Apologies to my non-Christian readers, this one’s not for you. Following are many references to a deity, a book allegedly written by said deity who allegedly took the form of a human to rectify some things only accessible to a deity. To my Christian friends, I believe all of the above, as you do, and will attempt to make a strong case for the way people like us should show up when the world around us seems to be losing its mind.

The Bible is the best place to start.

If our holy writ is truly the “Word of God,” as we confess, it should have a massive bearing on Christian life and praxis in a world that, 50 years ago, was simply dealing with things like race, divorce and the sexual revolution. Now, there are so many more issues, things that seem preposterous to us.

Regardless of where you land on these issues, the world is more hostile to conservative Christianity than it’s ever been. God doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it, and we don’t want to kowtow to this nonsense like our liberal brothers and sisters. Since “God helps those who help themselves” (not in the Bible) we’ve decided that it’s time to rectify things on our own, to “take American back,” to fight.

The other side – the liberals and/or the non-Christians – seem to want a different world, so we find ourselves in a wrestling match, where both sides have their hands on the wheel, desperately trying to force the boat in opposite directions, resulting in a trajectory that nobody wants.

To all of this, Jesus spoke clearly about the business of a Christian. He said these words to a group of his followers who had sequestered themselves in a small room for fear that the government was coming to get them (it was) and do what it did to their leader.

Their situation was different from ours. They were actually being hunted, on the hit list, days numbered.

Either way, when Jesus spoke his final words (preceded by his death, resurrection, and walking through a wall), he didn’t use hate speech, or try to convince them to supplant his teachings with a religion of self protection.

He began with one word:

“Go.”

This account is typically referred to as the “Great Commission” and appears at the end of Matthew’s gospel. It’s important because, far as ancient Jewish narrative goes, what happens at the end of a story carries the most weight. If this is true, Jesus’ command is of great importance for the Christian trying to show up in any world, under any circumstance. There is nothing that trumps this, no cultural movement or anti-movement that might excuse us.

Specifically, Jesus said:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go 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 I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

We have to be careful to unpack some of these terms, loaded with meaning that gets missed in our not-so ancient, not-so-Jewish world. The first is “Baptism.” You don’t tell first-century Jewish people to go outside the safety of holy, clean, God-fearing Israel and baptize non-jewish people. Baptism was a distinctively Jewish thing, meant to cleanse only the most contrite, humble Jewish person of their sins. Telling these poor folks to extend this holy ritual to the dirtiest, most unqualified people they could imagine would’ve been heresy at best.

But in commanding his disciples to baptize everyone, Jesus was expanding God’s family to the whole world, without condition. Everyone now qualifies. Again, this was something previously unthinkable to the first-century Jewish mind.

Second is the word “disciple,” one that, these days, is primarily used by Christians and, ironically, terrorist groups. Beyond that, you won’t often hear it used. In Jesus’ day, “disciple” simply described someone who devoted themselves to a particular rabbi’s teaching.

That’s what Jesus wanted.

He didn’t command his disciples to proselytize everyone into being good Evangelicals, or Catholics, or whatever. He simply wanted a world full of people who acted like he did.

I want that too. A world full of people like that would change the world like politics and anti-whatever religions could ever hope to.

Instead, we’ve decided to spread our fear and anger as far as we can, trying desperately to convince our comrades that Christianity is in some kind of trouble, that we are victims – holy, clean, and God-fearing – now targeted for destruction.

As a result, we’ve not only disengaged from the business Jesus called us to, we’re acting in defiance of it.

I get it. America’s breakneck cultural revisions are disorienting for me, too. I’m 56, raised in a world much different than this one.

But believing that these things fly in the face of God while ignoring all the ways that we fly in the face of God, while also ignoring the Great Commission, is the biggest way to fly in the face of God I can think of. His commandment was crystal clear, but we’ve invented all kinds of ways to excuse ourselves from it.

We’d do much better to take our anti-woke energy and aim it at ourselves. There are many more targets within our ranks that are much easier to hit. But the contemporary church doesn’t tend to critique itself nearly as much as it critiques everyone else. And we’re not just critiquing, we’re vilifying, declaring the outside world “enemy,” segregating ourselves, forfeiting the power that God has given us, and saying a devout “no” to the change that would come from placing our lives on his altar.

If that sounds like a bunch of malarkey to you, think about the legion of historical episodes when Christian folk really needed to wake up but just couldn’t manage it.

We have a propensity to stay in bed when it’s time to face the day.

We don’t have to agree with America’s many cultural shiftings, or support them, we simply have to get up, get back in the game, and continue to be the hands and feet of the diety who got really angry at the holy, clean, God-fearing, unwoke, segregated, self-righteous people of his day.

 

Photo by Ahmed Nishaath on Unsplash

Before I got into ministry, I worked as a pilot, and had racked up a mountain of debt. Flight school was expensive and I didn’t have the $$ pay up front, or a marginally good credit score, so I took out several loans at exhorbitant interest rates. At the peak of my borrowing, I owed over $30K, and was struggling to pay it back.

A dear friend stepped in and paid off my loans, then wrote up a deal where I would pay him back monthly over 3 years. His interest rate was exponentially lower.

About that time, I decided to get out of aviation and pursue a career in ministry, but couldn’t get accepted to Dallas Theological Seminary because of my debt load.

After a few months of me moping around at church, my friend and his wife took me out to dinner and announced that they would be forgiving my debt. I got up without saying anything and went to the bathroom to completely freak out.

I can’t tell you what it’s like to be free of such a burden, especially for someone who was having a difficult time paying his bills. You could say some things about my career decisions and how I had chosen my predicament, but when I hear about people being somewhat freed from their student loan burden, especially in a country where education expenses are higher than they are just about everywhere else, it makes me happy. I know what that feels like.

I’ll never forget the moment of my freedom and the positive impact it had on my life.

This week, as the Biden administration rolled out it’s debt forgiveness plan, I was surprised to see so many of my Christian friends up in arms. I’m not sure I fully understand their frustration at this point: one friend seemed to think that this will plunge America into some whirlpool of irresponsibility, calling Biden’s measure “immoral” and “unlawful.” The government has no right to take our money and pay someone else’s bills. Others are pissed because they worked hard to pay their debts. Why should someone else get such a break?

From this crowd, I haven’t heard anything about the fact that the most you can get is $20,000. In most cases, that’s less than half a semester. I’m not sure why my friends believe that people are getting all/most of their debt erased.

More surpisingly, few have managed to put themselves in the shoes of folks that benefit from this plan – the single moms and others having a hard time making ends meet, now a little farther down the debt-free road.

Shouldn’t Christians of all people get happy about that?

What frustrates me most – apart from my fellow Christians, once again, publicly displaying an insensitivity unbecoming the people of God – is that debt forgiveness is biblical. That’s a big deal because us Christian whackos are convinced that the Bible is the very word of God. If it deals with debt forgiveness on any level, that’s where we should start.

God’s debt free world

To the accusations of “immoral,” “unlawful,” and “unfair,” I’ll share some thoughts about debt from the Old Testament, specifically from the book of Deuteronomy. I’ll spare you any discussion about the forgiveness of sin, or any other spiritual spin on debt that the bible makes. This passage deals specifically with the forgiveness of financial debt, and reveals for us bible-believers heaven’s desire for freedom.

At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. This is how it is to be done: Every creditor shall cancel any loan they have made to a fellow Israelite. They shall not require payment from anyone among their own people, because the Lord’s time for canceling debts has been proclaimed. ~ Deut. 15:1-2

The passage goes on to warn debtors about adjusting their lending practices based on how close they are to the end of the 7 year cycle.

I’m not up to speed on the history of this, or when the Isrealites nixed it, but I’ll bet that, after seeing the world’s most powerful army destroyed in the Red Sea, then being led through the desert by a column of smoke and fire, one might be open to the craziest ideas, even when it comes to money.

Alas, with very rare exception, us Christians do none of this, understandably, neither does anyone in modern-day Israel.

But if our government’s cancellation of debt – a mere fraction of what would be affected by the passage above – is unfair, unlawful, and immoral, was God’s? And was he leading his followers into some pit of irresponsibility by commanding such lunacy?

Regardless, this is what God wanted for his people. All throughout the Old Testament is the idea that God doesn’t want a world that’s ruled by money and all of the slavery that comes with it. It should surprise no Christian that God wants his people to handle money in a way that puts it in the background so that the much more valuable things of his world can be enjoyed.

But because so many of us have been suckered into money’s siren call, and because we live in a world that puts money before anything else, God’s attitude towards debt is too alien, so much that if someone comes close to expressing it, we feel cheated, threatened.

The experts, again

According to a widely cited survey of 43 leading economists, Biden’s plan is a progressive one, so long as it is weighted towards those who need it most. So, once again going with majority expert opinion, this administration announced that single people who earn less than $125,000 can get up to $10K in debt forgiveness, double that for married folk.

Some from this group raised issues of fairness (percieved) and the impact that such a level of forgiveness would have on incentives, supply, etc. (to the “irresponsibility” allegation cited above).

I’m not aware of any economists claiming that this measure is illegal, or immoral, or in any way completely out of phase with pro-America governance. It seems that most are calling this a good move.

But here we are once again, Christians from the conservative tribe who seem to be completely unintroduced to expert opinion, taking to social media not with mere critiques, but accusations of skullduggery. We went through this with Covid, then inflation and rising fuel prices. On one hand were a mountain of experts offering their publicly accessible analyses on cause, responsibility, remedy, etc., on the other hand a cross section of evangelical Christianity continuing to peddle their belief that liberal America’s response to these problems is further proof that liberal America just wants to destroy America.

I don’t expect my conservative Christian friends to agree hook, line, and sinker with non-conservative politics. And I get the argument that too much intervention/forgiveness/whatever can and will be gamed by opportunists. But to what degree? The destruction of our country?

Every time the Biden administration makes a move, I read a commentary about how it will drive America into ruin, fanning the flames of anti-liberal hatred that have been brewing in conservative Christian ranks for decades.

These friends of mine are angry, now segregated from the data, conversations, friendships, and perspectives required for a functional grasp of what America needs to move forward. This level of segregation doesn’t come from God, it hails from somewhere else, forcing his followers, once again, to be overthrown by the religion of self protection, where fear is God, and compassion is dangerous.

To a similar crowd, Jesus said (my paraphrase) “Stop it. The kingdom of heaven is sitting next to you. Do something better.”

It’s an understatement to say that America is in crisis. A big chunk of us are unhealthy, depressed, in debt. Unhappy. On top of that, we’re more politically divided than we’ve been in my lifetime.

There are benefits to being an American, a mountain of freedoms being one of the biggest. We should be thankful for our unprecedented ability to choose, but we struggle. Turns out that having a bunch of options hasn’t helped our predicament. In some ways it’s made it worse. In a 2021 Economist/YouGov poll, “freedom” ranked lowest as the thing people are most thankful for.

We have everything we need to be happy, but instead, we’re angry, so much that scientists are beginning to track our ever-growing rage while politicians fan it for personal gain and social media spreads it like hot butter. There’s money to be made here; our emotional state trumps things like science, empirical data, and the rationality that might help us vote more clearly, and many of today’s politicians and others will gain from our growing lack of objectivity.

Most Americans, especially American Christians, will tell you that their anger is justified: there is a large group of people and/or circumstances standing in the way of whatever’s needed for a general sense of happiness. We are being cheated out of something and therefore should be angry.

That’s not true, of course. Sadly, we interact with our blessings the way a spoiled child interacts with theirs. Regardless of the fact that so many of us have everything we need, we still feel like we’re the victims of some injustice, only seeing what’s missing at the expense of everything else and desperately needing someone to blame.

I don’t mean to oversimply our issues, they are rooted in many things that come part and parcel with a wealthy, Western lifestyle. But this problem is ours to solve, not a politician’s, and we’re compelled to take a deeper look at the contributing factors so that we might embrace a deeper level of responsibility.

I don’t believe that we’ve simply become spoiled and/or that we’re just not thankful enough. We’d certainly be a greater nation if we could manage to adult a little better, but there’s something that runs deeper that might change everything if we could address it.

I’ll illustrate with a personal encounter:

As a former pastor, I’ve dealt with many congregants over the years. At every church I served, there were people who were committed to the overall community, and people who weren’t. Every time I took a position, it became easier to identify who was who, i.e., the people who’s agenda was focused on others, and the people who’s agenda was focused on themselves.

I have a unique perspective here because, much as I hate to admit it, my agenda has frequently been dominated by a similar self-focus.

I can tell you that “other-focus” people seem to share one fundamental common ingredient with “self-focus” people: self-esteem. How these people viewed themselves seemed to determine their posture towards the community. People who enjoyed the most peace about who they were tended to have space to serve others while people with an opposite self view tended towards an opposite agenda: they were typically harder to deal with, experienced more anger/dissatisfaction with the church, and tended to recruit other self-esteem sufferers to their cause, many times creating a significant fracture in the church.

America’s anger problem might have a similar root.

Low self esteem affects everything. Psychologists who study this phenomenon assert some serious side effects: sensitivity to criticism, excessive preoccupation with personal problems, anger, hostility, anxiety, and depression are all said to have low self esteem at their core.

Allegedly, a bunch of us struggle with this.

It’s frequently noted that 85% of the world’s population suffers with poor self image, the average American being no exception.

An impaired self-concept adversely interferes with a person’s ability to find happiness, and over 80% of my clients are struggling with feeling some level of unhappiness in their lives. Taken together, the relationship we have with our self-concept can invariably prevent our ability to achieve our overall desired level of satisfaction and happiness in our lives.

Some have strongly suggested that this problem has wormed its way into our political arena. In her 2018 book Uncivil Agreement — How Politics Became Our Identity, John Hopkins University political scientist Lilliana Mason suggests a deep correlation between low self-esteem and strong emotional partisanship. If you’re wondering how politics in American got so unbelievably emotional, Mason has a compelling theory, implying that our self esteem problems lie at the core.

Mason’s not the only one to suggest such a correlation. Christopher Federico, political psychologist at the Center for the Study of Political Psychology at the University of Minnesota, has suggested that our sense of personal identity often derives from the tribes we identify with. As soon as we view ourselves as a member of a large group, it affects the way we think about everything:

“You like members of [your] group more than others. You want things to reflect favorably upon your group. You’re biased toward believing things that reflect positively on your group…” 

Ultimately, if I attack, villify, or critique your politican(s), you’ll take it personally if a poor self image is driving your politics.

You’d think that our growing tribal factions would help us feel better about ourselves, but they might be doing the opposite. Researchers in India suggest that people with strong tribal affiliations experience more problems with self image than people who view themselves as more independent.

For the legion of us with self image problems, all of this research suggests that the vote we cast isn’t so much for policy and the preferred future of America as it is for our suffering sense of identity.

Lilliana Mason is convinced that the majority of political debates in the US are “identity debates masquerading as policy debates.”

I agree.

When we vote, we might be voting for the legitimacy of ourselves more than anything else.

If you’re looking for a good definition of bad politics, there you go.

For us Christians who struggle with self esteem – and we are legion – this is especially problematic. We’re convinced that our anger is justified, that it’s time to accuse and condemn the people who don’t think like we do, to support the increasing population of politicians who see fit to unleash hate speech of Hitler proportions.

What might be happening instead is that, at baseline, we don’t like who we are, so we scour the earth for something that might alleviate our lack of self-appreciation. Once we find it, we condemn anything that threatens it, and endorse with much emotion anyone who supports it. But this doesn’t help us feel better about us, so the problem grows. The more we invest our identity in whatever, the stronger our emotional affiliations become, making us complete suckers for the leaders, influencers, and media outlets who seek to gain from our undying devotion.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Rest assured that the anger that stems from all of this is patently unjustified and in need of a brutal audit.

 

Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash