Tag: politics

Beatitudes and Bias

The past year in the U.S. has been hard to watch. The people we’ve elected, the decisions we’ve supported, the direction we’re heading. It all makes me mad.

Although I haven’t always succeeded, I’ve tried not to add to the noise because things already feel so divided. But I keep coming back to this: when we see actions that lack compassion, elevate power over people, or divide rather than reconcile, we have to ask whether that reflects the way of Jesus. And that question led me to the Beatitudes.

The Beatitudes were written in a time of political instability, economic inequality, and high taxation. So many people were hurting, hungry, marginalized, and attacked under Roman rule. Wealth was concentrated among elites. There was tension between collaborators and resistors, and people faced violence when they dissented.

Rome’s political leaders sent their men in armor throughout the empire to make sure their authority was visible and feared. Leaders said it wasn’t about control, but instead about order and stability, with protection and trade. Stability would enable prosperity, and prosperity would enable taxation that would continue to support the stability. (Somewhere my middle school Latin teacher is so proud!)

At the same time, the religious leaders who set the parameters for faithfulness and worship made laws that were near impossible for ordinary people to consistently follow. The laws weren’t a path to God but a standard that was impossible to meet.

People no longer believed political or religious systems could deliver what they promised. Because people couldn’t trust the political system that kept them in a cycle of oppression. And because people couldn’t trust the religious system that was constantly judging them.

What all the systems lacked was compassion.

What all the systems lacked was grace.

What all the systems lacked was humanity.

The more I read about the context of the Beatitudes the more I see our modern-day America, with people searching for something trustworthy in a world where both power and religion can feel (and maybe are?) unreliable.

In Jesus’ time, the specific issues were different but the labeling was the same – people were grouped together based on things like cleanliness and obeying guidelines. Today, issues like abortion or voting habits are moral shorthand for how we evaluate and include/exclude people.

At a time when people need the church most, what they see from “Christians” can feel inconsistent, and I think it’s because we’ve let our politics shape our faith instead of letting our faith shape everything else. If we as Christians can’t agree on something so simple like God’s love extending to all people, how can those who already feel unloved or ashamed ever encounter the love of Jesus through us?

It’s into worlds of unreliable systems that Jesus speaks about why and how we are blessed.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. We don’t have to have it all together to be blessed, and we don’t earn our way in.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. God’s with us in the good and the bad.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. I don’t have to win or control or be famous.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. I’m supposed to care deeply about right and wrongs in the world, and about what God cares deeply about.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. I’m supposed to have compassion and offer forgiveness, even when it’s hard.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. I’m supposed to be the same person at home and at work and at church and at the grocery store and everywhere.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Peace takes work, and does not mean avoiding conflict or hard discussions.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I need to do what’s right even if it costs me something, including the approval of others.

The Beatitudes are for the ordinary moments of our lives. All the days of all the lives of all the people who’ve lived since the time of Jesus. Even and especially when they are mad and frustrated. And maybe today, they’re an invitation – to love more like Jesus.

March 19, 2026
Hell in a Handbasket

I failed a class in college. Political Science 101. I love all things politics so you’d think I would have earned an A++. But that class started at 8am, in a building at the top of a very large hill, during the very cold winter. I skipped it. A lot.

That professor taught me two things:

1. The phrase hell in a handbasket.

2. Always read the syllabus.

His class had an attendance policy, which I didn’t know but I also thought shouldn’t matter because I was smart. Wrong. But I am actually very thankful for the lesson, which I have thought about on dozens of occasions since. That lesson made me better.

Hell in a handbasket was a phrase he said often, and at 18 I thought it sounded a little crazy and overdramatic. But now that I’m the age he was when teaching the class I find myself thinking a lot of things are going to hell in a handbasket.

For instance, there is absolutely no reason to rearrange the TJ Maxx. We go there to wander around until we hear the call of the things that need to be in our home. But when some new manager decides to move whole sections around, shoppers can’t hear items calling them while trying to navigate the new walkway pattern and aisles.

Put. It. All. Back.

But that’s not the real reason I’m annoyed today. This evening I passed a church with a sign out front that said “Everyone Welcome. No Exceptions.” And it made me angry. Why would anyone NOT be welcome? In any church, anywhere?

Maybe because we’ve been getting some things wrong, like our responsibility to show the world the love of God. To live lives that reflect Christian values, to the best of our ability. To vote for policies and people that reflect Christian values, to their best of their ability.

So many church-goers give Christians a bad name, with a lot of it boiling down to the refusal to obey God’s call to love your neighbor. So many church-goers give Christians a bad name, we have to put up signs – SIGNS – that show where the people who are marginalized are welcome and safe.

We have so much repair work to do, and what that sign represents makes me mad.

Sometimes I feel like half of America has put hope in a man because they desperately want to hold some sort position, at the expense of others. That’s not going to save anyone or make disciples. Sometimes I feel like half of America has put hope in a man simply because, whether or not they realize it, they no longer have hope in their hearts or their churches.

Either way, it seems like a path to hell in a handbasket.

August 19, 2025
The Same Coin

Heads or tails?

So much of what we are reading about and dealing with today are two different perspectives on the same situation. Two different visuals of the same thing. When you pick up a penny and flip it, you may get heads or you may get tails – but you still have the same penny.

A family all on their phones in a restaurant is a broken unit that doesn’t communicate. A family who’s spent the day visiting grandpa in the hospital appreciates together downtime and a meal.

People on Medicaid don’t work. People on Medicaid can’t work.

A woman that marries a man who dies a few weeks later is a tragic figure. A woman who marries a dying man, and in the few remaining weeks of his life while he’s hospitalized and medicated his beneficiaries change, is a woman with a lot of money.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

In some cases, there’s a clear right and wrong side. But generally I think both sides of the penny have some level of truth.

Sometimes we are unaware. Sometimes we choose to be ignorant. Sometimes we just choose wrong.

A lot more of us have to be willing to look at the other side of the coin with a mindset like what am I missing or what would I think if this was me, or someone in my family? We have to stop being afraid to look at the other side of the coin. We have to stop acting like we lose if we give the other side any attention. We have to have open and honest dialogue about both sides.

We also have to stop refusing to admit when we are wrong. Sometimes you don’t know until you know – like Medicaid is not mostly utilized by people who don’t want to work but mostly by people who can’t work or who lost their job. Maybe they had a tragic accident or their child is critically ill.

We can’t rely on politicians to talk about or even look at both sides of the coin. They don’t benefit in that. We, the people, must do it – refusing to believe there are two coins. We must approach issues as they really are: and sometimes that’s two sides of the same coin.

March 4, 2025
Land of Confusion

My thoughts right now are a little all over the place – kind of like the world we currently live in, I guess.

What is the appropriate Christian response to all that is happening, and what is the acceptable human response? What would an angry Old Testament God do and what would a forgiving New Testament Jesus do?

Even the people who (supposedly) read the Bible, pray, and worship on Sundays can’t agree on this.

Over 70 years ago, Orwell told us Ignorance is strength in the Ministry of Truth…and if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’

Who and where is the Winston Churchill of our time? Please stand up.

So many neighbors hung Ukrainian flags a couple years ago. Many of those same folks posted Trump signs in their yard last fall. Are they suddenly convinced that Russia did not invade Ukraine or are they the kind of humans that can easily just abandon oppressed people? Our righteous anger must need a new and exciting target.

Fox Christianity has taken over the country – a version more about people who are bad or wrong instead of neighbors we need to love. If 90 people are getting aid so they can live and feed children, why are we so focused on the 10 who “gamed the system?” Do not preach to me your stories of the 10 if you cannot tell me even one story of the 90. You are the problem in the Land of Confusion. There’s too many men, too many people Making too many problems
And there’s not much love to go around.

Social Security and Medicare decisions should not be made in a room of only wealthy people. The vast majority of people who have paid into those benefits need them for survival, and they need representation in those discussions. It doesn’t matter who is to blame for why we are here right now. To move forward in any way, we must agree that millionaires (and billionaires) cannot possibly understand the impact on those lives while driving around in their Teslas or flying to warm weather for the weekend.

All Presidents are thoughtful about their first 100 days and the story it will tell the American public. Administrations throw darts hoping maybe 25 percent will stick. While the goal of blitzkrieg is to defeat an enemy before they can mobilize, the risk of blitzkrieg is that the aggressor on the march is exposed and his troops tire quickly. Blitzkrieg worked in Europe, but not against the better prepared culture of the Soviet Union.

Long Live the King? I hope we’re talking about LeBron James.

I have to limit social media and news consumption right now. It’s just too much. You need to calm down. You’re being too loud. Please, Taylor Swift. Write a part 2.

Why are our ugly old Washington guys targeting the countries with the hot leaders? Jealousy is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.

Photo from NDTV

We’re two months past Christmas, but I still put Matt Maher’s Let There Be Peace on a lot these days.

One voice speaks for the voiceless
Hope for the hopeless, Emmanuel
One love brings us together
Now and forever, Emmanuel…Do not be afraid, His love is strong
Enough to save us
Nothing stands in the way
His love is strong enough to lead us.

February 23, 2025
Be Strong Right Now

I struggle to be at rest when I don’t have things figured out or when I am overwhelmed. I don’t have to know the answer, but I need to at least identify the next step. What is the next right thing to do?

All week, my thoughts have been disorganized and full of feelings. Sadness. Despair. Frustration. Rage. And just as I was trying to focus on God and church and a sermon and peace this morning, I opened an email about our schools partnering with the city to remember the lives lost here 3 years ago – asking that “we reflect together on the essence of #VBStrong” – and it really triggered me.

The hashtag #VBStrong seriously pisses me off. We should not have to be strong. We are capable of taking steps to prevent the situations that result in these stupid hashtags.

I went back to my journal entry from three years ago and realized that absolutely nothing in this city or this country has changed.

Why can’t we start being strong in the areas that could help prevent these things from occurring? Why can’t we be strong when we vote, supporting candidates who support mental health care and background checks and reforms? Why can’t we be strong about a commitment to finding a compromise on gun control? Why aren’t we willing to put our strength into finding a compromise that shows that our commitment to life and quality of life is more important than our commitment to allow anyone to own any kind of weapon? Why are we just perpetually stuck in an argument about what we can and can’t have and what medical conditions we will and won’t help with, and then relying on each other to be strong when the guns we won’t give up end up in hands that kill our family members and our children and our neighbors?

We should all be horrified by and convicted by The New York Times Sunday Review cover today.

Our belief that gun violence won’t impact us personally may have been the original reason we were quiet, but at this point we must all accept and admit that our inaction and our selfishness and our obstinance got us here.

I am done with all the reasons for not talking about it right now, with all the reasons this is really mostly a mental health issue, and with whining and indignant quoting of the second amendment. Those are the actions of cowards – people afraid of losing money, people afraid of losing votes, people afraid of losing power or control, people afraid that they have been complicit. News flash: you, we, are complicit. Our inaction makes us complicit.

I don’t live in Texas and I have no idea if I agree with all the man’s politics, but I cried this week when I watched Beto stand up and call a thing a thing and call liars liars. There is no longer any right or appropriate time for these sorts of things. People – children – are being gunned down every day in schools, grocery stores, churches, movie theaters. I am so proud of this man in the moment captured in this photo.

Maybe he wants votes. Maybe he’s a Dad and heartbroken. Maybe both. Likely both. But this took some guts. He has a hell of a lot more courage than most of us – and we stopped him a hell of a lot faster than we stopped an armed 18-year-old in a classroom up the street.

I am a believer in the second amendment, the purpose of which was to ensure our ability to defend our country and our homes in the event of a tyrannical overtaking of our land or government. But we cannot be so afraid of compromise on finding regulations that we allow our own countrymen with AR-15s to tyrannically overtake our schools and our churches and our grocery stores and our peace.

Today Audrey and I visited Horton’s Cemetery to talk about what Memorial Day is really about, to honor the memories of such brave men and women, and to pray for all those who mourn. Some fought in World War II, some Korea, some Vietnam, some Iraq. Some were drafted and some volunteered. Some died young and some died old. I read the words of Abraham Lincoln etched in a wall of stone there: “Honor to the Solder, and Sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country’s cause.”

Albert G. Horton, Jr. Memorial Veterans Cemetery

Albert G. Horton, Jr. Memorial Veterans Cemetery

What did they actually fight for? It wasn’t for our right to own an AR-15. It was so we wouldn’t need to live in fear of evil people who would wield weapons such as that against us.

We need to be strong right now and actually take steps in the direction of making America safer. We can march. We can write. We can donate. We can vote differently. We can speak differently. We can open our hearts and minds to finding compromise. We can try something. We can try anything.

In the words of David Hogg, a student survivor from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School: “I can respect you have a different opinion than me on guns but I can’t accept that we can’t do anything to save our kids.”

May 29, 2022