Author Archives: elizabeth.turner

Humans are expert excuse-makers.  

“Well, GOD, the woman you gave me tempted me, so…that’s why I didn’t listen to you when you told me not to eat anything from that tree.” 

“I know I’m not supposed to cut my hair, but…I mean, have you seen Delilah? I’m only human.” 

“I’d love to follow you, Jesus, but I have family obligations and an urgent to-do list first. Let me take care of those things and then I’m totally on board.” 

“I’ve followed all those commandments since I was a kid, and now you’re asking me to give up my hard-earned wealth in order to follow you? How is that fair? Surely I can have both?” 

“Learning with the men is all well and good, but Jesus, are you going to let her shirk the duties literally all other women manage? I’m in here in the kitchen and I’m happy to be, but I need some extra hands! After all…this dinner is for you…” 

“Who, that guy? No, no, I wasn’t one of his disciples, I’m just hanging out here. You must have me confused with someone else. No, *&#$, I’m telling you, I don’t know Jesus!” 

You and I can find a multitude of ways to make excuses for ourselves, and just as dangerously, for each other.  

“He’s a great leader, so we shouldn’t hold his past indiscretions against him. After all, we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, so we shouldn’t expect more from our pastors than we do anyone else.” 

“She would face a lot of resistance from peers and family members, so while she did a great job preaching last Sunday, let’s not pressure her to enter pastoral leadership; there are other places she can serve, and we’ll be doing her a favor to protect her from the resistance she might encounter.” 

“I’ve fought long and hard to get to where I am. I’m finally a voice at the table. If I mentor other underrepresented people, are they going to take the opportunities I’ve worked so hard for? Is she my ally – or my competitor? Chances like this are few and far between. Someone else will give her a leg up. I have enough on my plate already.” 

“It’s just really hard to find minority speakers, we’d love to have some on the lineup, but we’re just not aware of many who have the experience for this kind of setting and this size of a crowd.” 

“If I accept that speaking invitation, they’ll just try to use me as a token representative. I’m sure it would be a waste of time. It would just be settling their uneasy consciences. I don’t think that’s how God wants me to use my time right now. I can make more of an impact somewhere else.” 

“Those women have troubled pasts, so obviously we can’t take their accounts seriously. I grew spiritually under his leadership, so it’s hard to imagine he would’ve done those things to kids. This is just Satan attacking him and his ministry. Now more than ever, we need to rally around him and pray for him.” 

Beware the excuse that lets you off the hook, or lets your friends, your ideological companions, or your heroes off the hook. If you have to jump through some hoops in a way you would never accept from your opponents, your ideological adversaries, or those you disdain, let that be a red flag: abandon hope, all ye who enter here. 

Recently I read an observation from someone on Twitter (sorry, anonymous, I can’t remember who you were). He simply said that across conservative and liberal spectrums, religious and secular, red and blue, that in North America, God is busy unmasking our hypocrisies. It occurred to me that unmasking hypocrisies is a grace – a gift. Many in the Wesleyan Methodist family have been praying for a great awakening. But is awakening possible without first coming face to face with the depth of our own sin, faults, blindness, and excuses? 

John Wesley didn’t think so. In his “Letter on Preaching Christ,” he noted,  

After more and more persons are convinced of sin, we may mix more and more of the gospel, in order to “beget faith,” to raise into spiritual life those whom the law hath slain; but this is not to be done too hastily neither. Therefore, it is not expedient wholly to omit the law; not only because we may well suppose that many of our hearers are still unconvinced; but because otherwise there is danger, that many who are convinced will heal their own wounds slightly; therefore, it is only in private converse with a thoroughly convinced sinner, that we should preach nothing but the gospel. 

In this context, he is counseling on how to preach to believers and unbelievers; and he clarifies that while preachers must preach hope, that hope can only truly be received after a person is clearly convinced of the depth of their own need for it. In other words, preaching to show how far off the mark humans generally are must come before we can effectively preach the scope of the promises of a loving, pursuing God. 

In other words, while awakening is the satisfying part, unmasking excuses and hypocrisies in both believers and unbelievers must come first. 

Wesley continues by pointing out that preaching that celebrates the love and goodness of God without confronting the twists of the inner heart has done considerable damage in different parts of England:  

This is the plain fact. As to the fruit of this new manner of preaching, (entirely new to the Methodists,) speaking much of the promises, little of the commands; (even to unbelievers, and still less to believers;) you think it has done great good; I think it has done great harm. 

The Spirit of God is an equal-opportunity hound nipping at our heels. The Hound of Heaven doesn’t pursue “them” without also pursuing “us.” And part of this conviction of our souls appears when we attempt to abandon common sense and morality as if they are divorced from the revelation of Scripture; as if somehow they are dispensable, unrelated to the Word of God. But of course the “Hound of Heaven” will not let this cognitive dissonance continue unchallenged indefinitely. 

God never intended Scripture to be used as an excuse to abandon common sense and general ethics. Even Satan twisted the use of Scripture during the temptation in the wilderness. Jesus actually preached against this tendency when he pointed out, “you think loving and forgiving your friends and family is a virtue? Even crooks and pagans do that.” In other words, “basic decency available through prevenient grace and general revelation of God’s goodness in the world isn’t something you should brag about. People of other religions or no religion love their families and forgive their friends.” He continued – “but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for people who persecute you and make your life miserable.” (Matthew 5:43-48, Elizabeth Version) 

Jesus cuts through their feeble defense at their own righteousness like a hot knife through butter. “Don’t brag to me about the number of truckloads of supplies you sent out of your abundance to citizens of your own country going through a natural disaster. The mosque down the street did that too. So did a bunch of atheists. Instead, tell me what you’re doing to love the opponents, threats, enemies, and irritants in your life, locally, nationally, and globally.” 

The Holy Spirit, the Hound of Heaven, not only uncovers the areas in which you and I make excuses for why we can ignore basic common sense and morality; the Holy Spirit also stays in pursuit of us, moving beyond general common sense and ethical norms, pushing us further and further towards the model of Christ, so that, far from relying on our laurels of meeting basic morality codes, we are hounded to live closer to the image of Christ, pursuing peace with our enemies, loving people who have wronged us, proactively serving people who despise us, and abandoning our right to be seen in the right. 

God save us all, liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat, religious and secular, from “healing our own wounds – slightly.” We cannot any of us afford to live in the stench of our own excuses. 

As Francis Thompson wrote in the first portion of his famous poem “The Hound of Heaven” (that deeply influenced G. K. Chesterton and J.R.R. Tolkien),  

I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;
  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
    Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
      Up vistaed hopes I sped;
      And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
  From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
      But with unhurrying chase,
      And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
      They beat—and a Voice beat
      More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’

In your relentless, pursuing grace, o God, let us get tired of attempting to outrun the discomfort of coming face to face with you. 

Recently I read a moving account of one German woman’s actions and the impact that they had. A 92-year-old man living in New Jersey received a three-page letter from her in which she apologized for wrongs long past. Reading it, he wept. 

As the article recounts about the letter writer, “Doris Schott-Neuse…told him how her grandfather had acquired Hirschmann’s family home under the Nazis, expressing her shame and imploring him for forgiveness.” When Hirschmann was young, he had had to escape Germany and the purge of Jewish people; he arrived in the United States leaving his unrecognizable homeland behind. For years, Schott-Neuse wondered how her family had acquired the house since they came into ownership of such a nice property for so little. 

“It seems to be only now that we – the grandchildren generation of the men and women who became criminals – start to ask tough questions of the degree and way our families have been involved and actively contributed not only to a war but to the shoah [Holocaust],” writes Schott-Neuse. 

The urgent truth that this moving story illustrates is a simple, powerful one: honor is healing.  

Showing honor to a person who carries visible or invisible wounds stitches back together in a small way what’s been torn apart, especially when, individually, we cannot comprehend the uniqueness of their suffering. Whether we pay special honor to veterans of war, or orphans and foster children, or women who have been raped, or acquaintances who are pulled over four or five times a month because they drive a car that’s “too nice,” to go out of our way to actively pursue ways to honor others is to promote healing, understanding, and community. 

Apologizing even when you individually did not wrong someone can mean that you are honoring their story and experience. It is a way of standing in proxy for those individuals or groups unable or unwilling to confess their wrong and ask forgiveness. This is not the same as poorly exercising boundaries in terms of burdensome feelings of guilt or responsibility, because it does not come from misdirected feelings of shame or a weak sense of self; rather, it comes from a steady sense of self that cerebrally bears witness to others’ pain and seeks to recognize the power that self may have to, in some way, comfort the grief and anger of a person who has been singularly wronged. 

Hirschmann’s response, immediately accepting the letter of apology, bears witness to this truth: “it is obvious that you, too, are suffering and it pains me to think of that — you, who are blameless,” further corresponding, “You were not satisfied…and examined the depths of your heart to reveal the era’s true impact. You had the option to ignore it and instead, you confronted it. My tears reflect the fervent hope that the humanity, dignity, and compassion you have shown is shared by others of your generation and the generations to follow.” 

It is worth asking, what hurts do you carry that someone has honored through respect for your experience? When have you experienced healing, peace, and forgiveness through someone going out of their way to apologize or make amends for a time in which you were dishonored? 

And – perhaps more difficult – who can you honor through apology, respect, or action, even if you have not personally, individually wronged them?  

There’s an overwhelming amount of beauty and awe in the world – from midday eclipses to bounding monkeys in jungles to the perfect curl of newborn baby toes. 

At some point, though, we all encounter suffering. Sometimes it appears as physical pain; sometimes it’s in the form of prolonged waiting; sometimes it’s mental or emotional distress. Sometimes suffering occurs through our perception of loved ones’ suffering: others’ pain multiplies our own distress. If there is loss, there is the suffering of grief.  

When I was in college majoring in Christian Ministry, I walked into a classroom one September morning to be told by a classmate that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had been attacked. My brain struggled to process the news; like many, I was bewildered, at a loss. Throughout the fall semester of 2001 I grappled with feeling completely overwhelmed by the pain and need in the world. How could I possibly figure out what path to take? There was pain at home, pain abroad. Need around the corner, need on the other side of the equator. I signed up to go on an international trip the next spring, flying for the first time months after watching repeated footage of jets slam into Manhattan skyscrapers. 

Sometimes our gut reaction to suffering is to sign up for a trip to Mongolia (maybe not, but maybe your reaction is to drive to Houston and help with cleanup, or donate money to help people suffering from catastrophic flooding in Bangladesh). Sometimes our gut reaction is to turn our face, finding oblivion in addiction, numbness, or denial. Sometimes our gut reaction is to raise the drawbridge, hunker down, and protect our own at all costs. Therapists can have fun teasing out why humans behave the way we do. 

But beyond our emotional reaction shaped by our individual experiences, personalities, hopes, and fears, what postures can Christians have towards suffering? In other words, beyond behavioral tendencies, how does faith shape our approach to suffering? 

1. When you’re depressed, troubled, and hopeless, you are called to shape your own response to suffering – your own suffering or others’ – by Christ’s suffering. This Christocentric response is essential for grounding your belief. It does not deny the realities of clinical depression or anxiety disorders: rather, it reorients pain so that it is placed in the context of the God who suffers. In Isaiah 53 we read: 

He was despised and rejected by mankind, 
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. 
Like one from whom people hide their faces 
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. 

Surely he took up our pain 
    and bore our suffering, 
yet we considered him punished by God, 
    stricken by him, and afflicted. 
But he was pierced for our transgressions, 
    he was crushed for our inequities; 
the punishment that brought us peace was on him, 
    and by his wounds we are healed. 

Christians believe that, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness,” but that Jesus genuinely suffered when he sobbed with Mary and Martha after Lazarus died, and that he genuinely suffered in the garden of Gethsemane when he struggled to accept what was coming. The portrait of Christ as the “suffering servant” is a familiar one, and whether you meditate on an icon of the crucifixion or rest in passages of scripture, it is crucial to form our response to suffering from the starting point that the Word who Became Flesh, God Incarnate, comprehends suffering, even if we cannot fully comprehend God. 

2. When you’re grappling with why suffering exists, persistently explore the intellectual satisfaction that will form your feelings and emotions. Sometimes Christians look for their emotions to be shaped by inspiring worship, emotional testimony, or the good feelings that come from being accepted by a group. At the same time, sometimes using emotions as the starting place can be unsatisfactory.

One time in seminary a fellow student ran up to the philosophy of religion professor who was standing nearby. “I just need to say thank you,” she said. She explained that after losing her mother to cancer, she had struggled deeply with grief and anger, even in the midst of preparing for ministry at seminary. She had been to therapy, talked to pastors, but could not find peace – until she took a philosophy of religion class. During that semester, the problem of evil was addressed (how can an all-loving, all-powerful God coexist with suffering and pain in the world?), along with various perspectives responding to it. Part of her anguish had been mental, alongside the grief of bereavement. When she understood that philosophers had grappled with the question for centuries, and saw some of the reasoned response to the problem of suffering – including the role of human free will – she received some peace.  

As a Christian, you do not need to be able to comprehend everything about God or everything about the world in which you live. But even if you cannot know exhaustively, it may be possible to know truly, and if that is the case, you can receive intellectual satisfaction even if you don’t hold all the answers. 

This means that your approach is shaped by the realization that sometimes the best thing you can do is to allow your thoughts to shape your feelings.  

A vivid example of allowing subjective perception to shape your thoughts and decisions is the tragedy that occurs when a pilot doesn’t use a horizon instrument, gets confused, and believes that he is flying even with the ground, when in fact, he is flying straight at it – what experts believe happened when John F. Kennedy, Jr died in a plane crash. This “spatial disorientation” occurs when there is no visual reference point. Similarly, our emotions can mislead us, shape our perception so powerfully that our instincts are tricked into faulty convictions about who God is or where meaning comes from. But sound theology and the resources of Christian philosophers can help guide our thinking when all our instincts point toward hopelessness and despair. 

3. When you’re overwhelmed by the sheer scale of pain and need, allow the Holy Spirit to guide your discernment on your immediate path of action. There is a great temptation to become overwhelmed by the trauma and tragedy in the world, and because of the inability to do everything, to then do nothing at all. But Mother Teresa is famously quoted as saying, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” 

Christians’ posture towards suffering cannot be to internalize the burden and responsibility for everyone else’s pain; this kind of unhealthy response leads to burnout, bitterness, and depression.And it does not trust the prevenient grace of God that is already working in places we cannot reach. 

What we can do confidently is to trust that if we ask God to show us where we can go and what we can do through the power of the Holy Spirit, God will be faithful to show us what our part can look like. God may not unfold a giant map showing what your part will look like in 20 years, but in this season, the Spirit will put on your heart new ways to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ. As Frederick Buechner wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

Look to the example of Jesus Christ, shape your thoughts deliberately so that your feelings will follow, and trust that the Holy Spirit will give you the joy that comes from doing what you uniquely can do as you explore how to be a witness to the beauty of God’s love in a hurting world.

What does your church do with people who are differently abled, disabled, mentally handicapped, handicapped, or crippled? (All of those terms have been used in my thirty-odd trips around the sun.)

Do you have someone in your church who comes in a wheelchair? Do you have training for teachers and nursery workers, preschool workers and children’s ministers on how to engage kids with autism? Do you know a person with Down’s Syndrome? Are you equipped to recognize mental illness? When you offer communion, do you comment on how someone who is differently abled may access the Body and Blood of Christ? 

I have two children. So far, to my knowledge, neither one is differently abled. The youngest can’t yet read; it’s possible we’ll learn she has dyslexia later on. Both are what strangers would call, “healthy.” For now, of course. A disease or tumor or accident could hit, leaving one with impaired cognition or missing an arm or with burn scars. When I was expecting my first child, I attempted to mentally prepare myself for various possibilities – miscarriage, birth defects, a disabled child. After all, there are a few pregnancy screenings most expectant mothers go through.

Growing up in North America at the end of the twentieth century during a constantly shifting linguistic atmosphere that aimed for more sensitivity, however imperfectly, meant changes in popular dialogue.

Recently a news story emerged about the drastic reduction of Down’s Syndrome in Iceland, ostensibly nearly “eliminated.” Actress Patricia Heaton stepped up and publicly challenged the portrayal of the reality: you’re not eradicating it, she said. You’re eradicating people with it. Because Iceland’s supposed “progress” wasn’t through some medical breakthrough: it was through abortion. 

Around the same time, when I didn’t recognize the name of one of the white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, I researched it online. The preview of their site used the word, “fit.” Fit. Not healthy or well-toned or strong. Fit, as in, fit or unfit. As in, who is fit to live. Nazis had no use for people with disabilities, or people who might need special education. I was sickened to see the word “fit” on that website as my mind went back to the documentaries on the Holocaust. 

Life is a gift. Life is a good. 

Downs people matter. Black people matter. Jewish people matter. Catholic people matter. Gay people matter. Handicapped people matter. Roma people matter. People who protect these people matter. 

All those people went into camps and didn’t come out. 

Life is life.  

Jesus said, “let the little kids come to me.”

When someone talked about a guy born blind (in front of the man, mind you) and asked Jesus, “who sinned, this man or his parents?” Jesus challenged the notion that there was something wrong with parents of a child who was different than other children, and Jesus challenged the notion that there was something to be avoided about a person who was born with a physical limitation.

In fact, Jesus went on to clarify that the differently abled man was part of God’s inbreaking Kingdom, a specially chosen revelation of the power and love of God. 

Around the same time that I read the word “fit” on the Neo-Nazi website, around the same time I saw the news out of Iceland about the approaching “eradication” of Down’s Syndrome, I happened across the video below.

Sometimes Wesleyan Methodists use the word “perfect” or “perfection.” We use it to mean, “complete in love,” “fullness of love,” “free of the desire to separate ourselves from God.” We use it to mean the kind of perfection alluded to in the Greek language of the New Testament – perfect, having met a full goal: whole, complete.  

We never, ever use it to mean superior, or “fit,” or more worthy than another. All through the New Testament, Jesus encounters people whose minds or bodies work differently than other peoples’, Jesus encounters people whose minds or bodies don’t work “right,” but Jesus always sees them. Jesus makes eye contact. Jesus extends dignity. Jesus acknowledges personhood.  

Zaccheus, we read, was a man “short in stature.” He may have been a little person, a human with dwarfism. Zaccheus was small, and for whatever reason, he was in a very unpopular profession. He risked ridicule by climbing up a tree to see Jesus. In the middle of the shoving crowds, Jesus looked up and made eye contact. He saw Zaccheus, he didn’t see through him. He didn’t avoid him. While Jesus is the star of the day, the big news in town, whose house does Jesus decide to go to? “Zaccheus, get down from there. I’d like to come to your house for dinner, is that okay?” The small man’s life was changed. 

There is no “life unworthy of life” in the Kingdom of God. In the Gospel of Matthew we read about Jesus saying, “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.” 

One of the sisters of Mother Teresa’s Order commented on the value of disabled children a few years ago.  “Each life ought to be lived,” Sr M. Infanta said, even if it does not meet utilitarian criteria or is not “productive” according to today’s models. “These children have been created to love and be loved. They are a unique source of blessing for us, society and the whole world,” she said. 

Similarly, a few years ago a movie called “The Drop Box” was released about a Korean pastor who takes in otherwise abandoned infants, many of whom are disabled in some way. (At the time of publication, “The Drop Box” is available to view on Instant Netflix.) 

What a diametrically opposed view Christians are called to embrace in contrast to the concept that there is, “life unworthy of life.” But more than a viewpoint or a concept is the challenge of practice.  

In a subsection editors titled “The Judgment of the Nations,” we read these words from Matthew 25:

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;  for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,  I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?  And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

An Icelandic mother of a child with Down’s Syndrome posed this question in the news story referenced earlier: “what kind of a society do you want to live in?” 

I don’t know about you, but I want to live in one that looks more and more like a place that welcomes people Jesus loves. I want to live in one that looks more and more like the Kingdom of God, where we make eye contact, where we smile, where we kneel down, where we reach out and touch, where we embrace, where we see what we have to learn from people who are different than us. 

Churches can become beacons of this merry, determined band of disciples that doesn’t leave anyone behind. The question is whether you will.

Picking up mentally handicapped adults in a church van for Sunday services isn’t glamorous. Pushing a heavy person in a wheelchair uphill with an oxygen tank banging into your shins doesn’t readily come with an apt hashtag. Learning how to serve a family with special needs kids might not headline any popular ministry conferences. 

But Jesus made eye contact. Jesus knelt down. Jesus reached out. Jesus went out of his way. And we cannot ignore that Jesus made eye contact with us. Jesus knelt down for us. Jesus reached out to us. Jesus went out of his way for us.  

A convenient time will never arrive. But if you look for them, beautiful moments will. There is no life unworthy of life. Life is beautiful.

Today is the day after. The day after a young black man got beat up in a parking garage, the scene caught by a quick photojournalist (I can’t imagine how sore he is). The day after a stunned mom learned from reporters that her son had been arrested for plowing his car into a crowd of pedestrians (she was in complete shock). The day after someone drove up to deliver a death notification to the family of Heather Heyer (I’m sorry to inform you…).  

In 2016 a high school student had petitioned Charlottesville City Council to remove a Confederate statue. A city councilmember was also suggesting the removal. Heated debate ensued. 

A year earlier, a Caucasian young man named Dylann Roof had entered a Bible study at the historic Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, opening fire on the black Christians gathered there, later confessing to police that they were so welcoming he almost changed his mind, but in the end, he did what he went there to do, killing nine people. His motive, he said, was to start a race war. His website displayed his values, showing Roof with white supremacist symbols and the Confederate flag. 

In the wake of the deaths of the Charleston nine, which included the pastor of Mother Emanuel AME Church, cities and states began discussing the role of Confederate imagery on city, county, state property. Somehow the Civil War came to dominate daily discussion. In February, the Charlottesville City Council voted to remove the statue. A lawsuit quickly followed, so for the time being it remains. However, in June the Council renamed Lee Park, one of the locations that regularly popped up in ongoing news updates yesterday, calling it Emancipation Park instead. 

Today a friend sent me a message. It had been a long day on social media. While pastors, churches and denominations crafted powerful statements condemning white supremacy, it was dismaying to see some of the reactions from people who genuinely do not see racism as a major ongoing problem in the United States. Who lump in violent counter-protesters with peaceful clergy. Who believe counter-protesters just shouldn’t have been there in the first place. 

“Do they really not see what we do? Or are they ignoring Christ’s teachings or somehow think they don’t apply in this instance?” 

Faith easily gets mixed with culture, wherever and whenever Christian faith exists. Sometimes – particularly for people who grow up in the church – faith grows up alongside culture in ways that tangle and diverge, until it’s difficult to tell what is distinctly Christian and what is a cultural value. A Christian growing up in the Pacific Northwest may automatically assume that air quality is a basic concern for people of faith. A Catholic Christian growing up in South America may have folk religion tied closely with the images of saints propped on a table. A Christian missionary may assume an African man with four wives should divorce three of them – until the missionary discovers that this has pushed three women into prostitution. Then, the missionary says, when you become a Christian, keep your wives – but don’t add more.  

Values come from many places, often automatically translated in culture without ever questioning them. Sometimes, our values come from places other than our faith. 

Where do your most deeply held values come from? 

Everyone holds values they aren’t even aware of holding until at some point, whether you’re eight or 80, they’re called into question. You may not be able to explain where they came from or why they matter to you. Sometimes marriage brings these questions to the fore: of course we’ll go visit family, we’ll just put it on a credit card, seeing family is paramount. Really? Of course we’ll never use the credit card, family is important but staying out of debt is paramount.  

I may say that your faith should shape your values, not the other way around. And I do believe your Christian faith should shape all your other values. 

The question is, what are your other values? Equality? Patriotism? Pacifism? Justice? There are many ways that the Body of Christ lives out our calling to be like Jesus, but as individuals and faith communities, we must examine what values we hold that we don’t even know we’re holding. 

Some pastors and professors I know refuse to ever allow an American flag to be displayed in worship space. Some Christians I know would say, but of course an American flag should be in worship space. Aren’t you grateful for your country? Don’t you take pride in being a patriot? Aren’t you thankful for the sacrifices of people in uniform? 

But the reason some pastors and professors I know refuse to ever allow an American flag to be displayed in worship space is because of a principle springing from a vivid example: some Lutheran churches in WWII Germany allowed swastikas to be spread over their weekly communion tables. The Body of Christ, broken for you, covered with a Nazi emblem. And so they say, of course no flag representing any nation should be front and center in a Christian worship space, visually equating the rightness of that country with the centrality of Christ on the cross. Do you agree with everything your nation does? Do you want Christians in other countries mixing their nationalism with their practice of faith? Should pastors ever place their vocation and calling in subjection to a government that may turn against them? 

This one example shows the difficulties in what is known as contextualization. In other words, what, culturally, do we couch our faith in, what values do we equate with our faith, that we don’t even realize are cultural and not unique to the way of Jesus Christ?

And what we must, must ask Christians in America right now is, are you willing to put any loyalty to any group above Jesus Christ? No statue is worth taking a life over – right? No political allegiance is worth alienating people made in the image of God – right? No Confederate heritage is worth making two helicopter pilots work for public safety, only to die in a tragic crash – right?  

In fact, Christians are to value other people extravagantly. Not just their lives – most “nice” people don’t want to see a young woman die. We’re also to, “look out not only for your own interests, but also for the interests of others.” 

A statue may not cause me pain, but what if it shows something as normal that ought not to be – the old goal of perpetuating a culture in which humans were bought and sold as slaves? What if it portrays a person willing to preside over a culture in which the economy was dependent upon slavery? What if it communicates – “your great-great-grandma was brought here chained up, she was owned by other people, and that’s what you deserve to be, too – a person with no worth other than what I’m willing to pay. And now you’re just an inconvenient reminder of an embarrassing part of our past.” 

Where do your values come from? 

Growing up, I usually experienced kindness from the people in my town. At church, at the library, the humans around me were white. But I loved Sesame Street, and Luis, and Maria, and Gordon. My little town was surrounded by farms, and I didn’t know why there weren’t people like Gordon down my street. Apparently they had settled somewhere else. Maybe they didn’t like farming. 

Even as a child, I had heard that a town far down the highway (ten miles was far to me) had, at some unknown eon before I was born, been a place where racists lived. A lot of people who looked like Gordon knew it wasn’t safe to go through there.  

Once, a visiting evangelist and his wife from the Caribbean came to my church with their children. My mom showed particular respect to them. Their dark skin gleamed in the sanctuary light. The evangelist’s wife played the piano beautifully – a goal of my little childhood heart. I admired her. Be especially nice, my mom said. They have probably been through a lot. 

Mom also got a bit grim when the summer camp meeting had the “color choir” from Indianapolis come to sing. I liked the “color choir,” the music, the difference. She seemed to think it was less than nice to ask them to come as performers for one evening when no one talked to them much after the service. I wished they would come every night. 

A couple of years ago a professor friend shared a resource listing historic sundown towns that Black Americans knew to avoid when traveling (“don’t come through here after sundown or you’ll be in danger”).  

My childhood town was one of them.  

The place where I had grown up was a place people like my beloved Gordon had had to avoid. 

Do we really not see? Or do we just not want to? 

What shapes your values? What do you skip your eyes over, ignore, glance away from? What do you need to see? 

It’s happened again and again.

Do they give out “Webby Awards” for“Best Social Networking Campaign Aimed at Disenfranchised Young Men Searching for Meaning and Manhood in a Post-Religious Context”?

In the 90’s, radicalization looked like bored, angry, white, oddball suburban teenagers shooting up their classmates as they latched onto whatever Nihilistic philosophy made sense of their bullied, middle-class ennui. 

Now ISIS just Tweets. And young men sit with their laptops or tablets or smartphones, drawn to the message and imagery. 

What a tragic form of religious “outreach.”

The public response to a bombing, shooting, or terror attack ranges from dismay and compassion to fear and confusion. While Muslim representatives present a memorial wreath at the British embassy in the U.S. and immigrant cab drivers give free rides to Manchester residents, social networking graphic design pops up with endless variations of hearts, ribbons, candles, and prayers for the London Bridge victims, for the northern English city of Manchester. Just like profile pictures changed for Paris, and Nice, and Orlando. There’s been less outcry over the English driver who plowed into Muslims leaving a mosque after services.

Underneath the response that ranges from depressed acceptance of the new norm to calls for blanket discrimination in an effort to control damage, there’s a pulsing anger: is nothing sacred? Can’t holidaymakers – innocent civilians – go about their leisure in peace? Can’t children and young teenagers go to a concert in peace?

Terrorism disrupts the basic social contract we have with each other in the public square: you stay in your lane, I’ll stay in mine, and I won’t swerve my vehicle towards yours just because the impulse hits. You sit and watch a film in a cinema without standing up and screaming in the middle of it, I’ll sit and watch a film in a cinema without standing up and screaming in the middle of it, and we’ll both function within these unspoken norms because we both want to enjoy the movie.

Globally, anxiety has grown as these basic modes of interacting together in public life break down. I may intend to stay in my lane, but I can no longer assume that you will stay in yours. I may intend to go to a crowded mall just to shop and not to take out my anger with a firearm on strangers, but I can no longer assume that you will. This is different than sacrilege: it’s a problem, but it’s not sacrilege.  

There is sometimes sacrilege in the public square, and it can be easy to confuse sacrilege with the breakdown of social mores. Yet many people would say that sacrilege isn’t even possible because – and this is important – there is no identifiable or agreed-upon sacred. Sacrilege implies profaning the holy. But it assumes the existence of the holy. For a great many people, if you ask them even rhetorically, “is nothing sacred?” they would be inclined to say, “no, nothing is.” If you cannot really know anything, then you cannot name it sacred. So at the same time that the mores that govern our public interaction together are ripping and frayed, the very notion of the sacred is also disappearing from public consciousness. (And an intellectually honest person who doubts the existence or the knowability of the sacred is not likely to attend Sunday worship, no matter how well-designed your social media graphics are, no matter what your theology is.)

In recent American politics, one of the biggest tug-of-wars has centered around whether the current U.S. president is an iconoclast or a defender of the sacred. Most arguments pivot on whether he functions in the public square as someone who rips apart unspoken social contract, publicly verbalizing lewd or rude content (iconoclast) or whether he functions as a guardian of a particular ideology, specifically, certain evangelical political interests (defender of the sacred). Is he defending the sacred or smearing it? Almost all conflict condenses down to that question.

But most Americans don’t use the word “sacrilegious,” even if they mean it. Even most fundamentalists wouldn’t describe the phrase “oh my God” as sacrilegious, even if they defined it as “taking the Lord’s name in vain.” Shock-jock antics long ago ballooned to absurd lengths for ratings, so that now, this spring’s high school graduates were born years after Sinead O’Connor tore up a photo of the Pope on SNL to the instant dismay of many.

In the past few years, the most famous incident related to anything touching on the word “sacrilege” was the shooting of employees at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for its artistic depictions of the Prophet Muhammed. Extremely strict interpretations of Islam forbid portrayals of Muhammed and attackers targeted the magazine for its alleged blasphemy. Plenty of moderate Muslims still believe in the sacred; but extremists chose to kill non-Muslims for acts that they deemed sacrilegious. And so the extremists are willing to ignore western social contracts (iconoclasts) of communal and public safety for the good of guarding a particular religious ideology (defender of the sacred).

People of many religions face the challenge of how and what to expect in the public square. Like agnostics or atheists, within the public square, most people of faith hope for basic social mores to be upheld – you stay in your lane, I’ll stay in mine. The Catholic priests “live and let live” down the street from the Hasidic Jews, and the progressive Unitarian Universalists “live and let live” down the street from the Amish farmhouse. In North America, free speech is prized – but in the past, social contracts have guided how and when, as a religious person, to politely express that speech so as not to be sacrilegious in the presence of someone of another religion. Insulting another person’s religion in the public square might have fallen under freedom but it wouldn’t have fallen under good etiquette. One needn’t be a universalist to be kind. For all its political baggage, separation of church and state was a vital part of the founding of the United States, many of the inhabitants of which had come pursuing religious freedom.

It can be easy to forget that there are still places in the world where religion and state are one in the same. (Even in the Western world we have Great Britain, where the monarch is the head of the church.) But you do not need to have a fused church and state in order to have a robust approach to the reality of the sacred.  

When the average secular citizen sees the sacred defended with explosions, death, and terror, it tends to drive them harder towards deeper secularization. What Christians need to do is to present the Beauty of the sacred in self-sacrificial love. The response to violent defense of the reality of the sacred isn’t to abandon the sacred but to recalibrate our response to it and our appreciation of it.

If you are asked, “Is nothing sacred?” you may respond with a resounding, “Yes! Yes, it is!” but your response will not be filled with examples of passengers being polite to each other on a jumbo jet – that’s meeting basic social contracts, not defending the sacred. Your response will likely have little to do with putting out a flag on national holidays or keeping explicit content off television networks while children are still likely to be awake. Those may be considerate for the good of the community, but failing to do so isn’t sacrilegious.

Christians are called to witness to the Beauty of the sacred through our rituals, our service, our worship, our love. Christ, the Word Made Flesh, brought heaven and earth together, and no act of sacrilege can undo that. Christ, the great cosmic insurgent, turned the system upside-down already, and when we say we bring his Kingdom, we do not mean at gunpoint. We mean we arrive with a bowl and washcloth to clean the feet of the violent, just as Christ washed the feet of his betrayer, Judas Iscariot. We believe that the sacred can be experienced but not contained, and that Jesus wants us to love those who are sacrilegious, not to punish them on his behalf.

We are comfortable being neighbors with those of other religions in the public square, but we are not afraid to live out our understanding of our faith – that God is three-in-one, and that we are called to a lifestyle in which we are individually and communally transformed more and more to be like Jesus Christ. We do not expect the public square to bend to accommodate us, but we enter into public space and dialogue with the intent to witness to the Beauty of God through humility, integrity, and humor.

Before social media and the prevalence of pop culture, it was a lot easier to enforce whatever ideologies you wanted your child to follow.

But as globalization increased, this changed. Young people became increasingly exposed to the rest of the world. Today, their ideologies and values no longer find a basis in what their priest or imam preaches but in what social media and pop culture influencers might be saying and doing. – Neha Rashid, “How Young Muslims Define ‘Halal Dating’ for Themselves,” NPR Code Switch

This reflection rang true with conversations I’ve heard around North American faith-based water coolers for several years. Kenda Creasy Dean has written and spoken at length on the sociological realities of the “Nones,” following the publication of her 2010 book, “Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church.” She has spoken to groups of church leaders and pastors about why the faith of parents and grandparents outwardly seems somehow to be skipping a generation.

To read Rashid’s “Code Switch: Race and Identity, Remixed” article, you would think you were listening to conservative North American parents expressing their fears that their children were shedding valuable elements of the shared family faith. Yet Rashid is exploring the realities of sex and dating, not for suburban Baptist teenagers, but Muslim teens and college students who want to date on their own terms, without heavy-handed family intervention in the architecture of the relationship.

I find it wryly amusing that you could put conservative Christian parents and conservative Muslim parents in the same room with coffee and pastries and they would commiserate about the challenges of attempting to instill religious values in their kids in an age of globalization, when many influences far outside their zip code influence their children as much as – or more than – locality does. They have a shared enemy: Western secularization. The religions are not the same, but the frustration is.