and difficulty as an opportunity to find our hearts again and save our communities?

On Easter morning of 2014, the guys and I sat in a circle on large rocks next to the Colorado River in the heart of the Grand Canyon and watched the sunrise. I unwrapped the foil that had preserved the homemade honey-molasses communion bread I had baked before the trip. While aching and feeling the loss of not being with my family to celebrate the day, I prayed with my brothers, broke the bread, and savored one of the most life-giving and holy Easter moments I have ever experienced.

Life is difficult and many times feels like profound loss, but we always have the opportunity to embrace the moment and look-inwardly. For it is only in this place where we can recover that which is life-giving and holy.

This Body of Death, Part 2

With the purchase of my last book Beauty in the Wreckage I offered a free bonus chapter. I have decided to make that bonus chapter available now as two blog posts. This is part two. Part one can be found here. Thank you so much for your continued prayers and support friends.

I am not one who has much affection for the King James Version of the Bible. It’s too hard to read and understand. But, on occasion, I go back to ole King James to see how a verse is translated. And I have been surprised quite a few times with my discoveries.

As a lover of Romans 8, I can almost tell you word for word what it says from memory. But there is some phrasing that most modern versions of the Bible surprisingly leave out, which I have recently uncovered in the King James Version. 

Verses 22-23 in the King James read like this, “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”

And if you don’t immediately see the beauty here, let me paint the picture for you.

All of creation, all of God’s good creation, brought into being by the loving and creative hand of God, is groaning and travailing. 

All of God’s good creation is crying out. 

All of God’s good creation is laboring through this painful experience. 

And it is not just every delicate blade of grass, every towering tree, every mighty body of water, every magnificent celestial body, and every beautifully diverse animal that runs across the land and swims in the sea, it is we too, God’s image bearers, God’s partners and caretakers, who join this collective chorus of pain and suffering, together, even while we embody and manifest the Spirit of God, a life of shalom.

It is not just that the King James Version rightly included both words, groaneth and travaileth, while other versions include just one of the words, it is that the King James Version uniquely says that we groan and travail together. 

I can’t underscore just how important this point is- we groan and cry out in this painful life experience together.

And that is the real beauty and insight of the text. The passage not only assumes that each one of us will experience and live through pain and suffering, it assumes that we will do it together.

That is why we should never be afraid to talk about what we are going through with others. That is why we should never have to suffer quietly or alone. That is why we should never have to hide in embarrassment or believe that no one else will understand.

Because we all suffer through this, together. 

Each one of us should be able to share the pain we are experiencing without judgment, condemnation, or questions about our faith, or lack of faith, in God. 

Each one of us should be able to be real about the stress, anxiety, and depression we are experiencing without being told that we simply need to read the Bible more or pray more, as if those things alone are the simple fixes to make everything go away. 

And each one of us should be able to be honest about our mental illnesses without feeling like a “lesser Christian.” 

The goal is not to be healed with enough faith. The goal is the journey of who we are becoming, in light of what we are suffering, in light of the pain we are experiencing, in light of what we are going through. 

And that is why you should never apologize for singing the praises of God in one breath, and groaning in the next.     

Because there is shalom in this fractured place. And we hold both together within us in hope.

I just attended the funeral of my 87-year old uncle who died with Parkinson’s disease. He had been a preacher almost as long as he had been alive. And the church he started was the same church I grew up in for the first 20 years of my life.

I probably didn’t agree with every doctrine of that church. And I didn’t necessarily agree with every nuance of their theology. But man, my uncle loved people. The love of the Christ radiated outward in his words and in his actions. He loved and cared for all of the people he knew and even people he didn’t know. He was one of the most loving people I have ever met. 

The amazing truth is that love can cover a multitude of differing doctrines and theologies, because it is all ultimately about how much we love God, love others, and love ourselves.

That he did. 

And it was a beautiful thing to hear all of the stories of how he loved. 

Even when his health was deteriorating, even when he was in pain, even when his body continued to tremor from his disease, he loved God and everyone around him. He lived in the wholeness of the Christ, he resided in the completeness of the Christ. And in this harmonious relationship with the Christ was the deep well of God’s goodness. It was his fullness and satisfaction, even while his body deteriorated and failed, even while his body deteriorated and failed.

That is what I want in my life.

I want to experience and share a love that transcends my broken body, that reaches down deep into the well of God’s goodness despite my pain and suffering. 

For it is in that place where we discover beauty, despite the wreckage.

God, we praise you for your goodness, but we also groan longingly, and hopefully, looking toward a future in which every tear will be wiped away, every heartache will be healed, and every burdened body will be lifted.

But for today, we groan and travail together, seeking the shalom of the Christ.

Even while these bodies exist in dysfunction, disability, debilitation, and disorder, we pray for your deep well of goodness to be our satisfaction. 

For when we are prospering, let us be satisfied in your fullness. And when we are in need, let us be satisfied in your fullness. 

For when we have plenty, let us be satisfied in your fullness. And when we are in want, let us be satisfied in your fullness.

For when we are well-fed, let us be satisfied in your fullness. And when we are hungry, let us be satisfied in your fullness.

For when our bodies are healthy and functional, let us be satisfied in your fullness. And when our bodies are unhealthy and broken, let us be satisfied in your fullness.

For when our minds are clear and balanced and thinking rightly, let us be satisfied in your fullness. And when our minds are cloudy and imbalanced and confused, let us be satisfied in your fullness.

Father, let us be patient, content, and joyful examples of what it looks like to bear the tension of our bodily pain and suffering, while becoming the wholeness, completeness, and harmony of your shalom. 

Let us experience and share your love that transcends our broken bodies.

Work in and through our every weakness, our every physical, mental, and emotional dysfunction, our every pain and through our suffering to reveal that which is eternal and valuable.

Amen.

Beauty in the Wreckage: Finding Peace in the Age of Outrage is available everywhere online in digital, audiobook, and paper versions. It is also available as a signed paperback at Viewpoint Bookstore.

Good News? (A Quasi-Political Post)

I need you to trust me.

If you have followed my writings over the last decade you know that I do not like politics. In fact, I hate politics. I believe the confluence of politics and religion has been one of the greatest dividers and antagonizers within the Church as a whole. And, as a result, I spend my energy working to unite people from all political persuasions into the only thing that can cover a multitude of sins, a multitude of ideologies, a multitude of political persuasions- the love of God.

For it is the love of God, singularly, that can save us from ourselves, as impossible as that may seem sometimes.

But at the same time, you should know that since I do not care for either political party, I try to speak as much unbiased truth as I can, regardless of political affiliation. I don’t have skin in the game.

So with all of that being said, please know that my intention with this post is not to make some political statement, or to take some supposed political side, because I am not. Neither right nor left, blue nor red, liberal nor conservative, Republican nor Democrat will save us. I am simply trying to work through some of the great divides I observe within the American Church in light of political influence and power.

This post began writing itself last week when I saw an article about Vice President Mike Pence, who by the way is from my hometown and my alma mater (Columbus, Indiana and Hanover College), addressing a pastors conference (and now the Southern Baptist Convention) in which he was a surprise speaker. It was this specific line that hit me, and then subsequently made me reflect upon it. It was when he told the audience of pastors to, “share the good news of Jesus Christ.”

Maybe that line doesn’t really stand out to you. In fact, I would be surprised if it did stand out to you in any appreciable way because it is the very backbone of Christianity and a very common thing for a Christian leader to say. So it’s no real surprise that someone would say something like that at a preachers conference.

But the reason it hit me in such a weird way the other day was because there is a growing number of Christians, like me, who see how un-Christlike our government is, whether it be the current administration or past administrations, and the Vice President’s call to “share the good news of Jesus Christ,” seemed to ring a bit hollow in light of the current un-Christlike administration.

I need to be clear here. I am not at all doubting the Vice President’s sincerity or his allegiance to his faith. That’s not it at all. As you will soon see, the main point of this post really doesn’t have anything to do with the Vice President or the administration. I truly believe that from Pence’s perspective, he believes that the work he is doing, and the work that the Trump administration is doing by proxy, is largely in alignment with the “good news of Jesus Christ.” And his rally cry at the preacher’s conference was his clarion call for them to join him in this good news mission. Again, I do not doubt his sincerity or allegiance to his faith at all.

I just believe it is mistaken and misaligned.

The problem is that there are those of us who see the “good news of Jesus Christ” differently, who see that the character and policies of the Trump administration (and the Obama, Bush, and Clinton administrations of the past) as un-Christlike, and who believe that any pronouncement of the “good news of Jesus Christ” ought to be accompanied by a people resolved to be like the Christ they profess to follow.

I want to be consistent, though. I am not saying that I believe a country should, or even could, be Christlike because I don’t think that is even possible, nor is it what Jesus ever intended. But, when Christianity is so actively and vociferously bandied about by the current administration, and then used as their basis for policy decisions, it begs for serious accountability and critique by those who take following the way of Jesus seriously.

So here are a few questions I would have.

What is so good about the “good news of Jesus Christ” if it has no real bearing on us becoming more like Christ in our lives?

Ought not the preaching of the “good news of Jesus Christ” be accompanied by lives and initiatives that look Christlike?

What is so good about the “good news of Jesus Christ” if the policies of the United States are rarely Christlike, or not Christlike at all?

What is so good about the “good news of Jesus Christ” if it really isn’t good news for people living today?

Does the Good News have any real world influence, or is it just something that guarantees a future in heaven?

Of course these questions are rhetorical, but they really bring to light the deeper problem we have within American Christianity in how we view the “good news of Jesus Christ,” and what it ought to mean for the here and now. And believe me, this problem is at the very center of the issues we have with each other in the larger American Church.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, we have two very different and distinct understandings of what the “good news of Jesus Christ” even is. And it is this difference in understanding that has led to very different ideas about what that means in the world and then how that ought to be expressed.

Some Christians believe the “good news of Jesus Christ” is the saving work of God through Christ accomplished through the death of Jesus on the cross in order to defeat sin and death, thereby satisfying the wrath of God and granting forgiveness to all who repent and are baptized so that they may go to heaven for eternity in a spiritual afterlife.

The limitation of this understanding of the “good news” is that it does not offer a cohesive moral lens through which to see the world. Because this understanding is largely end-oriented, it is significantly limited in how to view (and relate) to the world presently.

That is why many within this version of the “good news” have adopted the most accessible lens in front of them to understand the world- the Judeo-Christian American lens.

Within the vacuum created by only using Jesus as a means of salvation, but not the lens through which they view all things, they needed some sort of lens to make moral sense of our country and world. And the Judeo-Christian American lens was the most accessible, because it was the one handed down from generation to generation in America.

The problem is that the Judeo-Christian American ethic is a mishmash of selective and inconsistent ethics from the Old and New Testaments. And those who see the world through that Judeo-Christian lens seek to impose those values on the governmental system as their ultimate goal, because they believe it is what God has always wanted. The Judeo-Christian American ethic is believed to be fundamentally and unequivocally Christian by those Christians who use it as their lens, even though its ethics are thoroughly un-Christlike.

A Judeo-Christian American ethic is not a Christlike ethic. There is no such hybrid entity within Christ. To be a Christian means to follow the ethic of Christ. It does not mean ascribing to a mishmash of selective values that can be molded to your liking, or to your political leaning.

I am not pointing a finger of judgment here, because this is the quasi-Christian mumbo-jumbo that we have all been sold for generations. The problem is that a Judeo-Christian American ethic is not a Christlike ethic and we are mistaken if we believe they are synonymous.

However, there are those, including me, who believe that the “good news of Jesus Christ,” which Jesus and Paul referred to as the “good news of the Kingdom of God,” is an entirely different nation and citizenship without boundaries or divisions or hierarchies, and whose values look exactly, and consistently, like the king in this kingdom… Jesus.

Yes, we still believe that the forgiveness of God was given to all as a peace-offering through Christ crucified, that sin and death were triumphed over in the resurrection of the Christ, and that God longs for all to repent (for all to change their minds about God and be transformed in the process of reconciling their relationship) and to be immersed heart, mind, body, and soul into this new reality of living, this Kingdom of God.

But it goes much further than that. Jesus isn’t simply a means to an end. Jesus is the means and the end. Jesus isn’t just good for getting to heaven. Jesus is the template and the lens by which we pattern our lives and through whom we see all things.

The good news of the Kingdom of God stands in sharp contrast to the selective and inconsistent morality of the Judeo-Christian American lens.

For example, when we say “pro-life,” we believe that God loves all life from womb to tomb, not just in the womb, because that is what Jesus taught and what Jesus embodied. The good news of the Kingdom of God is that all people are loved and worthy. And in this Kingdom, like Jesus, one does not see enemy-combatants or people worthy of death row or illegal aliens or garbage human beings or humans referred to as animals. We simply see people who are made in the image of God and loved by God. We see, like Jesus, people that we are to love with our heart, mind, body, and soul. And that may make us stupid and worthy of ridicule for loving so recklessly, but it is consistently with who Jesus called his followers to be.

And that is just one difference, among so many, between the selective and inconsistent Judeo-Christian American ethic and the universal and consistent good news of the Kingdom of God. It is easy to know how to see the world and other people when Jesus alone is the lens through which we see all things.

Let me give another example to illustrate the profound difference between the two lenses.

A Pew Research article posted on May 24, 2018 looked at whether or not the United States has a responsibility to accept refugees.

Of every single demographic analyzed in the study, from age to gender to class to ethnicity to education level, the groups MOST AGAINST the United States accepting refugees were the white, Protestant Evangelicals at nearly 70% and white, Protestants at 50%.

The people of Jesus. The people of compassion. The people who have become the very “body of Christ” in the world. The people of the “Good News.” The people who are to see others as Jesus sees them, is the single demographic MOST AGAINST accepting and helping a refugee.

When a Christian religion adopts a lens through which to view the world that is in stark contrast to the lens of Jesus, this is exactly what we end up with. Whether or not one breaks an American law, whether or not a person deserves the help, whether or not the person comes from another country or not, the good news of the Kingdom of God welcomes in and cares for the foreigner, the outcast, and those pushed to the edges of society. The good news of the Kingdom of God has deep, deep compassion for the poor seeking a better life, for those being hunted and killed by their own domestic oppressors, and for those seeking religious asylum from violent regimes. A people who understands the good news of the Kingdom of God is not singularly concerned preaching about the self-sacrificing Christ. We are resolved to pattern our lives after, and see the world through, the self-sacrificing Christ.

That’s the difference.

And I believe that is why there are so many Christians who think that the current administration is “doing the Lord’s work,” while there are just as many of us Christians who believe the current administration is an affront to Christ. Because without making Jesus the lens through which all things are seen, one can pick and choose which ethical concerns are “more important” or more “politically satisfying” or “more in line with American interests,” than with the Jesus they profess to follow.

It may be time for us to have deeper discussions with each other about what the good news is and what it really means for the world today.

Peace…

Brandon