What Is Public Theology? Another Attempt To Define An Emerging Discipline

One of the defining marks of my current stage of life is that I am pursuing a PhD in Public Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, so it often comes up in conversations. I usually get the following responses:

“Public theology? What’s that?”

“Is that just like political theology?”

“I didn’t really know public theology was a thing.”

I will normally respond by admitting that sometimes I’m not sure what public theology is either, or that until I was admitted into the PhD program I had never even heard of the discipline. When I was first accepted into the program, I assumed public theology was just Christian ethics. On the contrary, public theology is a distinct field with its own history, methods, and challenges that need to be understood as a particular resource available to the church.

An Emerging Discipline

While public theology is a relatively new term in scholarship (being coined in the 1970s), it has proliferated publications, centers, and interest. However, despite exponential growth in attention over the last few decades, a precise and agreeable definition has been elusive. Instead, what one finds in the emerging field is a diversity of definitions, sometimes conflicting and contradictory, as it struggles to identify itself.

The first formal definition was offered by Martin Marty in 1981 (fitting, as he coined the term in 1974). He defined public theology as “an effort to interpret the life of a people in light of a transcendent reference” that flows from a particular communal tradition as an interaction with the broader public (Public Church, 16). For Marty, this kind of theology has more to do with “ordering faith” – that is, with the structure and operation of society – than “saving faith” (Public Church, 17). In other words, it was the effort of a religious community (i.e., the church or a specific denomination) to understand the life shared by multiple communities (i.e., the nation or the world) and to contribute to this life out of the community’s own theological resources.

Various definitions followed this initial offer, revealing the tensions within this emerging movement. Some definitions highlight the struggle against marginalization or authoritarianism. Others emphasize a concern for the poor and oppressed. Still others prioritize political or structural dimensions or democratic values. These definitions each identify important aspects of public theology, but sometimes do so at the expense and exclusion of others. Often these definitions seem to define not the field as a whole but a scholar’s own approach to public theology, which leaves the student of public theology still grasping for a definition.

This tension was was well observed by E. Harold Breitenberg, who noticed that there seemed to be no consensus among scholars – the friendly and hostile alike – as to what exactly was being discussed. In a monumental article, Breitenberg made a great effort to delineate genres, definitions, and consistent marks of the growing field, ending by offering his own attempt at a unifying definition.

According to Breitenberg, “public theology intends to provide theologically informed interpretations of and guidance for individuals, faith communities, and the institutions and interactions of civil society, in ways that are understandable, accessible, and possibly convincing to those inside the church and those outside as well” (“To Tell the Truth: Will the Real Public Theology Please Stand Up?”, 66). While there are multiple kinds of public theology, Breitenberg thought that this definition served to unite the discipline around what it had in common.

My Working Definition

This clarification offered by Breitenberg was in many ways a helpful move away from parochial or disconnected definitions and toward one that could sustain the variety of ways that public theology was practiced and performed. However, what it accomplishes is perhaps rendered inaccessible by the unnecessary verbosity.

It seems to me that the discipline would benefit from a basic definition that can sustain the multiplicity of public theologies, in the plural, rather than my own aspirations for the practice of public theology. This definition would hopefully establish a common foundation by which various schools, methods, and traditions of public theological thought could flourish, compete, and collaborate for the common good.

Thus, my minimal definition of public theology:

public theology is any theological engagement on matters that transcend the ecclesial community in a way that pursues dialogue rather than domination.

I believe that this definition serves to include the work of public theologians who offer competing definitions while remaining distinct enough that the doors are not open to any and every theological endeavor. In a short sentence, it encompasses the several marks of public theology that are necessary and essential to its practice.

Essential Marks

First, any theological engagement signals that public theology must of necessity be theological. Of course, this is a matter of degree, and I want to affirm the importance of the debate over distinctiveness and relevance, but to whatever degree they are rendered explicit or implicit the biblical and theological motivation, reflection, and support must be present and recognizable. Otherwise, it is ceases to be public theology.

Second, on matters that transcend the ecclesial community means that the issues engaged must must be issues that exist beyond the community of believers. This does not mean that ecclesial matters such as worship or the sacraments are out-of-bounds for public theology, but rather that in order for these issues to constitute public theological topics they must be handled in a way that emphasizes their significance for life outside of the congregation. For instance, when Matthew Kaemingk discusses the importance and influence of liturgy, sacraments, and worship on a Christian responses to Muslim immigration, he is handling ecclesial matters in a way that emphasizes and evaluates their public significance, and so doing the work of public theology (Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear, 196-236).

This also means that while public theology tends to focus on economics, politics, and civil society, more existential conversations about doubt, faith, friendship and the like are not excluded. While the earlier days of public theology emphasized concerns of polity or societal structure, the field has grown to include theological reflection on sports, art, beauty, and cinema. For an example of this sort of public theology, see Kutter Callaway and Barry Taylor, The Aesthetics of Atheism.

In other words, public theology emphasizes, highlights, evaluates, and otherwise explores the public face of doctrine. It is not about theological precision (although it is not necessarily opposed to it) as much as it is about theological action. What difference does theology make in the way we live our lives in connection with the public?

Third, pursues dialogue rather than domination is perhaps the most important part of the definition, as it emphasizes what is most distinctive about public theology. Public theology is, before anything else, a conversation (Sebastian Kim, Theology in the Public Sphere, 3). When one is doing public theology, they are not trying to win and argument but to achieve common ground and communal orientation and direction while remaining publicly accessible and accountable. Public theology does not stand at a critical distance from the world, relying solely on dogmatic confession or revelation for condemnation of that which is “out there”, but instead enters into a dialogue with those inside and outside of the church and seeks to contribute, out of a distinctively Christian identity, to the public good.

These are, in my estimation, the necessary marks of any and all public theology. Any theological project that strives to engage in such a way will also likely be to some degree interdisciplinary and multilingual, prophetic and critical, and global in its perspective and awareness. It is also the case that, as with any good theological project (whether biblical, systematic, analytical, confessional, or academic), public theology must be in some way performed in our worship, work, and living. Whether these marks are met in a way satisfactory to one public theologian or another – or whether they are met at all – is not a litmus test for public theology. However, I would like to see public theology that employs each of these marks to the degree appropriate to context.

Personal Preferences

On top of the above marks of public theology, I would also like public theology to expand upon the basic definition to include three further marks, which by no means garner universal support in the scholarly community.

First, public theology should maintain a missional and evangelistic impulse. While aware of its intent to restore the fullness of the gospel in proclamation and action, it should be seen as evangelism expanded upon, but not at the expense of, concern for faith in Christ and inclusion in the redemptive community (the church). If public theology is a concern for the common good, it should be concerned with the common and universal need for Christ.

Second, public theology should endeavor to cut through the partisanship of politics, not for bipartisanship but for something else altogether. It is not the goal of public theology to support the civil religion of the day in any of its expressions, but to tell a better story of the beginning and end of the world. Thus, public theology should attempt neither a synthesis of the left and the right nor a rejection of the true and good concerns emphasized by both, but should instead pursue the unique and distinct manifestation of faith in the context within which it is found. This is not to say that a public theologian may not vote in one way or the other, but that the project of public theology is simply much broader and deeper than the categories of (bi)partisanship can maintain.

Third, public theology should strive to include all voices (especially marginalized voices) in the conversation, not out of a religiously embellished savior-victim complex, but because privileged voices are truly insufficient and lacking without the full witness of human experience. Not only should excluded voices be included, but privileged voices should not be marginalized from the discussion. If theology has suffered from their over-saturation, certainly it will suffer from their absence, and if any voices are excluded, one may question whether or not a theological project is truly public. Importantly, this is not an appeal to welcome domineering and abusive players to the table of conversation, as their presence would from within destroy the project of public theology; still, disagreement must be welcome and a willingness to hear and learn must be forthcoming.

The Conviction that Theology Matters

Dirk Smit closes his contribution to A Companion to Public Theology (edited by Katie Day and Sebastian Kim) by stating that public theology is constituted by the conviction that theology matters:

“public theology should be about what counts in public life, about what makes a difference, about what affects human beings and the created world, about what matters to real people in real life… it should understand what the matter is, what the full story is, what the truth of the matter is, what the real concerns and possibilities are… it thereby claims to know what is good for life, for human beings and the world, and that its intention is to contribute to this, whether this state is described as flourishing, well-being, or the common good” (“Does It Matter?”, 88).

Public theology is about “discipleship as transformation” (“Does It Matter?”, 89). It is about becoming more like Christ in the ways that we interact with the world in which we find ourselves. It is about joining in with the work that God is doing in the world to pursue flourishing, well-being, and life, and to become an player in that grand story by grace.

What do you think of when you hear the phrase “public theology”? Who are some public theologians that you admire? What are some questions you still have about this emerging discipline? Let us know in the comments!

The following statement was written by Austin Childress, Olufemi Gonsalves, Darren Hagood, Barnabas Lin, and Dylan Parker, PhD students at Fuller Theological Seminary in the Fall 2021 Theology in The Public Sphere seminar, on November 15, 2021. The statement is representative of their views and does not necessarily represent the views of the Fuller student body as a whole.

Climate change knocks at the door of all the nations across the globe. All of creation is in imminent danger in ways that are connected to – and yet eclipse – all local and national conflicts. On August 9^th, 2021, UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced that the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was nothing less than a “code red for humanity.” The geological clock has struck midnight. In the words of António Guterres, “The sirens are sounding. Our planet is talking to us and telling us something. And so are people everywhere. Climate action tops the list of people’s concerns, across countries, age and gender. We must listen-and we must act-and we must choose wisely.” In order to mitigate the worst outcomes, all humans across the globe must commit to a shift in consciousness that prioritizes a reverence for the sacredness of all creation over viewing creation as a means for profit. We must act now.

The climate crisis offers a unique opportunity for solidarity, collaboration, and international cooperation. The participation of many nations in the COP26 summit is encouraging and signals a global willingness to engage with each other on global issues. However, with the summit closing short of its goals and the needed measures to limit the rise of global temperature to 1.5 degrees, it has become clear that these agreements – non-binding and filtered through economic appeals to business sectors – will not be enough. We applaud much of the work and spirit of the COP26 and urge all nations to seize this momentum and resist economic pressures that fable a world of unlimited resources for human consumption. Sacredness and survival will always be endangered as long as profit is the driving force of human commitment. Alok Sharma, COP26 president, closed the summit by assuring the world that the 1.5 degrees goal was kept in reach, but “its pulse is weak.” Taking advantage of the momentum engendered by the summit, all nations must make concrete, identifiable plans to follow through on their commitments, so that at next year’s summit, the weak pulse of climate hope achieved here becomes the strong beat of justice and expectation.

The earth was brought into existence and is held in existence by the Creator (Gen. 1:1; Col. 1:16-17), who has called humanity to protect and nurture the planet as stewards, guardians, keepers, caretakers, and protectors of creation (Gen. 2:15), collaborating with all creatures as co-inheritors of the divine breath of life (Gen. 7:15). As stewards, we were given the world not to abuse it but so that we would revere and cultivate its divine belonging (Ps. 24:1) and facilitate its rest and renewal (Deut. 5:12-15). We believe that, on the one hand, such reverence and responsibility for all of life positions us for blessings and prosperity in the form of material abundance for humanity, animal life, and the land. However, on the other hand, such neglect or outright violation of our call to protect and nurture all creation will lead to societal collapse and our collective death (Ex. 7:4-5; Deut. 28). Therefore, we call for a united human opposition to any further violation of the sacredness of all life and all agendas that continue to place the pursuit of profit over the divinely endowed dignity of all creation (Mt. 6:24).

We understand that there comes a time to call on the state to wield its appointed authority (Rom. 13), a time to call free people to act when the state cannot or will not (Rev. 13), and a time for the people and the authorities to act together (Mk. 12). Further, we do not think this is a time for blame, for all have violated the sacred (Rom. 3:23), all are implicated, and there can be no boasting or judgment. This is the time to cry out to God for help and to manifest action in keeping with repentance (Mt. 3:8). Governments, corporations, and communities must work together. To echo the late Rev. Dr. King, in his final sermon on April 3. 1968, the choice is not between action and non-action. The choice is between action and non-existence.

In light of these beliefs, we call on the human community to act for climate justice in the following ways:

ONE: We call on all developed nations to both individual action and international collaboration on climate change by way of education and (inter)national commitment.

First, all nations should develop and implement concrete ways to educate their populations on sustainability and raise awareness on climate injustice, providing resources for this global shift in consciousness toward the sacredness of all creation. Second, all nations should revisit their (inter)national commitments – particularly economic commitments – and evaluate them by the following question: how can national goals be re-envisioned so that all our endeavors reflect a commitment to the value of creation – human and otherwise – over profit?

A proper starting point would be the establishment of official organizations that work toward restorative truth telling for every nation, seeking to learn what they have contributed to climate injustice, particularly how they have inflicted harm on the Indigenous people who kept the land long before their arrival, confessing the present evils and precedent atrocities that continue to benefit those in power, implementing concrete reparation, restitution, and reconciliation. This will put nations in touch with communities who possess knowledge on how to better care for our mutually inherited creation and expand our consciousness of our place in and accountability to the global community that has existed long before us and will continue long after we are gone.

TWO: We call on all religious communities of every faith to reclaim and proclaim humanity’s primary vocation as one of stewards, guardians, and keepers of the gift of creation.

Regardless of our differences, we cherish agreement on our inheritance of the earth and our responsibility for it. In light of our failures and in the face of impending disaster, the religious communities of the earth must lead the nations in regular rhythms and public acts of confession, lament, and repentance. We must confess the harm visited upon all creation by ourselves, our communities, and our ancestors, and this confession must lead to lamenting and true grief over the truth of the matter, so that we may adequately repent of the demonic fantasies of anthro-supremacy and detachment from creation. We must teach our people that we are one with and dependent on creation and resist together the political economy of neoliberal capitalism that renders the earth and its inhabitants as intrinsically without value until her resources are excavated, pillaged, and processed into a commodity, restoring to our lives the sacredness of all life and flourishing.

As members of the Christian community, we call upon the church to contribute to this effort. Christians have contributed to some of the most enriching progress on our planet, but we have also led the way in acts of exploitation, domination, and destruction. Too often we have wed faith to the powers that be, exchanged truth for a lie, and listened to the voice of political and economic power rather than the voice of God. Now is the time for Christian churches to critically examine their theological, financial, and political complicity in the climate crisis in order to tell the truth about where we are and what we have done, so that we may have concrete roads forward through repentance, on local and global levels, and a pathway for returning to the reverence for all of God’s creation.

THREE: We call on corporations to use their power, influence, and opportunity to create lasting climate justice.

Corporations of every kind, while not neglecting the importance and necessity of profit, must reevaluate their methods, practices, and partnerships in terms of sustainability. Such entities must find ways to drastically reduce their carbon footprint, but reducing complicity is not enough. Such entities must also find ways to actively and urgently contribute to the healing of the earth, whether through restoring its forests, replenishing its wildlife, or cleaning its air and land of pollution.

FOUR: We call on individuals, plagued as we are by alienation from one another, from our work, from our land, and from ourselves, to roll up our sleeves and join, to the degree we are able, this work of pursuing justice for all of creation.

In our own contexts and relationships, we must each reevaluate our own commitments under the same question of prioritizing the sacredness of creation over profit, convenience, and consumerism. We must specifically reevaluate our consumer habits – what we buy and where we buy it – and pursue more sustainable patterns of consumption wherever we can. To the extent that we are able, we must all focus our energies on our local communities so that our place and our land may thrive and we can resist the harmful extraction, powered by fossil fuels, of goods and resources from other communities.

Such attitudes must lead to concrete ways in which every individual reduces their dependence and consumption (direct and indirect) of fossil fuels. We must each do our part and, as we call governments to cut CO₂ emissions, so must we. National leaders cannot be our scapegoat, for together we consume the fossil fuels that are produced, and production follows demand. What’s more, the disappointments and deficiencies at the COP26 summit communicate clearly that it will not be enough to wait on our leaders to move. We must move forward together in faith, hope, and love.

We believe these changes will knit us back into the fabric and friendship of the human community and of creation, for we are not alone. Christian scriptures promise that when we loose the chains of injustice on all creatures and untie the cords of the yoke, when we set the land free, and do away with the pointing finger and malicious talk, then light will break forth like the dawn and our healing will quickly appear. The light will rise in the darkness and our night will become like noon day. These promises are for usand for all creation.

As the late Rev. Dr. King wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” This is true not only of human life but of all life and all of creation. Together, the earth and all its inhabitants are waiting with great anticipation for humanity to respond to its sacred call of stewardship (Rom. 8:19-22). While education will inform us and concrete acts of restoration through policy change will bring progress, we believe that a lasting change will only result from a global reconnection with all of creation, including all of life and the land, which begins only by confession, lament, and repentance.

We make these calls with urgency, for God is not asleep. We live on inherited land and the Creator will hold nations, leaders, and communities accountable for every harmful and careless agenda and policy that encourages the destruction of creation rather than its flourishing. The earth is the Lord’s (Psalm 24), and God is no respecter of persons (Rom. 2:11). If we stand against the care of creation, then we have made ourselves enemies of divine love and declared our opposition to the divine purposes of rest, peace, and well-being.

But we also make these calls with hope, for God is ready and willing to forgive and to save. The Lord is speaking through the pain felt by creation and by those closest to it, the ocean and Indigenous peoples of the earth, and if we listen the call is heard for leaders to take action on their promises at the COP26 summit and for individuals to join in the work of justice. If we would turn in compassion and humble listening, and if listening would lead to lament, and if lament would lead to action, then God will hear and the Lord will heal us and our land.

Veterans Day Reflections: Honoring Veterans, Resisting War, and Longing For Peace

Veterans Day is a complicated holiday for me.

I grew up fairly single-minded in my appreciation for veterans and the U.S. military. I grew up under 9/11 rhetoric and the Homeland Security Advisory System; militarism and reverence for soldiers was in the water, and I’m ashamed to say that this sacred patriotic admiration was carried alongside my faith in Jesus in some unholy admixture of Christ and Caesar. To my young mind, ours was the one nation under God, in whom all true Americans trust, and the bravery exhibited on the battlefield was nothing less than godly doxology.

Like many Americans, I am related to several veterans. Two of my uncles were deployed in the Iraq war, my grandfather fought in Vietnam, and my father would have served in the National Guard had he not been medically discharged shortly before I was born for complications resulting from a club foot. So it was altogether confusing, awkward, and in some ways painful when I found myself turning strict pacifist in my high school years.

But this is not a post about pacifism. It is about Veterans Day and how I celebrate it.

I used to observe Veterans Day in ways that were intentionally offensive, divisive, and instigative, mostly through social media posts and starting arguments with classmates. I wanted – with no awareness of the deep irony – to pick a fight. But now that I’ve grown up a little, and especially now that I’ve had kids, I want to observe Veterans Day in a way that is deeper and more reverent of the sacred dignity borne by the men and women who have suffered and fought for this country. Don’t get me wrong. I am still a committed advocate of Christocentric nonviolence (despite the several promises from well-meaning individuals that I would change my mind when I had children), but as I consider the veterans in my life, especially my grandfather, I feel it in my bones that their experience cannot go ignored, dismissed, or trivialized.

I am not talking about celebrating war, bloodshed, and militarism. Since its inception, the United States has made a habit of waging wars to expand its imperial power in the world (the War of 1812, the Black Hills War, the Philippine-American war, and the Mexican American War to name only a few). U.S. military forces have been used to steal lands, seize resources, and install oppressive dictators. It is not uncommon to hear stories of torture, civilian targeting, rape, and massacre. This is not a plea to celebrate the Eddie Gallaghers and the Nicholas Slattens, who will nonetheless be thanked and applauded on today and every other day by their supporters.

What I’m talking about is refusing the militaristic narrative that renders them deployable and commendable but expendable, caring for veterans in a way that goes far beyond and far deeper than gratitude.

While growing up, I never really talked to my grandfather about Vietnam. He would sometimes – and very infrequently – make passing reference to his time in the war, complain about the jungle, and tell the story about a guy who wanted to get discharged for “bad dreams”. But there was always a look in his eye and voice behind his voice that warned me that bad things happened, that he did bad things, and it wasn’t something he really wanted to talk about.

Even though he’s never told me this, I know that my grandfather has killed people. I know that he has nightmares about it. I know the PTSD and the pain lingering from his time in the jungles and the swamps are with him every day. I know that he joined the military because poverty and impoverished parenting in a society with few safety nets and support networks left him with little or no choice. I know that he lost friends and pieces of himself and I know that he wishes none of it had happened the way that it did.

It makes me think of the soldiers who died and the many who survived but suffered in World War I, that Great War to End All Wars, and the string of unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front that rose out of a recognition that they were fighting, dying, and killing for nothing. It makes me think of the Afghanistan Papers and the other reminders that often – all too often – soldiers are pawns in a P.R. game for politicians and high ranking officials. It makes me think of the near twenty veterans who kill themselves every day, presumably not merely from a lack of appreciation, so that by now nearly four times as many troops and veterans have died by suicide than in combat. But we wave our flags and send our children uncritically off to die in the name of God and country, and the ones who make it come back in pieces.

In light of all of this, how can we observe Veterans Day? How do I do so in a way that serves the humanity, dignity, and Image of God borne by my grandfather?

It has been a very long time since I have thanked a Veteran for their service, and as a Christian, I cannot and will not celebrate war. But Veterans Day didn’t start as a day to celebrate war; it started as Armistice Day, established November 11, 1919, to commemorate the end of hostilities – what was meant to be the permanent end of hostilities – in World War I, purportedly the world’s final war. It was a day to remember the pain, suffering, loss, and death of war, and to let that grief create in us not bloodlust but a longing for peace.

So for Veterans Day, and in honor of my grandfather and the many other veterans who have suffered for causes long dismissed as unnecessary, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and peace should resist war and violence. Even those of us who did not find in Scripture a clear call for nonviolence must resist war and violence and reject any ethic that would call us to unquestioningly sacrifice our children to Molech by any other name. We must restore the conviction long held in the Christian tradition that even if violence is necessary it is still our last resort. We should not rush to arms, to vengeance, to shows of power and might, for if it is the meek that inherit the earth then power and might are not worth dying for, and they are certainly not worth killing for.

You don’t have to be a pacifist to know that war breaks people, not least the soldiers. Erich Maria Remarque, having served his own time, describes war as a place of knowing “nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow” and seeing “how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another” (All Quiet on the Western Front). So you don’t have to be a pacifist to know that it was never meant to be this way.

If we must have violence, let it not be needless, careless, and senseless. Let us hold accountable those who commit atrocities in war and those who use human beings as pawns in their own games to their own ends. Let us confess the suffering caused by our military forces and lament the ways in which war has broken, bent, and robbed our veterans of life and flourishing, often for causes less noble than the ones touted by purveyors of bloodshed. Let us listen to the voices of veterans who are calling out for help, for healing, and for forgiveness, and let us offer that to them where we can. And if Christians we are, whether we be pacifists or just war theorists, let us hunger for the world to come and pursue tirelessly the things which make for peace.

This is how we serve the humanity, dignity, and Image of God borne by those who, like my grandfather, have been dehumanized by militarism, imperialism, and violence, not by pretending that all their causes were just, but by telling the truth about the ways that they have been used and abused by the powers that be. We honor them by fighting the beast which chewed them up and spit them out.

So on Veterans Day and on every day you can, listen to the stories of suffering, heartache, loss, and pain the veterans in your life have to share. Learn about the horrid things that have been done to them – and the horrid things that they have been used to accomplish – and mourn with them and go with them to the throne of the Prince of Peace. Be patient with their angers, their frustrations, and even their hatreds. In the ways that they have disassociated from themselves and others, help them to reconnect with their God, their communities, and their humanity. Welcome them in, love them, and bear their burdens with them. Tell better stories of the beginning and the end of the world, stories that affirm that human beings were not made to slaughter and be slaughtered. Let our church be a community that facilitates regular confession, repentance, and forgiveness, for all our hands are bloodied, and let us together find creative ways to beat our swords into ploughshares, spears into fish hooks, and practice war no more.

A Statement on the U.S. Labor Shortage

The following is a brief public statement on the current labor shortage in the United States, prepared for the Fall 2021 Theology in the Public Sphere seminar (ET863) at Fuller Theological Seminary under the supervision of Sebastian Kim, modeled after his public statement on the 2017 military tension on the Korean Peninsula.

Assumptions that increased vaccination rates and the reopening of many segments of the country would lead to the rapid return of Americans to the workforce have been met with the rise in job openings and a shortage of job seekers. Help wanted signs proliferate as the appreciation for the so-called essential workers has become a disdain for a lazy, entitled, and self-centered generation of people demanding better wages, better benefits, better work-life balance, and better working conditions. Calls for higher minimum wage are met with calls for an end to federal and state unemployment assistance, to force people back into the workforce rather than to evaluate the reasons why people are reluctant to return to employment in the aftermath of a global health crisis.

I recognize that there are many reasons for not working and no simple answer will suffice. It is undeniable, for instance, that the coronavirus deaths in excess of 700,000 contribute to the labor shortage—that there are just less available laborers than would have been projected two years ago. But besides this, the relationship between Americans and work is complex. It is not enough to raise the minimum wage, and a four day work week will not solve our problems. Even granting that such measures would be steps in the right direction, a deeper reconceiving of work is in order. In light of this, I make the following statements.

First, when God created the world, he created it for life, flourishing, goodness, and blessing; this, the Bible calls work, and so the first time we meet God in Scripture, we meet God as a worker. Humanity was meant to reflect and represent the nature of the Triune God in dominion over creation by working and keeping the garden—in a broader sense, serving God by caring for what he had given to them. Being made in the Image of God, the labor that humanity went about was meant to mirror the nature of God’s work—harmonious cooperation, joyful participation, and loving contribution to the flourishing, goodness, and blessedness of creation and community. So work is a major way that human communities bear the Image of God. This work was not a curse but a blessing, a way that human beings lived and contributed out of their uniqueness, affirming their dignity as being made in God’s Image. Though the curse of sin and death has made work toilsome, it remains one of the primary dimensions of what it means to be human; more than that, it remains one of the primary dimensions of how humanity bears the Image of God, serves the Creator, and contributes to community. In light of this biblical and theological foundation, I call for the reimagining of all conversations on work and labor on the basis of our mutual createdness in the Image of God.

Second, in light of the foundation of vocation as bearing the Image of God by serving God through caring for what he has given to us, I call upon employers to reconceive of their function as servants of God and of their employees, charged with the sacred task of bearing the Image of God by contributing to the life, flourishing, goodness, and blessing of creation by their role as employers. In light of this vocation, no longer can the question be how much one can get out of their employees, but how much one can give to, serve, and bless their employees. In doing so, employers would better live in consonance with the Image of a God whose work is marked by such things.

This call is for all employers – whether affected by the labor shortage or not – to see their role not as providing jobs but as participating with God in pursuing shalomic communities. The community does not owe you employees; you owe the community contribution out of your vocation. Work that prioritizes profit and self at the expense of others and to the detriment of the community is unfaithful, un-biblical, un-Christian, and un-human. This new vocational foundation will mean that they will structure their teams, their workplaces, their management, their benefits, and their wages not in pursuit of profit and job retention but in pursuit of serving those who are also made with dignity in the Image of God by providing work that is a blessing—fulfilling, satisfying, and commensurate with their dignity and worth.

Third, I call upon workers and work-seekers to continue – as long as circumstances will allow – to demand working conditions and environments that are honoring of the dignity with which you are created. You are worth wages, rest, respect, and value. Feel no shame in this demand, for you are made in the Image of God and your work is a participation in the work of God. Continue to seek work that will contribute to your life and flourishing as you contribute to the life and flourishing of your community. When you are employed, continue to demand that your employers bear the Image of God in their vocation as you bear the Image of God with them.

Fourth, I call upon the church to repent of the ways that it has forsaken its prophetic role and failed to adequately denounce consumerism, materialism, labor exploitation, and individualist accumulation. In order to have a credible, relevant, and effective ministry in the world, the church must return to the call to pursue a community of shalom. Much would change if all Christians repented of the ways that they have contributed to the problem and then reimagined their own vocations in terms of partnering with God in the pursuit the blessing and flourishing of others in all that we do, seeing our work – within and outside the church – as ministry and worship of the Lord.

Fifth, I call upon all to focus on and prioritize the thriving of their local communities. It does little good to “solve” the labor shortage if we continue the dangerous and foolish tradition of extracting all the resources, human and otherwise, from local communities in order to consolidate wealth in the hands of a few, leading to increasingly weaker communities that support the luxurious living of those who have no stake in their neighborhoods or in their land.

He’s Not a Tame Lion: A Conversation About Life and Music with Ben Lange of Feraleo

Does God like music? Are human being inherently musical creatures? And what role does music play in the church and in discipleship? I had the privilege of speaking with Ben Lange about the role that music has played in his faith, his experience as a worship leader, and his ongoing music project, Feraleo.

You can find Feraleo on Facebook or Spotify.

Illuminating the Gospel: An Anonymous Conversation with a Gay Christian (Chapter One)

“I have this innate recognition that without suffering we don’t know Christ. Without suffering in this life, there is no chance for me to understand the gospel it its fullness… What an incredible, tangible, in my face, loud opportunity I have on a daily basis to see myself as in need of the grace and the love of Jesus Christ and the wholeness that he gives me, even when my flesh screams for wholeness somewhere else.“

The following is a conversation I had with a friend of mine. He is involved in ministry at a neighboring church and from a very young age has recognized in himself an attraction to men. It is only recently that he has started to be more open about his experience and he has yet to make it a part of his public ministry (so he has asked to remain anonymous). The conversation is separated into three chapters for easier reading (in case you need to stop and pick up where you let off later), but it is meant to be considered as a whole. Some of the ways that he interprets his experience may be upsetting to some – in fact, I am certain of it – but the point is neither to comfort nor to convince, but to promote and encourage understanding. If the conversation angers you or raises questions for you, I hope that you will read to the end and embrace the tension. Being human is neither simple nor easy and faith in Christ is often complicated. Still, I hope that you learn from my friend – as I often have – how suffering illuminates the gospel and the privilege of knowing intimately our dependence on Christ.

My words are in bold while his words are not.

Chapter One: Communities

Did you grow up in church? What was your family like and what kind of community that you live in?

Yeah, I grew up in a Methodist church. My family was very discipleship oriented – very righteousness oriented – and I think looking back at my childhood, even though things weren’t perfect, I had an incredibly healthy example in my home life and in my upbringing of grace and righteousness coming hand in hand, being called to live uprightly and regard your sin all the time. I had parents who were always asking you to ask for forgiveness from your siblings and explaining why things were wrong and bringing everything back to the Lord. Like, vacuuming the den on a Saturday morning was a spiritual task that my mom would talk about, like, how can you do that to honor the Lord? Annoyingly upright and like righteousness-driven, but not legalistic. There wasn’t really this attitude of needing to be perfect and needing to be better. There was a lot of grace in my house and there were a lot of tears. There were a lot of conversations around hurt and pain.

I really think that’s a lot of what saved me regarding my own sexuality: my parents intentionality toward my own pain and holding me with grace and teaching me righteousness. But I think what would have made the world of a difference in ways that I can’t even imagine is if they would have let me see it in them. They never let us see it in them, how they were messing up, or how they were in need of grace, or they were in pain. Never, like, at all.

So did your parents know about your own temptation or struggle?

No, not till I was in ninth grade, and they knew because my dad saw the internet history that I was searching for hot or attractive or whatever pictures of guys and knew it wasn’t my little sister because she was 10 at the time. Back then 10 year-olds definitely did not know about pornography. Nowadays, that’s different.

How did he approach that?

They were really… they both called me into the room where the computer was and I knew. I knew why they were calling me up there because they had been up there for about an hour and everything was really quiet. So, they had been talking about something. And I walked in, and they were both red-eyed and weeping – like, quiet weeping not loud weeping – but they’re just red-eyed. And they had clearly been crying for a long time. And… and you know, it was the whole like, “son, we need to talk” and “what is this? Is this you?” And “do you struggle with these things?”

Their conversation with me was incredibly loving and incredibly calm and also very healing-driven. Like, “we want to see you healed and we want to believe in your healing and we want to do everything we can as your parents to love you and encourage you toward healing.” I don’t think they believed that that something was going to heal me. I think they just believed that God has a heart to heal me. And so, why not care about that above all else? It felt really loving to me at the time and kind of exciting as a young ninth grader who knew his whole life that he’s gross, or outcast, or wrong, or messed up, you know? For all of a sudden, in one day, for that to just be switched and my parents know me and see me and love me and say, “you’re gonna be healed; we’re gonna be praying continually and we believe God’s heart is to heal you.”

I was all for it. I was all for it. And I still kind of am to an extent, but there’s been a lot of change even in that realm of things. Even whenever it first happened, my parents saw Satan at work in their son and that God desires to heal their son. And it’s… it’s become over time much more of a story—they’ve had a change of heart. It’s become much more of a story of Satan has attempted our son’s whole life, to ruin him, but in the middle of the pain, confusion, fear, and anxiety, we see time and time again how God has been faithful and God has been good. How God has been loving. How God’s grace, God’s mercy, God’s attention toward us has continually called our son home… without fixing him. It’s been much more of a thing that’s illuminated the gospel rather than a thing that’s hindered the gospel. Whenever they first found out about it, “oh, we need to see the gospel alive in our son, so, we need to get rid of this thing,” you know? And that’s changed over time.

But right now you’re not “out” yet. I mean, you’re telling certain people, but it’s not a part of your public ministry.

Right.

So, how would you identify, I guess, privately? You know, there are these conversations about whether Christians can call themselves same sex attracted or a gay Christian or a Christian who struggles with such-and-such. How would you identify and what was the process like coming to that realization?

I think most people that I agree with theologically would expect me to identify Same Sex Attracted, or Struggles with Same Sex Attraction, which I’m fine with. I’m fine with that. I also know there’s a spectrum of sexuality and it’s really helpful for people who… who are atypically on the spectrum to recognize that there’s a spectrum and to recognize that everyone struggles with temptation uniquely. There’s not just a pool of straight people and a pool of gay people and a pool of bi people, you know? The spectrum has helped me a lot to recognize that sin is sin and temptation is temptation and lust is lust. But on that spectrum, I would identify same-sex-attracted and even gay. I’m fine with gay and I’m fine with homosexual. I like homosexual a lot, because I think that’s really clear. I think same sex attracted a lot of times sounds like I’m trying to sugarcoat something.

I believe sexuality is a huge part of our identity. I know that my identity is rooted in Christ, but I don’t buy all the talk of like, well, that’s not your identity and don’t make it your identity. I just feel like we can’t help but wrap ourselves up in things that are that are huge, whether family, or passions, or jobs, or giftings. And sexuality is a huge part of who we are. And I think sometimes it takes being an atypical sexuality – or what would be deemed an abnormal sexuality – to recognize how big of a role it plays in who we are. I think maybe straight people might see sexuality is something that, of course, is a part of life, but isn’t part of identity. And as a gay man, I’m like, yeah, it is. You don’t realize how much of your life, your conversations, your friendships, your interactions, the things you’ve been involved in, the things you haven’t been involved in, the people you’ve flocked to, the people you haven’t flocked to… like, you don’t realize how much of your life has been formed by your sexual desires.

It’s like, being outside of what’s considered normal, you’ve been rubbing up against that.

I’ve been rubbing up against it. Because so much of my life has been formed by my sexual desires. It’s just in my face. I recognize the friends that I’m attracted to, the friends I’m not attracted to, the situations that I’m afraid of, the situations that I feel like I can have power over. It’s always on my mind. So, I have a hard time believing it’s not always on straight people’s minds. It’s just in different ways. More incognito, maybe.

But I went to I went to a college where there’s a lot of gay people or LGBTQ people and so I’m very comfortable with those people as being people. There’s a lot of people who struggle with homosexuality who are still homophobic, just being raised in this culture. I know many of those and I would not say I’m one of those, because for many years, while I still was ashamed of myself, or kept my sexuality silent, I was friends with a lot of LGBTQ people.

So, to identify as gay is not offensive to me in any way, because I have many gay friends who I love dearly and regard as normal people. And so I even kind of like identifying as a gay Christian, or a gay man, or whatever, because I just think it’s clear. I think it just tells someone what they almost expect to hear and it’s not wrong, you know? I almost kind of love someone hearing that I’m gay and then assuming whatever they want to assume and then me helping clear it up. Well, just because I’m gay doesn’t mean that I’m having sex with men or that I’m practicing, you know, relationships of homosexuality. I kind of like that rather than saying I’m same sex attracted and people wondering, “what do you mean by that?” or “how much?” or “so, just like a little bit? So, you just kind of like guys a little bit? or, you know.

(sarcastically) But you’ll be married to a woman one day?

(chuckling) Yeah, yeah, exactly. “But you can be straight even though you’re same sex attracted, right?” or things like that. But if I just say I’m gay, then I kind of like run and jump off the cliff without letting them assume things and then I get to kind of reel it back in, you know?

So, growing up in these communities, did you ever think that you would just embrace that and walk away from the church and Christ and just leave that all behind?

I never did never once.

What do you think kept you from doing that?

Shame. I think I would want to say fear of God kept me from giving in because I believe God is who he says he is and he knows what’s best and he speaks truth and he calls me higher. There was some of that, of course. That’s intertwined in all that, because I do love the Lord and have always loved the Lord. But fear of man has been the thing that’s kept me from giving in. I am so addicted to being accepted by people, not only because of what I struggle with, but also just because of my personality. I happened to be a very people-oriented, relationship-oriented person who is a people pleaser, even absent of my sexuality. The thought of being – even if people don’t reject me – the thought of being dismissed, or seen as weak, or seen as not loving the Lord enough, of being dismissed from a platform of leadership in the church, or the community of Christians being kind of taken away because of what I’ve chosen, the thought of any of that is way worse than the thought of not having sex with a man my entire life.

Of course, I have dealt with pornography – secret sin – and would and could very much so see myself having some time in my life dabbling in homosexual relationships, but only secretly in shamefully. I really think, knowing myself, the only way I will ever dabble in that physically is if I give in to a secret temptation and it somehow probably ruining me and it probably coming back to bite me in the butt. I don’t think I would ever give in as a lifestyle or embracing this as my earthly identity – embracing this as me – because it just has never felt like me. It’s always felt like something that’s not me. And it’s probably because I’ve hated it for so long.

So, I do need to do some healing there because there is an extent to which I need to kind of welcome it back in and not hate that side of me. And there is a fear that as I fully, or hopefully fully, welcome in the things that I’m shameful of in order for people and God to love me in that place and even see me healed in that place, that I would start being more okay with it. Like, maybe it’s fine? But even as I have started that process, I don’t feel theologically or personally any difference in my conviction at all. Not at all. I really don’t.

And you could, right? I mean, there’s plenty of people do. There are major movements in mainline denominations that would completely welcome and celebrate that. So, what keeps you from kind of that articulation of the church? What keeps you in more conservative theological communities?

I have talked with many people who are in my place sexually, regarding their sexuality, who have started to become a part of those communities you describe. At the risk of sounding prideful, I think I see myself as a little bit of a remnant or a set apart type of person—a child of God. I’ve always regarded those people in those conversations feeling like what I discern in them is ultimately a need to please themselves over the Lord. Ultimately, it’s a need to feel comfort over a willingness to feel suffering. I have this innate – I didn’t do anything to create it in me – this innate recognition that without suffering we don’t know Christ. Without suffering in this life, there is no chance for me to understand the gospel in its fullness, and when I see people do everything they can to even disregard some Scripture that we do have for the sake of comforting themselves, it just seems backwards to me. We use the truth of Scripture to comfort us in our earthly realities. We don’t change the truth of Scripture to make our earthly realities more comfortable. And that’s just always been clear to me. And I don’t think I did anything to create that. I really think it’s the Lord’s grace in my life and I think it’s true. I really think it’s true that as a gay man. What an incredible, tangible, in my face, loud opportunity I have on a daily basis to see myself as in need of the grace and the love of Jesus Christ and the wholeness that he gives me, even when my flesh screams for wholeness somewhere else.

So have you expressed that kind of faith and that kind of conviction to people who are affirming?

Maybe three or four or five times?

How is that usually received?

Not well, not well. Yeah, it’s not usually received well and I… it has been hard for me to feel like not only do I believe truth, but I know it to be true from my experiences of how God has been even more near to me whenever I even more forcefully reject sin or am broken in it. I feel like I’m interpreting the Bible in the right way and I also feel like that correct interpretation has found itself to be true in my experience of God. So it’s frustrating when those two things just fall on deaf ears. It’s so frustrating. And it’s been hard whenever it feels like, if there’s ever a time where my leadership is going to mean something, it’s right now, and even in that moment to recognize, oh my gosh, the Holy Spirit really does all the work. It’s not me. And love really is the most important thing, not my correction or my rebuke. It is the continuing to love that person, no matter what, that might ultimately work toward their redemption. For me to be to them what God has always been to me, no matter what I choose, no matter how much I hoard my sin, no matter how much I don’t confess, no matter how much I look at porn, or whatever. God’s always been like, “I’m still here and I still love you so much and I want what’s best for you.” The realization that I have to be that to the people that won’t receive the truth for me, you know? Well, man, I have not received it from God many times. So like, why would expect that? If God is humble enough to say, “I know that these humans I have created in my image will often reject me,” then why would I be prideful enough to think that I shouldn’t be rejected by one of those humans?

Right? Because you’ve explained it so well.

(chuckling) I’ve explained it so well, yeah.

They’re just not ready. They’re not ready. And that’s been hard. I thought my whole life I’m meant to change the homosexual community, and I think I can in a lot of ways, but it’s all God.

Click here to read the second chapter, in which we talk about some helpful – and unhelpful – ways people have responded to his experience, as well as how it has affected his relationship with Christ and his public ministry.

Illuminating the Gospel: An Anonymous Conversation with a Gay Christian (Chapter Three)

“My testimony is not a homosexual testimony, it is a sin and redemption testimony. I want my understanding of sin and redemption in my life to speak to other people’s understanding of sin and redemption and their life, whether or not it’s the same sin. That’s what we’re missing in America. That’s freaking what we’re missing in America. I mean, like, suburbs and fences and locked doors and social media, all the things that that enhance manipulation and deception and allow people to live in secrecy. Our churches are the same way.”

The following is the final chapter in a three part conversation I had with a friend of mine concerning his sexuality and his faith in Christ and the intersection of the two. If you have not yet read the first chapter please do so here.

My words are in bold while his are not.

What are some things that you wish people understood about your experience?

A lot, you know, but one this is… in adolescence, everyone around you has started talking about their sexual attractions to people, using their mouth to describe what they like on a daily basis, almost on a daily basis, and multiple times a day for most people. Even things like men, she’s hot. Or like, well, yeah, she’s cute, or I really like her or, or even more than that.

I have never – never in my life once – not used my mouth to describe what I’m feeling sexually. And I don’t know if I ever will. I don’t know if it’ll ever be something that I just feel like I would like to say, or to describe, you know?

Why you think you haven’t done that?

Well, totally fear of being of it being disgusting to the person that’s listening, or being really uncomfortable.

Not even to people who share your experience or people who would be pretty affirming of your sexuality?

Honestly, that’s never really cross my mind. It’s mainly been the opposite. I’ve never talked about my sexuality with someone who would want… actually there’s two people that love the Lord a lot that I shared with that really wanted me to experience it, to live out homosexuality. And like, 30 minutes into the conversation their hearts kind of changed, because they do love the Lord but are very liberal and lived in L.A. and were friends with a lot of people and had kind of just submitted to saying, “I care about loving them more than I care about whether or not it’s right or wrong.” And they didn’t even think when I confessed it to them or talked about it with them to encourage me toward holiness. The first thought was like, “You’re, you’re fine, you’re loved. Like, I want you to be happy.” And I was like, but I want you to hear me say that it won’t make me happy. They’re like, “why?” And, you know, having a theological conversation with them was kind of weird.

So, it’s mostly because I want to be normal. I don’t want people to be grossed out. One time, a friend and I were talking about sexuality and he was talking about wanting to care for me and love me and be accountable with me just to like his straight friends. He was being kind and saying it’s no different. But he’s like, “we’ll be at a restaurant and there’s a really good looking waitress and like, you know, we say that it’s really hard not to look at her butt while she’s walking away,” you know? But if I were at a restaurant with him and we had a waiter and he started walking by and I was like, “man, his biceps are nice,” even if he weren’t offended or weirded out, he’d probably be like, “oh, thanks for telling me and trusting me,” or like, “I hear you.” And like, even if you’re loving about it, like no one… no one wants their normality to be deep every time they bring it up. It’s always either weird or deep. You know, it’s either like “ew, gross,” or it’s like, “thanks for being vulnerable.”

It’s a thing every time.

It’s a thing every time! And if you didn’t make it a thing, that would feel like a thing, too. If he were like, “yeah, man, he’s freaking buff,” I’d be like, it’s kind of weird that he’s trying to kind of encourage my attractions and my sexual desires right now. And I know he’s doing it to make me feel normal or typical or seen or loved or whatever for who I am, but he can’t win. There’s nothing he can do to win in that situation. I just have to accept that.

Do you have more encouraging or open conversations like that with people who share your experience?

Not at all. Not at all. And I think we’ve kind of talked about that before. Like, why do I never open up like that with people who struggle like me? I do want my sin to be a normal sin and talk about it with people, but maybe not. But maybe I’m just judging straight as easier than it is. I perceive heterosexuality as something where you can discuss your sexuality frequently, even in ways that don’t feel like you’re discussing your sexuality, like whenever I told a friend that the fact that his wife is in his phone as “Sexy Wife,” that is him expressing his sexuality, even though he doesn’t realize it.

It seems like heterosexual people get to regard their sexuality all the time in healthy ways or in ways that don’t immediately trigger them to dabble in an addiction or to commit adultery or to lust like crazy or whatever. Even if there’s always temptation and lust there, it seems as though our culture or society allows heterosexuality to be discussed frequently. If I saw a movie where two men were making out, I would probably be like, this isn’t good for me to watch. But we see straight people making out all the time and it’s normal. And maybe straight people just are always lusting – and I am too – but I mean, maybe it’s just like, they don’t realize how sinful they are, how deep we are in lust we are as straight people in our culture, but it’s like, I can’t. I mean, none of my sexuality can be normalized, because it just feels wrong and it feels like I’m always fighting it. So even to be with a safe person where I could be like, “that guy’s really attractive,” and he would be like, “yeah, of course he is,” after that comment it’s kind of like, why did we even say that? Why did we even go there? We didn’t need to go there.

But it seems like straight guys can be like, “that girl’s really attractive” and be like, “yeah, of course she is,” and there’s this normality to it. As long as we don’t really say anything bad or keep talking about it, it’s totally fine to regard her as really attractive, you know? Yeah… and I don’t know what’s true or not true. Is it okay for me to regard my attractions a little bit more normally? Or has it just revealed to me how lustful our whole world is always? Not to condemn people who talk about attractive people; I just mean, wow, we really are so lustful all the time. Maybe I just have a greater awareness of that, you know?

There are going to be people who read this interview and this doesn’t answer hardly any questions. This is more just your experience an what it has looked like for you. People will have questions. People will be angry – on both sides – about the way that you’re interpreting your experience or the way that you’re handling your ministry. But for the people who have questions and want to do this right, how should they go about it? How should they be better brothers and sisters to people in your situation?

I think relationship – community – I think it changes everything, and if people could hear my experience and just be encouraged by the fact that when I, for the first time in my life, started to actually let people see me in my worst, that was the first time in my life that I felt people love me, actually. People’s love and attention toward me was a healthy thing that mended me, rather than just a comfy thing.

The people who I’ve talked to who are gay, who do not agree with me theologically, every single time, they don’t have community. That’s become, to those people, my encouragement. Before you decide for yourself what you will do the rest of your life, allow yourself to actually be held by people who love Jesus. Give the darkest places of yourself over to people who profess to love the Lord and believe in grace, and watch how the gospel of grace – whenever your darkness is held by people around you – watch how that starts to change, hopefully, the way you decide is true and untrue.

I am someone who has allowed his feelings and experiences to be interpreted through truth and tradition, and when people have allowed their experiences and feelings to be interpreted by their experiences and feelings, it goes nowhere. And that bridge from experiences and feelings to also reconcile that with truth and tradition, that bridge has been relationship, actual relationship, every time. It’s been someone crying with me or me crying with them about actual pain, and actual confusion. And it’s never not illuminated the gospel—with family, with friends with mentors, with people by whom I’ve been taught, with strangers even. It’s never not illuminated the gospel whenever actual confession and brokenness has existed. Like, Satan doesn’t have a place. So, I hope that people could, like, read this and… and be encouraged to not just want to know more of the people around them, but to let them know more of them.

Because this isn’t really a conversation about struggling with homosexuality. Yeah. It’s about struggling with sin.

Yes! Yes, that’s good. Yes, this is… and that is the reason why I haven’t yelled from the pulpit my sin struggle, even though I want to, and I think there’s good in that. There’s good in that. Because I’ve become more whole as I’ve realized that my testimony is not a homosexual testimony, it is a sin and redemption testimony. I want my understanding of sin and redemption in my life to speak to other people’s understanding of sin and redemption and their life, whether or not it’s the same sin. That’s what we’re missing in America. That’s freaking what we’re missing in America. I mean, like, suburbs and fences and locked doors and social media, all the things that that enhance manipulation and deception and allow people to live in secrecy. Our churches are the same way. I don’t want my whole church to know that I’m gay. I want my whole church to know everyone’s sin in our whole church, and that includes my whole church knowing I’m gay. And I know I actually don’t want everyone to know everyone’s sin. I just want everyone in our church to be known by people in our church, fully. So, part of that narrative is my church knowing I’m gay, but it’s not because I told my church I’m gay, you know?

It’s because they know about your sin, holistically.

Yes, yeah.

So really, what the most helpful way to go about this is not to find a gay Christian in their community and fix them or try to convince them that they trust them or anything like that. It’s just to start building communities where we’re more open and we’re more honest about our own brokenness, and we see our own brokenness for what it is. So often we seem to think it’s about the straight church helping the gay church, or whatever. And instead of it being like that, it’s about all of us being broken and humble, just sinners and saints who love each other and mutually need Jesus. This isn’t really about how we bear the burdens of our gay brothers and sisters. It’s about how we bear each other’s burdens and let our gay brothers and sisters bear our burdens as well?

Yes. Like, can we repent? Can we freaking repent, but then be instruments of real unity? No matter your upbringing, no matter your pain, you know? Real pain and real error, real things that need repenting of, and I think the same thing about my homosexuality. I think it’s a huge gateway to our church actually repenting of some big sh-t and starting to walk in real oneness with everyone’s pain and everyone’s confession.

Right? Because, yeah, one type of Christian is not the savior of another.

Yeah. That’s right.

We are all mutual sinners in need of a mutual Savior.

Yeah, so, the straight Christian is not the savior of the gay Christian and even the opposite. I find myself sometimes thinking that I, as the gay Christian, can be the savior of the straight Christian, even.

Sure, but I mean one side needs to learn a lot from the other. One side does need to learn a lot and other Christians who struggle with heteronormativity – the idea that theirs is the normal temptation – need to learn from people who share your experience. No sin is normal. Yeah, that’s probably the most frustrating thing to me about this these conversations is that no sin is normal to being human, including, you know, the ones I struggle with from my side of the sexuality spectrum. So, we can start we can learn a lot, I think, from gay Christians and the ways that people with your experience are loving Christ and loving other people, and the things that it’s teaching you about community. Even heterosexuals shut people out of our own struggle and we like to pretend that maybe we need Jesus a little bit less.

Right, that’s good. (chuckling) Yeah, you could do this whole thing without me; you don’t need me.

(chuckling) Well, I learned it all from you, so, no, I couldn’t. But, we are out of time. Before you go, are there any resources you would suggest for people who are interested?

Two books: Gay Girl Good God by Jackie Hill Perry an Washed and Waiting by Wesley Hill.

Jackie talks a lot about false gospels – whether you’re straight, gay, or anything in between – and the importance of recognizing that Satan is always trying to tell us that something will save us when it won’t; only Jesus will save us. And she talks a lot about the Marriage Gospel and the Hetero Gospel, but other things, too, depending on your story. And I love the false gospel conversation regarding heterosexuality and homosexuality.

Wesley talks a lot about the family of God and how – whether your sin is gay, or straight, or temptation, or lust, or addition, or anything – the church being a family would really heal a lot of our illnesses, if we started to walk in familiness. And he thinks that, in his experience, homosexuality has been a glaring invitation to actually find family in believers. I don’t feel called to celibacy, but he felt called to it and so had to say, “well, where’s my family?” and then realize, “well, duh, the church is my family,” and then realize all the ways the church was not acting as family at all.

I think those two things are really important, because this is a sin conversation not a gay conversation. I want the church as a whole to start rejecting false gospels that we believe are true. And I want the church as a whole to start regarding themselves as a family unit and to hold each other in really deep, painful places where we don’t do that.

This was one of the most edifying and wonderful conversations I’ve had in a long time. Anytime I speak with this friend of mine, I always walk away feeling like I learned more about myself than I learned about him; I always feel that I have learned more about what it means to cherish and adore Christ in my own brokenness. Of the two books that he suggests, I have read Washed and Waiting by Wesley Hill, and it is more a book about brokenness in community than it is about homosexuality. It has been several years, but it remains the best book on sin and our need for Christ that I have read to date.

I hope that you have learned from this conversation, as well, and I pray that we can become the kind of community that he dreams of, one in which we are all open and vulnerable enough to admit that we all are in need of a Savior, we all are in need of a healer, and the ground is level at the foot of the cross.

Illuminating the Gospel: An Anonymous Conversation with a Gay Christian (Chapter Two)

“I’m okay with my homosexuality and I know that brings me toward God. It always calls me toward lowliness and into scary places of obedience. But like, I’ll keep holding it. It’s made me closer to God. Without Christ, I would still be very distant from God, and even if I was still choosing to not walk out in this, I think I would kind of hate God. But the example of Christ in his suffering makes God make sense and makes Christ makes sense and makes me feel kind of high. And maybe some of its prideful. But I mean, even the Scripture is like, he will bring you low in order to exalt you.”

The following is the second chapter in a three part conversation I had with a friend of mine concerning his sexuality and his faith in Christ and the intersection of the two. If you have not yet read the first chapter please do so here.

My words are in bold while his are not.

So, this still isn’t part of your public ministry. What is that like? What is it like having a kind of private ministry, but also having this public ministry where you only talk about your sin in a vague sense?

That’s hard. It’s something that I… I don’t feel emotional right now, but I could cry over it, because it’s just hard. It’s such a desire I have and… it feels like it’s so impossible. What I’ve learned in my process of becoming more unashamed of the gospel and not ashamed of how my sin plays into that – so telling more and more people – what I’ve learned is that there are many times when I want to tell and it might not be helpful, and there are many times when I don’t want to tell and it’d be very helpful. I really do have to rely on the voice of God, that conviction of the Spirit in my own heart. But just knowing the leading from his Spirit, the peace that his presence brings, I have learned how important it is to regard that in my ministry, to not just assume. There are many situations where I go in like, “please, God, don’t make me share, please don’t make me share, I don’t want to share, I’m not going to share here,” I end up sharing and it’s so good.

I do want it to be more public, but I think that the moment of me actually sharing publicly in a sermon or in a teaching or something, somehow, somewhere, it’s even going to be a moment that God’s going to lead me to that I’m going to see and it’s going to be clear. I’m probably not going to want to do it, but I’m going to know that I should.

So, I wanted to be a part of my public ministry, but I want it to be I’d rather be a part of my public ministry because the people I shepherd more and more know that about me, rather than because I’ve announced it.

Well, because if you announce it, all of a sudden that is your whole ministry. All of a sudden, you’re a gay pastor who talks about how it’s okay to be a gay Christian and your whole ministry centers on that.

Exactly.

All of a sudden, that’s all you can do, even though we don’t treat other sins that way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s a college guy who used to be in the church here and was back over winter break and was talking with me about life, you know, and like, he wanted to talk about singleness, because he was struggling really hard with having roommates who were either engaged or almost engaged. He’d had a couple failed relationships and didn’t really see a wife in his near future – or a girlfriend or fiancé in his near future – and was feeling very distraught about it. He really was a very godly, very Christ loving and fearing man who was just struggling with all this anxiety and frustration and fear with his singleness.

He asked me for advice because he knew me as a late 20s man, still single and seemingly okay with it, and I knew in that when he was sharing this, it just it was one of those Holy Spirit, like, the kind of pressure calming weight on you that like, I need to share this. And it didn’t end up being a homosexuality conversation. I just told him, “you think you know what I’m going through and I appreciate your encouragement, but you don’t, and for me to tell you what I’ve learned about the Kingdom in my singleness, I need to tell you a lot more about me.”

It ended up being a conversation of idols and false gospels, that in my life and my singleness I have had to repent of false gospels I have believed. Like, I’ll be saved if I’m straight, or, I’ll be saved if I’m married. I’ve had to repent of those. I had to actually believe that intimacy with the Lord is all I need. I’ve had to call God up on that, you know, and ask him to meet me. I’ve had to believe in the family of my friends and of believers in my church. I’ve had to welcome couples into my life to know me in my sexuality and still lovingly include me in their family. I’ve had to do all these things to be okay with my singleness. And I know that he, as a straight man who really wants to have a girlfriend and wants to have a fiancé, is in a completely different place that me, but similarly, would he be willing to repent to false Gospels and false narratives? And would he be willing to go to a kind of humble broken place before the Lord and seek him as his satisfaction in similar ways that I’ve had to and ways I’ve chosen to?

It’s been here in that moment, he didn’t know me as a gay pastor. He didn’t know me as gay pastor, he knew me as a man after God’s heart that he wanted to ask advice for and I got to use my raw, shameful places of brokenness to shepherd his heart toward the Lord. And I want that to happen so much so that people start to know it about me and even share it with other people without feeling bad about it. But yet, I’m not known as like the pastor who only leads in that thing. Anyways, that’s kind of rambling.

I feel like God has been preparing hearts in my community to hear my story, you know. And I’ve felt God saying, “these are going to be people that I’m going to ask you to share with,” and I’ve even seen how he’s kind of prepared their hearts to be able to have this conversation and be like minded with me. I felt him over and over in ways that I would have never imagined with people I would have never imagined. I felt him gaining and growing my community of loving, sharpening, edifying believers, and I know that it’s probably ultimately for a season where I’m not going to experience that from believers, where there’s going to be more persecution, or more hatred, or more rejection. But I think if and when that comes, I’m going to be ready for it in ways that I’m not now and I’ll respond like Christ would. But I think right now I might respond with more anger, or hatred, or self-righteousness. So that’s one hope that I have is that he’s preparing me for that.

So, going off of that, how has this experience affected your relationship with Christ? Not so much how has Christ affected the way you struggle, but how has having this as part of who you are had an influence on the way that you follow Christ, the way that you love Christ, and the way that you approach him?

It’s good. It’s made me not… in a weird way, it’s made me not assume that he owes me something. It’s illuminated his sufferings in my mind. I’ve been dealt this hand that seems unfair. But ultimately, I find life in this place of suffering, and that’s the story of Jesus—dealt a hand by God that would very much so seem unfair and ultimately finding greater glory, greater satisfaction, greater wholeness, and a lot of eternal purpose in his obedience to the suffering.

The older I get, the less I wish that my life were more comfortable and the more I kind of cling to the discomfort. I kind of like the suffering and I feel really close to Christ in my suffering, in my confusion, and kind of cling to it. And I don’t get mad at God because of it, because I see how it’s made me love Jesus more and believe in Jesus more. I believe in his story more, the story of the passion of Jesus Christ. It’s made me believe in it more in like, that it has to be true. And God had to have done that to save me and to love me and to bring me in. And I don’t want to rid myself of it because I kind of want to, like, keep holding it.

I’m okay with my homosexuality and I know that brings me toward God. It always calls me toward lowliness and into scary places of obedience. But like, I’ll keep holding it… Yeah… it’s made me closer to God. Without Christ, I would still be very distant from God, and even if I was still choosing to not walk out in this, I think I would kind of hate God. But the example of Christ in his suffering makes God make sense and makes Christ makes sense and makes me feel kind of high. And maybe some of its prideful. But I mean, even the Scripture is like, he will bring you low in order to exalt you. So I feel exalted, even in my place in ministry, even in not being “out” publicly. I often talk with people and feel like, I get the gospel way more than all of you do. I feel kind of exalted by God. I’m like, thanks. Thanks for exalting me in my suffering.

I think there’s many people like you in my life who don’t struggle with homosexuality, but yet have welcomed brokenness in their life and experience God exalting them in different ways. I don’t think it has to just be tragic death, sex, brokenness, or adultery. There’s plenty of people that I’ve been friends with that I’ve seen that same sense of welcoming suffering to be exalted in Christ and haven’t had the big crazy thing that they unveil, you know, like the big secret. So, I think there’s a lot of people that get it, but don’t have the big thing, but I am kind of thankful to have a big thing, because I think it’s helped me know Christ.

So, what are some of the helpful ways that people have approached this with you, as you’ve shared? And what are some of the unhelpful ways that people have approached it?

Unhelpful, I just think of people who expect me to be healed from it, or people to expect me to be normal. It’s really burdensome. Whenever someone finds out that I’m homosexual, their first thought is wanting to come alongside in prayer for my healing. But it’s like, do you just not want to see how much the gospel has been magnified through this? Come on, like, come on, man! God didn’t mess up in doing this to me, and you’re worried about me being healed quickly seems as if you think he messed up. That pulls me back to my elementary and middle school days; you wanting me to be healed so badly is like shoving me back in that middle school, elementary school kid where I thought God messed up, where I was so confused and so pissed, because he must have messed up and he must have forgotten to make me normal.

Then the other thing is that when people expect me to want to be married or want to date. I do want to I want to have a wife. I do. I really do. And I want to have sex with her and learn how to enjoy and how to how to serve her and vice versa. I want to raise kids. I like dating. I even like pursuing women. There are things about me that still want a female partner, to comfort and to hold her, too. I want a lot of those things, but when people assume that I, like, crave dating women like they do, that’s been really burdensome for me.

I had a conversation with my dad one time where he was always expecting me to start dating. Just to like, dabble in it, you know? “Son, it’ll be good for you.” And I agreed with him, but finally said, “Dad, the thought of you dating a man romantically, like, how does that sit with you? You know?” And he was like, “well, that’s, I find that disgusting.” And I said, “even though I can agree with you that heterosexuality is holy and homosexuality is not, you have to recognize that I, in many ways, see myself dating a woman very similarly to the way you see yourself dating a man, and you can just pretend that that discomfort isn’t always present in me.” And he handled that really graciously and understood.

So when people expect me to act straight, and when people expect me to want to be healed quickly, I like… I think straight is good and I want to be healed. It sounds awesome and I believe in it. But it’s when people come to the table with that first that it hurts me, because you’re missing something.

And then, when people respond good, the biggest thing has been when people tell me they trust me. I’ve told one of my mentors one time and he just told me that he trusted me more than he did before. He said, “I would let you be alone with my son even more joyfully and more excitedly than then 20 minutes ago, because it’s not about how sinful you are or are not. It’s about your integrity, and it’s about your confession, and your willingness to build trust with me. And your confession means the world and I trust you more than ever before.” That was huge.

When you tell people, do you feel like all the sudden they feel that your relationship with Christ is kind of their responsibility? They feel like they need to make sure you’re getting it right or make sure you’re doing it the right way.

Yeah, yeah, uh-huh. The same thing that I was trying to do with the gay people who don’t agree with me, theologically, you know? Yeah, yeah, I feel that.

So the more helpful times when people don’t do that.

(chuckling) Yeah, right. That’s a good point. When they just regard me. Yeah, that’s been the most helpful times. Trust means the world and when you do everything you can on your own accord to build trust with people your whole life because you think you don’t deserve it, and then you actually allow yourself to lay before them broken in confession and realize that for the first time this actually built trust. It just illuminates the gospel, like, the upside-downness of the gospel of Jesus. The things you don’t think are going to bring about holy outcomes end up doing just that.

Click here to read the final chapter, in which we talk about some things my friend wishes people could understand about his experience, as well as some suggestions on how to move forward in your own communities, whether gay, straight, or somewhere in between. He also gives a couple of book recommendations.

Illuminating the Gospel: An Anonymous Conversation with a Gay Christian

“I have this innate recognition that without suffering we don’t know Christ. Without suffering in this life, there is no chance for me to understand the gospel it its fullness… What an incredible, tangible, in my face, loud opportunity I have on a daily basis to see myself as in need of the grace and the love of Jesus Christ and the wholeness that he gives me, even when my flesh screams for wholeness somewhere else.“

If you would like to read in three separate sittings, you can find links to the chapters below:

Chapter One: Communities
Chapter Two: Lowliness
Chapter Three: Redemption

My words are in bold while his words are not.

Chapter One: Communities

Did you grow up in church? What was your family like and what kind of community that you live in?

So did your parents know about your own temptation or struggle?

How did he approach that?

But right now you’re not “out” yet. I mean, you’re telling certain people, but it’s not a part of your public ministry.

Right.

It’s like, being outside of what’s considered normal, you’ve been rubbing up against that.

(sarcastically) But you’ll be married to a woman one day?

So, growing up in these communities, did you ever think that you would just embrace that and walk away from the church and Christ and just leave that all behind?

I never did never once.

What do you think kept you from doing that?

So have you expressed that kind of faith and that kind of conviction to people who are affirming?

Maybe three or four or five times?

How is that usually received?

Right? Because you’ve explained it so well.

(chuckling) I’ve explained it so well, yeah.

Chapter Two: Lowliness

“I’m okay with my homosexuality and I know that brings me toward God. It always calls me toward lowliness and into scary places of obedience. But like, I’ll keep holding it. It’s made me closer to God. Without Christ, I would still be very distant from God, and even if I was still choosing to not walk out in this, I think I would kind of hate God. But the example of Christ in his suffering makes God make sense and makes Christ makes sense and makes me feel kind of high. And maybe some of its prideful. But I mean, even the Scripture is like, he will bring you low in order to exalt you.”

Exactly.

All of a sudden, that’s all you can do, even though we don’t treat other sins that way.

So, what are some of the helpful ways that people have approached this with you, as you’ve shared? And what are some of the unhelpful ways that people have approached it?

Yeah, yeah, uh-huh. The same thing that I was trying to do with the gay people who don’t agree with me, theologically, you know? Yeah, yeah, I feel that.

So the more helpful times when people don’t do that.

Chapter Three: Redemption

“My testimony is not a homosexual testimony, it is a sin and redemption testimony. I want my understanding of sin and redemption in my life to speak to other people’s understanding of sin and redemption and their life, whether or not it’s the same sin. That’s what we’re missing in America. That’s freaking what we’re missing in America. I mean, like, suburbs and fences and locked doors and social media, all the things that that enhance manipulation and deception and allow people to live in secrecy. Our churches are the same way.”

What are some things that you wish people understood about your experience?

Why you think you haven’t done that?

Well, totally fear of being of it being disgusting to the person that’s listening, or being really uncomfortable.

Not even to people who share your experience or people who would be pretty affirming of your sexuality?

It’s a thing every time.

Do you have more encouraging or open conversations like that with people who share your experience?

Because this isn’t really a conversation about struggling with homosexuality. Yeah. It’s about struggling with sin.

It’s because they know about your sin, holistically.

Yes, yeah.

Right? Because, yeah, one type of Christian is not the savior of another.

Yeah. That’s right.

We are all mutual sinners in need of a mutual Savior.

Right, that’s good. (chuckling) Yeah, you could do this whole thing without me; you don’t need me.

(chuckling) Well, I learned it all from you, so, no, I couldn’t. But, we are out of time. Before you go, are there any resources you would suggest for people who are interested?

Two books: Gay Girl Good God by Jackie Hill Perry an Washed and Waiting by Wesley Hill.

Celebrating Resurrection in a Dying World

Trigger Warning: This post contains discussion of death, war, suicide, and still-birth.

There it is.

Another church advertising their upcoming Sunday service.

Join us this Sunday at such-and-such times to learn about the Risen Christ!
Egg hunt following service and pictures with the Easter Bunny!

I suppose it is that time of year. The daffodils and the tulips are blooming, the bermudagrass is starting to green, the shelves are stocked with pastels, and the bunnies and the peeps are finding their way into just about every shopping cart. Easter is upon us again, bringing with it demands of frilly dresses, short-sleeve button ups, and eggs – plastic, deviled, painted, saladed, and otherwise.

Oh, and church.

I’m sure that studies have proven this, but anybody in the Bible belt knows that the rule is you can be a Christian if you go to church on Christmas and on Easter. We’ll get all dressed up and sing songs about how Jesus is alive, do all of the festive duties, and go back to our lives the next day, fingers stained with dye and never wanting to see another boiled egg.

I understand that this probably comes off as bitter and, perhaps, crotchety. After all, what harm is there in letting people have their fun?

Despite all this, I don’t actually think that there’s anything wrong with filling little plastic eggs with coins or candies and having kids rummage about the house or yard or wherever we pretend the rabbit hid them. I also, turns out, don’t think there’s anything wrong with remembering around the turn of Spring every year that you should probably be going to church. And I certainly don’t think that there’s anything wrong with deviled eggs.

It’s not so much what’s there that bothers me; it’s what isn’t there. Especially this year. Let me explain.

A little over a year ago, the Coronavirus broke onto the world scene and proceeded to mercilessly steal away over two million lives (and climbing). Families everywhere mourned the loss of their loved ones who – due to the horrid infection rate of the virus – often died alone, with final words passed over the phone or through window panes. Nurses have described the flood of patients as a wartime triage, quickly having to make the decision of who lives and who dies due to the staggering need and the minimal resources to treat them.

Shortly thereafter, a man in uniform murdered a man by kneeling on his neck for nine minutes while the unarmed victim cried out for his mother, and the country was once again reminded that racism did not end with the Emancipation Proclamation, nor did police brutality end with body cameras. The social unrest that followed would come to mark the year as one of upheaval and uncertainty, but the bloodshed was nothing new. The names pile up in the wake of a world moving on.

After that, we learned about a doctor on the border administering forced hysterectomies and sterilization to detainees. Ethnic genocide in China. Homeless children in Syria left scarred and disfigured by another bombing. More COVID deaths. More law-abiding murders. Another shooting in Atlanta. Another shooting in Colorado.

Even without global pandemics and racist violence, the world is dying. It may not look that way from my back deck – the blooming redbuds and the henbit peaking up through the lawn would want me to believe otherwise – but everything in creation is racing towards death. Just recently, the winter took the lives of many in Texas as hundreds were left without power, water, and heat in a record cold. An explosion in Beirut, and the world spins on without blinking. Earthquakes, flooding, rockslides, and hurricanes seem to be picking up the pace. And still, while natural disasters and industrial accidents pile bodies to the heavens, it is no match for the efficiency with which we kill each other.

But it isn’t just that.

In the house next to ours lives an old woman who woke up this morning thinking of all the things that need to be done in her yard: the fence needs to be cleared, canopies need to be raised, pergolas need to be moved, and abandoned sheds need to be torn down and hauled away. She was out there this morning with a bow saw and a pair of loppers attacking the ivy that never seems to end, knowing full well that she will likely not live to see the end of the work ahead.

Just last week, a friend of mine told me about witnessing a suicide at work – an eleven year old boy googled the best way to tie a noose and dropped himself in it. He had to be there when the family found out and those faces are still what he sees when he goes to bed and when he wakes up. This he holds with him as the anniversary approaches yet again of his cousin’s own suicide.

We have friends who have suffered a miscarriage; we have friends who have suffered multiple miscarriages. Some of my friends have tried to take their own lives. Some of my friends’ parents are dead. Most of us have watched grandparents die and while modern science builds its Babel, the grave awaits our breaking bodies. Be it COVID or cancer, a car crash or another Columbine, something is going to put us in the ground. Maybe it will be old age that does it, and if we are lucky it will be painless. But most of us will not be lucky.

So what the hell are we doing painting eggs? And why in the world are we singing about life when everyone – everywhere – is dying?

I look at my daughter with a sobering realization that as young and lively as she is, she is not long for this world. And while I have no idea what suffering the world is storing up for the day her childhood crumbles, I know that death is part of the world she was born in. Already death schemes for her. And whether its eighty years or eighty seconds, it will get her. Lord willing, it will get me first.

And in this moment Easter begins to hit a little different. What is Easter, anyway?

Two-thousand years ago there was a man who claimed to be God and king and he was executed for it. They drug him from court to court through the night, ripped the flesh off his back until muscles spilled from his shoulders, and marched him to a hill and nailed him to a cross. He slowly suffocated, each breath becoming more desperate and tried. He soiled himself as a crowd watched and jeered and mocked. Wave after wave of unrelenting pain, and then he died above a pool of his own blood.

They pried the nails out of his hands and carried him to his tomb.

And then he lay there, unmoving and unbreathing.

And for two-thousand years, people have claimed that this man who claimed to be God and king did not stay dead. That a torn and tattered lump of flesh and organs was healed to the point of living again. Lungs breathing, heart beating, neurons and synapsis firing as the man got up and walked out of the grave, never to return again. For two-thousand years people have claimed that this Godman King would come again and put an end to death, suffering, pain, evil, and all things bad forever and ever.

And for two-thousand years people have been dying.

And for two-thousand years people have been suffering horrible, horrible things, and still no one has shown up.

Two-thousand years of still-births. Two-thousand years of suicides. Two-thousand years of murder, rape, war, and oppression.

And Christians still have the gall and the audacity to celebrate resurrection day. To say that all of this suffering will be defeated on some yet-to-come day when Christ will come again and raise the dead to life.

It’s offensive, isn’t it? To look at people who are suffering at the hands of sin and death and tell them that it’s all going to be okay. It’s like telling someone with stage four cancer that there’s a pill you can take that will make it all go away. It’s like telling a child who just said goodbye to their grandparents to come back tomorrow and they’ll be good as new.

And yet this is the audacious claim of Christianity, that really and truly the world was not supposed to be this way. That death slithered into the world a very long time ago, but it is neither welcome nor long for creation. That there is a man who claimed to be God who defeated death by succumbing to it, only to leave the tomb as empty as death’s claim on him. That sin, suffering, pain, and death – never at rest in hunting down life – had the chance to throw everything at Christ and destroy the giver of life, and it was nothing. The wave of death met its mountain and broke beneath it. And it has been a very long time since death was defeated, and it has not yet died, but it will, and the time spent dying will pale in comparison to the time spent living.

So, what is Easter? Easter is neither cute nor quaint; it is raw and gritty. Easter is, to steal from Levi the Poet, a middle finger to the grave. It is a victory cry in the cemetery with fists pushed back above the dirt. It is looking death in its ugly face, seeing it for what it is, saying its damnable name, sitting in its abominable stench, staring into its grotesque and disgusting eyes and seeing it, knowing it, feeling it, and hating it, and declaring, “death, thou shalt die.”

We will do an egg hunt this year and you’d better believe that my daughter is going to look adorable in her pastel dress. We will walk through daffodils and smile amidst the tulips. I’ll eat as many deviled eggs as I can handle. We will go to church and sing songs about Jesus raising from the dead, because he did and we will. Death is not the end. Death will die. Easter is not primarily a time for egg hunts and pastels. To celebrate resurrection in a world so marred by suffering is a serious claim. Here’s to the Christ who overcame death by suffering its worst and raising in power to vanquish death, and to empty tombs on the day when he makes all things new.

Happy Easter.