In the past 30 days, according to the CDC, COVID deaths in the US have averaged 1,840 per day, That’s higher than heart disease, the number one cause of death in our country.

The liberal crowd tends to believe that these numbers are trustworthy, and climbing because so many have decided that mask wearing and social distancing aren’t that important. Folk from my Evangelical camp continue to worship indoors, complaining about government overreach, while many others continue to hit the bars and restaurants, refusing to let COVID get in the way of good livin’.

Currently, we’re the top country in per capita COVID deaths.

To many who lean conservative, there’s a conspiracy here, one whose ultimate aim is to dismantle the Trump administration, with the CDC’s COVID data at the center of it all. The numbers have been exagerrated in an attempt to paint Trump as a fumbling, uncaring cretin in the middle of a global pandemic. Evangelicals have been indicted in these COVID theories (CT’s), accused of being too gullible to discern the truth, trust science, or consider perspectives that don’t jive with our own.

But we’re always being misrepresented, especially by left leaning media outlets. The world seems to love a good story about dumb religious people.

CT’s are a fascinating thing, and certainly not limited to Evangelicals, or a specific political affiliation. According to a study on partisan conspiracy theories, everyone’s a sucker, it just depends on who’s in office. Referencing the past 30 years, liberals have birthed far more CT’s under a conservative administration, and vice versa when a republican is in office. It’s also interesting to note that, according to a Cambridge study, liberal CT’s tend to center around evil operators in the coporate arena, while conservatives see more conspiracies originating from government circles.

But I’ve never seen so many CT’s launched from my Evangelical camp as I have in these past 4 years. From my perspective, limited and non-peer-reviewed as it is, I don’t have any liberal friends posting on social media about the government “coming to get us” or engaging in anti-America overreach. These come almost exclusively from my Evangelical friends, many of whom I’ve known most of my life.

Moving a bit beyond my limited view, the world’s largest Evangelical publication, Christianity Today, has spoken multiple times about our attraction to fake news and its attending CT’s, calling out our tendency to get suckered into this stuff and spread it as far as possible.

“Sadly, Christians seem to be disproportionately fooled by conspiracy theories.”

“…God has not called us to be easily fooled. Gullibility is not a Christian virtue. Believing and sharing conspiracies does not honor the Lord. It may make you feel better, like you are in the know, but it can end up harming others and it can hurt your witness.”

As America’s leading Evangelical pastors shut down their indoor worship services, and as the most famous Evangelical in the world begs us to show up differently, we’re compelled to rethink our devotion to what has grown to be a liturgy of sorts, one that’s done great internal damage while running counter to our calling, in the case of COVID, now contributing to a body count that is unimaginable to the people we’re supposed to be reaching.

“But the numbers aren’t real,” we say, or they’re simply not reliable. 3,000 people didn’t die yesterday from COVID. What about comorbidity, or the fact that the CDC’s overall death count hasnt risen significantly since all of this started? To us, there are plenty of reasons why we shouldn’t trust the CDC, or WHO, or the COVID Tracking Project, or the other organizations around the world that believe the numbers are real..

But that’s what we say when we’ve categorically failed to sit down with someone who’s well versed in the other side of the story. This is one of the reasons why CT’s have so much power with us. We’ve segregated ourselves from liberal voices, accusing them of mindless, nation-daming politics. No self respecting Evangelical should be found giving ear to NPR, the New York Times, Reuters, USA Today, New Yorker, Time, The Economist, etc. In this, we’ve distanced ourselves from the data required for a fuller picture, ultimately segregating ourselves from the truth.

This lack of unity, and all the Godless drivel that drives it is condemned over and again in our scriptures. We’re called to sit and listen, to have patience with each other, suspend judgment, and consider every single facet of the story.

“The gullible believe anything they’re told; the prudent sift and weigh every word.” ~ Proverbs 14:15

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told that my perspective is garbage by people who couldn’t articulate my perspective to save their life. Again, it’s not because of stupidity, but because we’ve all decided that the “sifting of every word” simply isn’t required. I don’t have to take my liberal friend out for coffee and listen to their side of the story. Why would I when theirs is part of a conspiracy to destroy my country?

To that, I’d like to offer the side of the story that compels us to reconsider the CDC’s numbers, and the behavior that should follow. You don’t have to agree, but I’ll ask that you gain some ability to articulate what’s below before dismissal. Please comment if you’d like to debate, but understand that I’m a data nerd and can best most at the art of sitting down for hours looking up things on the internet.

1. The majority of world epidemiology takes no issue with the CDC’s numbers, or those of the World Health Organization. A friend of mine asked how I could possibly know that, so we had a tit-for-tat exchange, both of us posting noted epidemiologists who either support or oppose the CDC and their attendant guidelines. So far, we’ve come up with 7 who believe that the numbers are way off and/or that CDC/WHO guidance is overreach. While that’s nothing to sneeze at, it doesn’t compare with the sheer number of epidemiological staff/leadership at the CDC, WHO, and the multitudes of health organizations and their overqualified faculties; to name a few: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Yale School of Medicine,  the Perelman School of Medicine at UPenn, and the Joan & Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University, all giving no indication that the CDC numbers are unreliable, or that the resulting state/federal mandates and guidelines are misguided.
2. MD level docs are reporting their first-hand experiences with overwhelmed hospitals. I’m somewhat connected with the medical community in Denver purely by proxy of being married to a doc, and can confirm the very real lack of resources. A friend of mine who had just come off of an ER rotation recently told me, with a fair amount of emphasis, “COVID is real,” then went into some detail about what it’s like to watch someone die from it. I’ll spare the details.
3. Regions with strict protocols see less case/death counts, and vice versa. Hawaii might be the best example of this, shutting things down in a way that few Americans on the mainland would tolerate. Lacking the benefit of neighboring states to lend a hand, and citing a limited supply of ventilators, the state went full-on, in some cases arresting people who didn’t quarantine in their condo for 14 days after arrival. If the COVID numbers were unreliable, there wouldn’t be such a huge correlation in case/death numbers between the regions that have locked down, and the ones that haven’t.
4. Comorbidity is a factor in most deaths. The CDC recently reported that only 6% of COVID deaths were “pure” COVID deaths, i.e., not attended by any comorbidities. The non-medical community jumped on this as further evidence that the CDC’s death counts are bogus. If you got suckered into this one, have a quick chat with an MD about what comorbidity means and how it relates to recorded COVID deaths.
5. The CDC’s total death counts are provisional. If you visit their website, you’ll see that the CDC is currently posting total deaths in the US that aren’t much different that those of prior years. If so many are dying of COVID, why aren’t these reflected in current counts? There’s a disclaimer on this site that frequently gets missed, clearly stating that these numbers don’t reflect what’s currently happening, and are frequently updated. This implies that the CDC isn’t tracking total numbers the same way that they’re tracking COVID numbers.
6. I’ve had more COVID conversations with medical professionals than you have. I realize how this sounds, but my MD friends aren’t questioning the CDC, frequently referencing their stats to make difficult decisions. If you’d like to challenge me on this, go and have 15 conversations with 15 different docs, then let’s talk.
7. Evangelical COVID conspiracy theory fits the mold of previous conservative/religious CT’s. Again referencing the above research, conservative conspiracy theories have historically focused on evil operators in government. This particular CT is all that: the government is trying to control us, shut down our worship services, take away our freedoms, destroy the economy, etc. The only thing that doesn’t fit is that this one is embraced by conservatives under a conservative administration. Beyond that, we should take a moment and consider how fishy this is.
8. Nobody wants the economy to tank. If everyone follows CDC guidelines, nobody’s arguing that the US will suffer financially, maybe catastophically so. But if the death rate is anywhere in the neighborhood of the CDC numbers, we have a bigger problem than economic peril, one that, by definition, will result in exponentially more. I don’t see a way to deal with this apart from taking a tragic economic hit. But that’s where humanity is supposed to step in, especially us Evangelicals; we’re the ones who’ve been called to help in difficult times. It’s not like we don’t have the resources.

You might not agree on what’s above, but you can at least understand why I’ve come to believe that the only conspiracy here is the one against data, majority medical opinion, common sense, the front-line medical community, and the American population at large.

You could rightly question my devotion to or understanding of the more conservative side of the argument, but keep in mind that I’ve spent the majority of my adult Chrstian life as a conservative Evangelical, living and voting as you might think I would. I’ve sat through many a church service where it was heavily implied that the liberals were coming for us, and sat through (even led) many a Bible study on the godlessness of non-conservative politics.

In my mid-thirties I married a highly educated non-white lady, moved to a much more liberal part of America, and began to have legitimate conversations that I never once had in my previous, predominately white, Southern, conservative Christian existence, full of truth to be sure, but not fully true. Now, there are parts of my political mind that are conservative, and parts that lean liberal because there’s truth and falsehood on both sides.

Initially, I didn’t vote for Trump because he called for physical violence at his campaign rallies, a sign that his character wasn’t up to the task. His further calls to division, and his final magnum opus of downplaying the deadliest pandemic I’ve ever seen were the last three nails in the coffin for me. I’m not implying that everything Trump’s done while in office has been bad. Every president manages to do some good for our country; Nixon and A. Johnson being fine examples. But they’ll forever go down in history as bad presidents, as will Trump.

I’m not claiming that I’ve sat down and had a ton of personal conversations with people who don’t think like me, but I’m not devoid of those encounters. In addition to the conversations I am having, I’ve lived a big chunk of my life as a person who doesn’t think like me.

But, just like everyone else, I’m well served by the listening required to restore peace and unity to our country. To that, let’s have a zoom call, or an email exhange, or whatever, where I listen to your side of the story, read it back to you, then ask you to extend the same to me.

I triple-dog dare you.

In the meantime, if we come to believe that we’re being lied to by a large number of highly qualified people whose data has never before been so challenged, we should prove it before we get suckered into a conspiracy theory, one that’s encouraged too many Americans to put themselves and others at risk.

We should know better.

First, the story, and what it would mean to a first century Jewish person living in high expectation that something of Old Testament proportions was about to happen:

Before Jesus garnered any sort of a following, he went to a wedding.

These were a big deal in His day, and didn’t go down without a fair amount of recreational beveraging. The modern-day, sparkling-grape-juice-Baptist-y thing would’ve been laughable to these folks.

A wedding was a huge party, in every sense imaginable, lasting multiple days.

As Jesus kicked back with a few soon-to-be OG’s, maybe thinking about all the trouble He was about to get into, His bossy mother interrupted to announce this particular celebration had drunk itself out of wine – a very real emergency, and a potential embarrassment for everyone involved – suggesting very strongly that she expected Him to do something about it.

Up to this point, the author has made clear his belief that Jesus is Messiah, prophesied about in the ancient Jewish scriptures – our “Old Testament.” Other Gospel narratives indicate that Jesus’ mother believed too. If we’ll allow a miraculous visit from an angel, a virgin birth, and whatever else His mother witnessed, we can understand why she expected a penniless handyman to somehow come up with enough wine to service the entire wedding crowd.

What happens next is something that would be highly offensive to the upper muckety-muck religious leaders of the day; they shared our modern “Christian” tendency to shun alcohol in all its forms.

Jesus somehow convinced the wedding attendants to fill 6 stone water pots, used for ritual cleansing ceremonies, in total holding about 160 gallons of water. These were holy artifacts intended exclusively for holy occasions: filling them with booze would be analagous to filling a babtistry with tequila. You can imagine what would follow.

Christian thinkers for millenia have scratched their heads, wondering how to fit this into our mainstream understanding of what God considers “clean” and “unclean.” This party was already out of wine, i.e., folk were intoxicated (unclean), shouldn’t they call it a day and head home? Why is the holiest human a religious person can fathom making another 4,000 glasses of wine?

Some have suggested that it wasn’t actually wine, or they point out the fact that, on many occasions in this culture, wine was diluted with water. But historians are quick to remind us that no self-respecting wedding feast, one of the most coveted expressions of Jewish life, would be caught watering down it’s wine.

There’s no compelling evidence to suggest that this was anything but the same stuff we drink today, maybe better.

Anyway, the servants ladeled out the newly released “Party On!” 0030 and brought some to the head attendant for a sampling. Things shifted fast from near disaster to roaring success. The wine was amazing, the wedding could move forward.

You could remove this story entirely and still have a Gospel account of the life and times of Jesus that’s just as impactful, but the author has engaged in a bit of character development, suggesting to his audience that this particular Messiah is human; He cares about something that’s purely cultural, something that most religious people would see as completely devoid of spiritual merit. To those who’ve come to believe that drinking booze is a high infraction in God’s order, or that we need to be really careful at a party: oops.

To this author, Jesus is still holy, but he’s put a bit of a wrinkle in our typical understanding of the word.

This also throws a massive wrench in our understanding of what is clean (ritual cleansing ceremonies) and what is not (booze) by throwing them together to keep a random party going.

Up to this point, and with annoying repetition afterwards, the author is also trying really hard to convince his Jewish audience of Jesus’ Messiahship. They had grown a bit tired of the influx of would-be messiahs and all the painful debunking that attended them. So, because the Old Testament Messianic prophecies foretell of one that will be marked by miraculous signs and wonders, the author focuses on the miracles of Jesus: water to wine, multiple healings, the feeding of the 5,000, walking on water, and the resurrection of a close friend, who was so dead he smelled bad.

This is one of the main reasons that the religious leaders themselves, especially those who opposed Jesus, hesitated to dismiss him.

“Then the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered a council and said, ‘What shall we do? For this Man works many signs.’ ~ John 11:47 

But enough with the story. Should we consider John’s book an accurate historical narrative, or is it merely a brilliantly crafted fairy tale?

I’ll judge nobody for believing the latter, but there are a couple of things we have to allow into the courtroom before we accuse this author of fraud.

The Science of (no) Miracles

Faith and science aren’t mutually exclusive, until the subject of miracles comes up, then the two seem to be mutually exclusive. Faith says crazy things happen all time, science says if we can’t reproduce it in a lab, it’s not real. To many, the world around us is miracle enough. No need for more.

Christian thinkers have long tried to reconcile the tension between science and miracles, positing the idea, for example, that the creation of the universe was no miracle, but merely an event that conformed to cosmological principles that exist today. When it comes to the miracles of Jesus, maybe we’ve interpreted things wrong, or the Biblical authors were exaggerating.

All of these are compelling, and point to the fact that miracles are problematic on a million different levels. But we should stop for a moment and remember science’s fundamental limitation:

Human observation.

The universe is not human, and the majority of it exists outside of our understanding. Many would say that the majority of humanity itself, as well as the created order around us, exists outside of our understanding.

Science is a tool that we use to stretch our ability to see farther than we could otherwise; a pedestal from which we might gain a better perspective. And it works. We know more than we did 50 years ago, exponentially so. But we’re too impressed with ourselves to remember – what we don’t know far outstrips what we do.

Regardless of how high, impressive, or advanced our observations might be, science will never be anything more than the cumulative, extremely limited observations of humanity. And so when we say that nothing can exist outside of this, we’re saying a lot.

But that’s a bad arugument for the veracity of Jesus’ water-to-wine episode. Saying “it could’ve happened” doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. But let’s take, for a moment, the “it could never happen” argument off the table.

No New Religions

The first century Judean region was no place to start a new thing. With few exceptions, It was homogenously Jewish, with high devotion to the practices and beliefs laid out in Torah, the historical books, psalms, prophets, etc. In multiple places throughout, these prohibit the worship of other Gods, and filled with many horrible stories of what happened to the people who did. As such, adherents to Judaism believed that devotion to other Gods and their attendent religions was tantamount to national treason.

Start a new religion in this neck of the woods and pay dearly. Ask Jesus.

In comparison, Islam was birthed in a region marked by much more syncretism; Jews, Christians, and pagans rubbing elbows in day to day life, forced to be much more open towards different beliefs and practices. Muhammad’s life wasn’t devoid of persecution by any stretch, but Mecca and Medina were much more friendly to new things than first century Israel.

America, even more so. We value tolerance, openmindedness, and best of all, Western Individualism – my truth is mine, yours is yours. We start new religions all the time, so a story about someone starting his own doesn’t strike us as odd. Happens all the time. No miracles here.

But there’s no way to waltz into the ancient Jewish context and start a very popular, fast spreading, somewhat non-Jewish religion without a lightning bolt or two to get everyone’s attention. Given the day’s Messiah fatigue, and the propensity for Jewish people to annihilate anything non-Jewish, Jesus couldn’t have garnered the following that He did without something far removed from the ordinary. In addition, whatever miracles he did manage happened to jive with the treasured ancient writings that promised thier arrival.

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.” ~ Isaiah 35:5-6

When John the Baptist was imprisoned, he sent his disciples to ask Jesus if He was really the promised one. Jesus quoted the above passage in response, as it was held by so many to be a prophecy about Messiah:

“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me” ~11:4–6

Apart from this, Jesus would’ve been a nice guy with some good things to say, but that’s about it. There were plenty of those guys around, some of whom tried to start their own thing as well, none of whom made it very far.

But in a place where no new religion could hope to make it out alive, the world’s largest religion was born.

God, Interrupted

If God’s world is one that doesn’t tolerate things like death, disease, and hunger, what happens when it bumps into ours? If I open the door to a dark room, what does the outside light do? If God’s world comes into close proximity, as it did when He became human, we can expect to see some glimpses of things that don’t exist here, a sampling of what it will be like on the day when our world is overthrown by His.

To say that miracles can’t happen is tantamount to declaring that there is no world beyond our own, much less one presided over by a deity who can do whatever it wants.

But that begs the question: why doesn’t He? If miracles are real, why don’t we see more of them? Why the restraint?

For me, that’s an easy one; as a parent I show restraint all the time. I could let my 8 year old drive the family minivan around the block but I’ll pass on that – for now. I could give my 13 year old free reign on the internet, but yeah, no thanx – for now.

With regards to unlimited miracles, maybe God has chosen to take a pass – for now. It might be that a world full of crazy magic things wouldn’t be good for us, not at this stage in humanity’s development anyway.

If you could turn water into wine, would you do it? Maybe for awhile, but over time it would become less miraculous. Better to go through the rigors of planting, cultivating, harvest, crushing, fermenting, etc. That requires a process riddled with success and failure. But the human process of procuring miracles requires one thing that God’s miracles don’t: human cooperation, the kind that results in friendship, closeness, and the brand of intimacy that God seems to want most.

I don’t have a problem with the idea that Jesus turned water into wine, but I don’t think He did it to prove something, I think He didn’t want to sit and watch what would’ve happened without the wine. He was God to be sure, but He was also a first-century Jewish human, one who understood the love and mercy of God like no one else of His day. And while He certainly showed some restraint in the way He leveraged the powers of heaven, sometimes I think He just couldn’t help it.

But why the extravagance? That’s the one that gets me. He didn’t simply make enough wine to keep the party going, He made enough for 40 weddings. I’ll leave it to you to ruminate on why He overboozed it, but I’m left struck by a God who is much more extravagant in His desire to do crazy things on our behalf than we typically give Him credit.

First, some anthropology, because, well, everyone’s an anthropologist, i.e., someone who studies or otherwise makes observations of οἱ ἄνθρωποι – humanity. It’s impossible to swim around in this sea of sentient bipedality without forming up a few thoughts about the nature of us.

As a kid, I was enraptured with people, convinced that we could do no wrong, with rare exception limited almost entirely to my little brother. In my young adult+ years it was tempting to see others as a stepping stone for personal gain, then into this twilight zone 50’s chapter where my anthropology is shifting again, back towards that of my enraptured youth. Regardless, like all of us, my soul is watching, unconsciously making observations about human beings that ultimately affect the way I understand everything else.

The Bible has some things to say about anthropology as well, but the way it pitches us is so rudimentary and archaic that it comes off as a little crazy: how it describes what we are doesn’t jive well with our contemporary, advanced, oh-so-lofty understanding of us.

Things get much more strange, if that’s possible, in the way that it talks about where we are, but a full understanding of this is fundamental to a deeper grasp of what Jesus believed we’re supposed to be up to.

To the Biblical authors, and some Christian thinkers over the millenia, humanity is one, interdependent, connected organism, like C.S. Lewis’ “complicated tree,” if you will; a view that gives much more weight to the Bible’s “one another” passages, elevating things like intimacy, justice, mercy, forgiveness, etc. above just about everything else. Jesus’ “Golden Rule” is also driven home – we’re supposed to treat others as we would ourselves because they are, in nearly every way imaginable, us.

From here, scripture takes a dive into the deep end, likening us the organism to an infant in utero.

Hang with me.

In his letter to the Roman Christians, St. Paul spoke of creation itself as if gathered around a pregnant loved one, groaning like a child at midnight on Christmas eve in expectation of the birth of humanity. Likewise, in his letter to the Gentile Christians in Ephesus, he talked about the “body’s” bones, ligaments, etc., in process of joining themselves together, as they do in the earliest parts of our formation.

“…in every respect we will grow into Him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body is being joined and knitted together, joint by joint, according to the measure of the expendended energy of each individual part, the growth of the body will result in the building up of itself in love .” ~ Ephesians 4:15-16

(It’s a bit hard to translate, so for you Greek nerds: αὐξήσωμεν εἰς αὐτὸν τὰ πάντα ὅς ἐστιν ἡ κεφαλή, Χριστός, ἐξ οὗ πᾶν τὸ σῶμα, συναρμολογούμενον καὶ συμβιβαζόμενον διὰ πάσης ἁφῆς τῆς ἐπιχορηγίας, κατ’ ἐνέργειαν ἐν μέτρῳ ἑνὸς ἑκάστου μέρους, τὴν αὔξησιν τοῦ σώματος ποιεῖται εἰς οἰκοδομὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἐν ἀγάπῃ).

In all of these, if you’ll allow some Biblical authority, and its attendant craziness, humanity is not yet formed, engulfed in a scene that approximates an occupied womb, awaiting a transition that’s not unlike the birth of a child.

This does violence to the drastically different view of humanity that us Western believers embrace, seeing ourselves as an independent, smart, capable, free-range, fully formed sort of proposition. If there’s an afterlife, it’ll be amazing, fun, holy, etc., but we the organism(s) won’t be too different beyond the idea that maybe we won’t sin so much. Barring the behavior issue, and maybe a few character tweaks, we’ve done all the changing we’re going to do. The idea that we’ll be spat out into a new scenario, under an entirely new contract with God, ourselves, others, and reality – like a shell-shocked newborn – is completely foreign, and somewhat insulting.

To us, scripture is a garment spun entirely for warriors, armed and commissioned to storm the cultural fields and wage war on God’s behalf – not as a helpless preborn floating about in the love of God, but as a spiritual Goliath, sent to steamroll just about anything we deem unholy. That’s one of the reasons we’ve become so politically angry – we can’t reconcile the way we view ourselves with the catastophic losses we’ve suffered. If we’re supposed to be the winners, why do we lose so much? Then comes the blaming and finger pointing, culminating in the election of the most vile human being our 20-year-ago selves could’ve ever imagined.

Strapped tightly to this socio-cultural bomb is the idea that winning is everything.

But we’ve been invited into a different narrative, onto a different stage; one that’s attended by just as much power and glory to be sure, but not our own, and one that drives us to much less anger, division, fear, victimhood, and general nonsense.

If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to live for a moment in this peculiar brand of anthropology, and mine some of its implications for our day-to-day life, as well as a deeper understanding of our calling as “children,” “servants,” and quite possibly, in the future, something more:

“I have said, ‘You are gods; you are all sons of the Most High.’ ~ Psalm 82:6

First, if the dumb, relatively inanimate created realm is all a-wriggle about this coming “birth,” how much more is God? And if He’s so excited about this singular day, how much more is He concerned with all the days leading up to it? How invested is He in this “baby’s” health, development, and general welfare?

Is it safe to conclude that this is His #1 priority – that all of His commandments about peace, generosity, forgiveness, intimacy, mercy, selflessness, humility, etc. are born from His desire to see this child come to term?

Second, and equally important, shouldn’t we be about the same thing? Should the care of one another be at the top of our to-do list?

Jesus seemed to think so, with His “do unto others” and “whatsoever you do to the least of these” types of thoughts. First and foremost in His economy is the proper care and feeding of us.

“Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is just as great as the first: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Everything in the scriptures hangs on these two commandments.'” ~ Matthew 22:34-40

On the other hand, Western Christianity’s tendency to top-shelf secondary things like morality, Bible knowledge, “right” politics, and church attendance wouldn’t find much room. I agree that these are important, but calling them “the greatest” is not unlike a pregnant mother who’s altogether forgotten that she’s pregnant.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices–mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy, and trust. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.” ~ Matthew 23:23

If we agree on the “what” and “where” of humanity, it naturally follows that God is overthrown, just as we would be if the baby was ours, which it is, while also being us, oddly enough, giving all possible weight to the idea that we should grind whatever grist the mill requires for it’s wellbeing.

The Endgame of Us

While the overall design at this stage seems to be that humanity would float about in the love of God, we frequently find ourselves surrounded by something else. Odd as it sounds, the seeds of hatred, envy, fear, and violence have somehow been sown into the womb.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while the man slept, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the weeds also appeared. So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’

The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the weeds you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the weeds and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”

Suffice it to say that evil is so much a part of the “what” and “where” of humanity that it’s going to have to be left alone, for now. Like it or not, there are weeds here, and they have one purpose, to choke out everything, and, worm-canny as this is, possibly have some negative effect on humanity’s final expression.

So, God intervened.

When humany had developed just enough, God Himself entered the womb, as a human, or better, a vaccine of sorts, to introduce a plague of compassion, mercy, forgiveness, peace, life, and love that the world had never seen. Before he departed, He instructed His disciples to spread His plague as far as they were able, even to people groups that no self respecting Jewish would touch with a ten foot pole. He infected 12 people, they went and infected a bunch more, and so on to today where His funk has spread far beyond the original ragamuffins that started all of this.

At the time, God’s people believed that the greatest thing a person could do was “love God with all your heart, your, mind, and your soul.” In His time with us, God pointed out that loving God with everything we have can’t happen unless we’re also loving people with everything we have, and vice versa.

Just to drive it home, for them and for us, He made it clear that this summed up the entire collection of Holy writ.

In light of Jesus’ greatest commandment, and the situation we find ourselves in, the Christian’s job is fourfold.

Good Old Fashioned Sin Management

In the interest of self-interest, the best course of action is to reject the siren call of bad choices, lashing ourselves instead to the cold, boring, splintery mast of self control. In avoiding evil, we don’t make things worse, spreading what we’ve perpetrated against ourselves into the lives of others.

We should stop here and reflect for a moment on something about personal evil that tends to get overlooked. Because we see ourselves as isolated, independent, disconnected organisms, we’ve come to believe that our individual evil doesn’t travel far beyond us. My sin is my sin. Maybe you’re affected if I steal from you, or betray you, or physically harm you, but that’s as far as it goes.

If, however, we’re connected as the Bible seems to think we are, our evil travels far beyond us, much like a rock tossed into a placid mountain lake; the whole thing is moved. My sin is our sin. When I sin against you, I sin against everyone else, and, ironically, against myself.

But be encouraged – the same holds true for our most meagre acts of love.

Of course, this is a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do sort of proposition. While I believe with all of my heart that I shouldn’t do bad things, all of my heart isn’t big enough to compel me to comply when the occasion presents itself. Sure, I can manage some obedience in fits and starts, but I’m still tempted, powerfully so, to do things that run counter to what I believe is right.

Good Old Fashioned Humanitarianism

Second, assuming that we’ve cleaned up our own mess(es, above), we’re to engage the brokenness that everyone else’s evil has caused. Poverty, injustice, war, revenge, entitlement, greed, etc., all come with a huge price tag, rippling far beyond their perpetrator, deep into the heart of everything that’s human. So we’re compelled to feed the poor, right the wrongs, heal the sick, stand up for the helpless and marginalized, etc.

That’s scary, expensive, and doesn’t happen without great personal sacrifice. People have died engaging this stuff. So we instead engage the “easy” battles, ones that require little more than a Sunday morning social media rant. In this, we engage the brokenness of our world, and it leaves us feeling like we’ve done something good, but we’ve contented ourselves with gnat-straining, while the camels are left free to ransack the tent.

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” ~ G.K. Chesterton

But there are other reasons that we turn our noses up at the Gospel’s humanitarian aspects. Consider this brief history:

The “Bible Movement” was born sometime in the 70’s, gaining a full head of steam by the early 80’s. In general, it was a response to the purely humanitarian, not-so-spiritual expressions of Christianity that had been running the show for so much of America’s spiritual history. It was believed that humanitarian efforts, by themselves, could never change the world as deeply as a changed heart, so the focus turned inward, towards personal transformation, sound theology, and right living.

The Bible movement made good theology, ie “truth,” more important than the kind of theology that comes part and parcel to Jesus’ greatest commandment.

Unwittingly, this movement unwittingly vilified humanitarianism, seeing it as the enemy of personal transformation. The more social oriented expressions of Christianity, Catholicism at the head, became the Devil’s agenda, viewed by many as utterly non-Christian. Never before had there been such a rift between those who believed that we should transform the world around us, and those who believed that it was more important to transform ourselves.

While this trouble is alive and well today, it’s beginning to shrink a bit as American Christianity is getting itself “woke” to the idea that scripture calls us, clearly and with annoying frequency, to both.

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’”

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the entire Bible.” ~ Jesus in Matthew 7:12

Of course, none of this threatens the importance of personal transformation. St. Paul taught that Jesus wants to rewire our minds. King David begged that God would scour the insides of his heart, ridding him of anything that might get in the way of God’s rule in his life. St. John’s gospel reflects many times on the personal benefits of following Jesus.

The Bible is as full of this stuff as it is of the passages that call us to everything else.

Honestly, if I had to choose between humanitarianism without a changed heart, or a changed heart without humanitarianism, I’d choose the former as it results in poor people being fed, inequities engaged, etc., while the latter results not only in a lack of the former, it leaves Christians convinced that their highest calling is adherence to a few moral things and a good rant about abortion and Gay marriage on social media.

If it was up to me, I’d choose both. Someone who believes that God is a king who has the power to do anything He wants, loves unconditionally and without reservation, and who shows up personally with a measure of unimaginable peace and vision, who then believes that this king commands his subjects to step boldly into the brokenness and injustice of this world, to do violence to it, like a surgeon who’s discovered a cancer in his youngest child.

Change

Before Jesus departed, He promised that He would leave behind something that’s best translated as “helper,” or “comforter,” or both. The word ὁ παράκλητος is a bit difficult to translate, but according to NT guru Bill Mounce, it means “counselor, intercessor, helper, one who encourages and comforts; in the NT it refers exclusively to the Holy Spirit and to Jesus Christ.”

For those who have decided to damn the torpedos and follow Jesus into the most broken and scary parts of the womb, there’s hope, help, and a fair bit of power, televangelisty as that comes across.

The same holds true for those whom the world’s brokenness has seated itself comfortably at the kitchen table.

We’re never alone.

For me, I’ve experienced this many times as I walk a bit zombie-like through the world of PTSD. I can, at any time, stop what I’m doing, admit that I’m hurting, and/or about ready to do some real damage to the good things in my life, and ask for help.

I can’t think of a time when God’s failed to answer. For sure, I’ve refused to ask on occasion, mainly born from my epic authority issues, but all stupidity aside, this sh@t’s real.

I can also attest that I’m a much different person that I was 20 years ago. Apart from the help that God has provided over the years, I wouldn’t be married, much less the father of three adopted children. I’m not sure I’d be alive. My anxiety, insecurity, and general propensity towards stupidity have all taken a hit, rendering a man that never should’ve been.

God has called His people, literally, to “storm the gates of hell,” to engage with lethal force the broken, ugly, violent, unfair, hopeless places of this womb. They are legion, and frightening. We can’t walk into these impossible places without the tangible presence of God, and the peace, hope, and life that attend it.

Go, Therefore

Last, we’re to take this plague that’s come over us, and spread it as far as we possibly can. I know, I’m now peddling proselytization, but hang with me.

New Testament Christianity is unique from every other religion in one important aspect: God entered into humanity and did something that removed every barrier between us and Him. According to scripture, all of our sins have been forgotten, regardless of what religion we embrace. The only thing that now stands between us is the choice to live in this freedom that God as provided. Barriers now obliterated, If we’ll give our consent, He’ll enter into us, turn everything upside down, and inject a level of peace, hope, and life that, as I’ll again atest, changes everything.

In spreading Christianity (not the angry, benign, mindless knock-off version) we’re spreading peace, hope, and life – the kind every human on the planet is looking for.

Why would I then not try my best to spread this as far as I can?

A few years ago, a friend of mine sat crying at our kitchen counter, convinced that God had rejected her: she was raised in a fundamentalist Baptist household and was sure that God could never love a Gay person. I can’t describe the fire that burnt inside as I listened to her despair and watched the tears roll down her cheeks. What followed from me was a very clear, very passionate, somewhat loud dissertation on the unconditional love of God. I didn’t rip on her parents, or bring up some of the Bible passages that are commonly used to remind Gay people that they need to stop being Gay. I simply introduced her to a different God, one that she had become convinced didn’t exist, and invited her to step towards Him.

If you hail from the more benign, angry, cultural Christian persuasion, you’ll comment below that I should’ve instead launched into a passionate, clear dissertation on the morality of alternate sexual orientation. But that’s not what Jesus has called me to. As His child, unformed though I may be, Jesus sent me to invite people into a life of dependence upon, submission towards, and mutual love within the God who became human, who loves us without condition.

Un-p.c. as it sounds, you’ll find me in these conversations doing my best to direct people towards a view of God, an understanding of themselves, and way of life that I’ve come to believe changes everthing, and, again, infects our current situation with something that does great violence to the evil that’s trying it’s best to lead people into something completely different, at great expense to all of us.

Either way, as the Bible says, “this current world will pass away.” If you’ve stuck with me until this point, considering the idea that this world on some level is like a womb, it’s better to say that this world will be washed away, leaving behind only one thing that matters. As such, there’s only one thing that we should be investing our time, resources, and energy in, the only thing that will matter to God when the time comes for us to be spat out into a much fuller expression of everything.

“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 all that I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, even to the end of this age.'” ~ Matthew 28:18-20