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Are We Really Free?

Recently I was having coffee with a good friend, and as we are wont to do, we began talking about what the other had been reading. Myself, as someone who’s a pastor and general church nerd, always tends to read around church or theology or culture. He is a business executive coach, so he often reads about topics such as leadership and coaching and that sort of thing.

And sometimes he even reads beyond those boundaries.

But when he shared the name of the most recent book he had been reading, I was quite surprised. The topic and the title were a bit taboo, in fact.

I was immediately curious.

As someone who cannot, cannot, cannot resist an intriguing title, ⁓ I’ve already, in fact, taken home a book and read it from the church library here.

I was immediately drawn by the title and went to our local library to download the audio version of the book.

The book title is this:

Existential Kink: Unmask Your Shadow and Embrace Your Power, a method for getting what you want by getting off on what you don’t.

No.

Now I must admit I feel a little sheepish saying those words in church and even especially from the pulpit, but I figure ⁓ this is Pride Month, so we say things that are unorthodox or untraditional, and I can get away with it perhaps.

And if not, I’m only here for, you know, how many more weeks?

As it turns out, this is a sermon about a kind of freedom that most would not understand.

The Patterns We Keep Repeating

Existential Kink is a self-help book by Carolyn Elliott, and she argues that our recurring negative patterns persist because at some level we are unconsciously attached to them. And by bringing these hidden desires into light, they lose their power over us and we become free to live differently.

She’s seeking to build off the words of the famed psychologist Carl Jung.

Who was German, guess, right? So it fits well in this context.

That he said,

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

Listening to the author as she reads these words, I couldn’t get away from the question:

What if she’s right?

What if we’re not nearly as free as we think we are?

We say we’re free, but we don’t live like it.

And while Elliot’s language is certainly provocative, I suspect most of us would recognize that same basic premise.

We know what it’s like to find ourselves stuck in these same patterns again and again and again.

We swear we’ll respond differently next time.

We promise we’ll finally let it go.

We tell ourselves that we’re done.

We’re done with that bad habit, that resentment, that way of thinking.

And yet somehow.

Somehow we find ourselves there again and again.

Alas, I found myself there this past week.

Which raises, I suppose, for us a rather uncomfortable question.

Are we really as free as we think ourselves to be?

And if we’re not, what do we do about it?

We often move toward tactics of control and strategy.

We make vision boards, vision statements, we practice visualization, but these can sort of function like wallpaper over a deeper rot.

And until we address these underlying issues, the same black mold will just seep through, infecting our relationships, our actions, and our overall well being.

And perhaps this is where I suppose things get a little interesting, because maybe the deeper issue is not that we need to get a better hold of ourselves, develop better strategies for when we lose our temper, or even become more disciplined versions of ourselves.

Again, none of these are bad per se.

But it’s sort of like wallpapering over the black mold.

It’s not solving the root excuse me, it’s not solving the rot at the core of the problem.

And the deeper question is this:

Why do we keep returning to the things that hurt us?

Why do we keep repeating those same patterns?

Why do we keep finding ourselves stuck again and again in those same places?

In short, why do we say we are free yet live as anything but free?

A Very Pauline Question

I’m only a few chapters into this book and immediately after listening to the introduction I texted my friend and said:

This sounds very Pauline.

Meaning, this sounds very similar to the questions that the Apostle Paul is wrestling with in the book of Romans.

In his own way, I think Paul is asking a very similar set of questions.

Why do humans keep returning to the very things that diminish them?

Why do we say we’re free but keep living as though we’re under the power of something else?

The details, of course, are different.

We turn to vision boards, affirmations, strategies for self-improvement.

Not again that these are inherently bad per se, but Paul’s audience did something similar too, except their move was to turn to strict adherence to religious rules and practices.

The challenge, of course, is that underneath both practices, both moves is the same instinct:

If I can just get myself under control, then I will finally be free.

And that’s the very instinct that Paul here is trying to challenge.

Don’t You Know You’re Dead?

So Paul says something perhaps equally unorthodox and surprising to his hearers.

Don’t you know that you’re dead? he says.

Don’t you realize that the old person you used to be is buried and the corpse of your old self is dead and gone?

I mean he doesn’t quite say it like that.

He says this:

This is what we know that the person we used to be was crucified with him in order to get rid of the corpse that had been controlled by sin. That way we wouldn’t be slaves to sin anymore because the person who’s died has been freed from sin’s power.

Remember the question we’ve been wrestling with:

Why do we keep returning to the things that hurt us?

Paul’s answer is not what we might immediately expect.

He doesn’t offer a better strategy.

He doesn’t offer a more disciplined approach.

He doesn’t tell us to try harder or to go back to my children’s sermon to pull harder.

Instead, he proclaimed something else.

Something that God has already done.

That the old self is dead.

That the old self has been crucified with Christ.

And that the good news is that in death we are freed from that which once had control or dominion over us.

A few verses earlier, Paul writes that if we are united together in death like Jesus, we will also be united together in resurrection with Jesus.

In other words, Paul isn’t simply talking about self-improvement.

He’s talking about death and resurrection.

He’s talking about God doing something so profound that the person we were once no longer has the final word.

Trust the Promise

We tend to think we’re free from our past self, our old lives, our old habits.

Or perhaps more accurately, we think we can control them.

We think we can manage them, contain them, keep them in check.

Yet for all of our assumptions of freedom and control, we’re often more bound to these old ways than we would care to admit.

And Paul’s entire argument is that the old self is dead and buried, and sin no longer has dominion over us.

Sin no longer has control over us.

Death no longer has dominion.

And the question I invite you to consider this morning is whether we trust that promise to be true.

In his book The Church in an Age of Secular Mysticism, theologian Andrew Root writes that faith is about reception, not right actions or beliefs.

This is quite a contrast to our modern understanding of faith.

And today in some Christian contexts we understand faith as right beliefs, mentally assenting to the right sort of beliefs.

With the assurance that if we just think the right thing or believe the right thing, then we will be okay.

In other contexts, Christian contexts, faith is understood purely as right actions, that if we just do the right thing, then we’ll be the right way.

Again, none of these are bad per se, but they’re both moves of control.

And they can become assumptions that if we can simply get a hold of ourselves, if we can simply believe the right thing or simply behave the right way, then we can steer ourselves in the right direction.

What Paul is saying, what the good news of Jesus is saying, I believe, is something quite different entirely.

It’s saying:

Trust the promise.

Trust that this has already happened.

Trust that the old self is gone and the new self is come.

And to be sure, this is quite contrarian to our modern ears.

Shaped as we are for command and control, our move in most places is just to try harder.

To try harder.

And the good news of Jesus is essentially:

Try less.

I mean, again, the finger traps.

Try less.

Don’t produce, receive.

So then it becomes not about self mastery, but instead death with Christ.

It’s not about more effort, it’s about God’s action.

It’s not about finding ourselves, excuse me, fixing ourselves.

But rather trusting the promise.

And it’s not about I will change, but rather Christ is already changing me.

And that’s good news.

The way Paul describes is one of reception, and it’s only in a life of reception can the unknown be made known, and our cells be made attentive to the dramatic truth of God’s transformative love and grace.

Two Stories

So then in a way it’s not about self control, but rather about accepting our own mortality.

I see us quite often in my work as a hospital chaplain.

Not too infrequently I encounter people who have been hospitalized for what they assume is simply one too many drinks.

They often say the same thing.

This is my wake-up call. I’m going to get my life together. I’m going to get this thing under control.

Rarely, of course, do I get to see the fruit of their actions.

Except one time I did.

And it was not pretty.

It was a middle-aged man, not too much older than me, who had been hospitalized and was in quite bad shape.

He was unconscious and had the telltale signs of a person whose liver had quite literally taken too much.

Yellow and jaundiced, he lay there unconscious in the bed.

And as I sat there and talked with his family and his loved ones and prayed with them and encouraged them, something about his story rang familiar.

Sure enough, looking back in his chart when I was going back to track my meeting with this family and patient, I scrolled down a little bit in the chart notes and I noticed that I had actually seen this same man some months prior.

I remember hearing many of the same things from him.

This is a wake up call. I’m going to get my life together. I’m going to get this thing under control.

Quite clearly he had not.

What he had thought he had control over had in fact turned out to be his slave master.

And why, as unorthodox and pre-modern as those words sound to us today about slavery and bondage, I think in many ways they still ring true.

The man had been unable to admit that alcohol was his slave master, and that he was in bondage to it.

He thought he was free, but he was anything, anything but free.

And this is why I find the path of Alcoholics Anonymous so intriguing.

Each and every time they meet together, they say willingly, they say this:

I’m an alcoholic.

I am defeated.

I’m a slave to this.

Perhaps not so much in those certain terms.

See, us modern people today, we tend to think that if we’re a slave to something, we’re not free.

Paul says quite the opposite.

That when we finally stop pretending that we are in control, when we finally acknowledge our own bondage, we become open to a different kind of freedom.

Not by our own power or efforts or trying harder, but by the power of the one who already conquered death:

Jesus.

And that brings me to a second story.

The first man sought freedom through control.

The second man found freedom through trust.

A few days ago, I think it was driving perhaps to and from church here, that I was listening to an evangelical podcast about a man sharing his story about sex addiction.

And he had tried it all.

More rules.

More control.

More attempts at behavior modification.

None of it worked.

And none of it worked because none of it got to the heart of the matter.

The deeper rot inside of him that was a deep woundedness and brokenness that he could neither fix or control on his own.

One day his wife came home and asked him straight out:

“Is this you?”

Directly confronted with the reality, he did the unthinkable.

He didn’t try to fix things.

He didn’t try to manage.

He didn’t try to control things.

He simply surrendered.

“Yes”, he said.

And in surrendering and admitting that he could not fix things on his own, he joined a recovery group where he opened himself up to the radical and transformative grace of God.

He made himself receptive to this truth.

That when he finally acknowledged his own death and failure, newness could be born within him.

Whereas in the past he sought freedom through control and trying harder, instead he found freedom through trust.

The Good News

Friends, this is the good news of the gospel.

Like this is it right here.

Not that we finally can get our lives under control, but that in Jesus Christ, as we’ve already sang this morning, our chains are broken and we’ve been set free.

Thanks.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

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This book grew out of years of ministry, nonprofit work, chaplaincy, podcast conversations, and a growing conviction that church buildings can become places of faithful presence throughout the week—not just on Sunday mornings.

The book explores practical and theological ideas around:

• housing

• childcare

• food ministries

• social enterprise

• financial stewardship

• youth and older adult ministry

• and how churches can serve their neighborhoods without losing their identity as the church.

At its core, this is not a book about “saving” the church through innovation. It’s about joining the work God is already doing in our communities.

If you’d like to support the project, here are three simple ways to help:

1. Pre-order the book from the publisher:
   https://churchpublishing.org/products/9781640659988-the-church-as-community-hub

2. Share the book with pastors, church leaders, denominational leaders, and thoughtful church nerds in your life
   Word of mouth really matters with projects like this.

3. Recommend or share this Substack
   A lot of the ideas behind this book were developed right here through ongoing writing and conversation.

Thank you to everyone who has encouraged this project along the way. I’m genuinely grateful.

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Hospital chaplaincy often reveals the end result of years of unresolved grief and trauma. Watching these stories unfold has shaped how I think about faith as well. When Christianity becomes little more than our best intentions or moral effort, it cannot carry the weight of human suffering. Like recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous, real healing begins with confession and surrender—acknowledging our limits and depending on the power of God rather than our own strength.

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When Pain Goes Unexamined

The interesting thing about serving as a hospital chaplain is that I rarely see the beginning of a tragedy.

I usually see the end of it.

The ICU bed.
The machines.
The family gathering outside the room.

And almost always, when the story begins to unfold, you realize the crisis didn’t start here.

It started years earlier—with grief that was never faced, trauma that was never named, pain that was simply pushed aside until it became something far more destructive.

A dad who, isolated and alone during Covid, relents to addiction and ends up hooked up to machines in the ICU, awaiting death, leaving behind a wife and young daughter.

An older man, his siblings exasperated and exhausted as unexamined grief from the passing of his own parent decades ago cascades into an addiction that has made his life unsustainable.

A young man seeking to escape and outrun his own trauma through risk-taking and drugs, only to end up piling more trauma upon himself.

First, believe it when you hear people say men—and especially young men—are in trouble. I have more stories I could share.

Second, as I’ve said before, the hospital is often the end point of unresolved grief and trauma—the almost inevitable outcome when it isn’t dealt with but simply ignored.

And because of the way my mind works, for good or ill, I often wonder: when did this start? What was the unresolved grief or trauma that set this person on the path that led them here?

Once, a family member said it quite bluntly:

“This all started when his dad died. He’s been escalating and isolating ever since.”

For better or worse, that’s how my mind works. Seeing the end results of so much ignored pain and grief perhaps heightens my awareness of unintended consequences—or, said another way, leaves me somewhat obsessed with implications.

And that instinct doesn’t stop with the hospital. It shapes how I think about theology as well—especially the kinds of theology that try to carry the weight of the world without the resources the Gospel of Jesus actually provides.

I’ve written about it before, but I’ll say it again.

What has cooled me so much on so-called “Progressive” Christianity1 is that I’ve seen where it can end up: cynicism, mistrust, isolation, and a flattened view of divinity that reduces God to little more than a conglomeration of humanity’s best intentions.

But when sh*t hits the fan—or when a certain president unconscionably wins a second term—there’s not much left to do but fall into hopelessness, despair, and/or rage.2

After all, if Jesus is simply an example for us to follow, we have quite clearly failed to live up to his standards.

If the goal is simply to become more loving, as some might say, our nation seems to be descending further into anger and chaos.

If the Bible is merely a conversation partner, then clearly we must tell it what is what—because loving your neighbor and showing kindness to those who persecute you begins to sound quaint, old-fashioned, even irrelevant.

I don’t mean to say that every person who identifies as a “Progressive” Christian ends up bitter or despairing.

No—the message of the gospel is too powerful for that. Even in diluted form, it still transforms.

What I am saying is that, left to its own internal logic, this is where the trajectory of “Progressive” Christianity can lead: despondent, alone, exhausted.

It’s no wonder the Apostle Paul wrote, addressing those who doubted the resurrection of Jesus, that such people are “most miserable…having no hope in this world.”

Is it any wonder that those who reduce Jesus to a mere thought leader and the Bible to book club fodder can find themselves overwhelmed and exhausted when things don’t go as expected?3

This is where I say: thank God for the Bible. Within it we see testimony of God’s presence and participation in life even when things seem bleakest.

I think of Elijah and the still small voice when he believed he was defeated and alone. All his earthly efforts had failed him. He didn’t need a pep talk—he needed to be reminded of a living God. And he was.

Hospital beds are, in many ways, liminal spaces, as I’ve written about before.

They represent crossroads, where the addicted or broken must confront in real time their own inability to overcome their demons alone.

This past year in America, if I may be so bold, feels like a similar kind of acute-care moment for the health of our nation.

And yet many people—including many in our churches—seem convinced that doubling down on anger and effort will somehow fix things, as if trying harder or “fighting harder” will resolve the polarization and mistrust tearing us apart.

Sure—tell me how responding to gerrymandering with more gerrymandering will solve our problems.

But I digress.

Often when I speak with someone hospitalized after an overdose, they say the same things:

“This is a wake-up call.”
“I’m going to change some things in my life.”

Trying to be supportive, I encourage them to name who they can rely on for support, where they can find help, and what communities they can reconnect with—especially a church.

I rarely get to see the outcome.

I say rarely because I did once see a man again several months later who had made similar promises but had not implemented the changes he hoped for. Now, deeper in the grip of alcoholism and with his body further brutalized by it, the results were not pretty.

Let me close with this.

As I understand it, one of the key steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is confession and surrender—an acknowledgment that one is indeed an alcoholic and cannot defeat the addiction alone.

Recovery begins when someone stops pretending they can fix themselves.

“Progressive” Christianity, I believe, needs to come to a similar place of confession and surrender.

We cannot defeat all the evil and injustice in our world on our own. We cannot solve it through effort, outrage, or even our best intentions.

We must depend on the same power that raised Christ from the dead—the power revealed in Scripture and present with us through the Holy Spirit.

When Christianity becomes little more than our best intentions dressed up as “God,” it eventually collapses under the weight of reality.

But when we confess our limits and surrender to God’s power, something very different becomes possible.

Grace.
Renewal.
Hope.

And sometimes—like the first honest words spoken in a hospital room—the beginning of healing.

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What if church attendance is not correlation, but actually causation?

In a previous post (see below), I wrote about the confusing and confounding tendency of many, especially progressive Christians, to disregard the data showing regular church attendance as leading to better mental health. The data, as I’ve seen from Ryan Burge, seems pretty clear that it does—even if some have tried to discount it.

One of my readers, made an interesting comment:

“What can’t we ever just say that “church-goers actually are participating in something real”?”

I think there’s something to that.

And, if I may be frank, I think there are a lot of “we believe in science” progressives who simply don’t think this is real—even some progressive Christians, if I may be really frank. The assumption seems to be that there must be some other explanation.

But what if there isn’t?

Joy, Grace, and What We Receive

This Sunday in church, the pastor spoke on joy from Gospel of John 15. She made a few comments that stuck with me, reminding us that joy comes from God and is not something we need to manufacture or perform.

Looking at my Greek New Testament after the fact, I noted again that the word for joy is chara, and from doing a little digging that the Greek words—chairo (rejoice), chara (joy), and charis (grace)—all come from the same root.

In other words, joy and rejoicing are directly connected to grace—God’s grace.

Abiding as the Mechanism

Sunday evening, I was walking into church to pick up my daughter from youth group, and something hit me—what if it’s the abiding in Jesus, often practiced by being in church with the gathered community, that produces joy?

As in, we receive God’s grace, we receive God’s joy, when we are abiding in Christ.

Not just that church helps—but how: through repeated practices of abiding—worship, prayer, Scripture, community—that place people in a posture to receive grace.1

In John 15:5, Jesus says, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.” Then further down in 15:9, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” Then in verse 11, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”

What’s fascinating is that in those few verses, the Greek word menó—translated as “abide” or “remain”—appears over and over again.

It seems then, pretty clear to me what Jesus is saying: abide or remain in me.

So Why the Resistance?

So I ask again: Why are so many progressives—especially progressive Christians—so eager to downplay or explain away the apparent benefits of church?

I can’t explain the former. But for the latter, I do increasingly wonder if, as suggested above, there’s no there, there, so to speak.

Or, to say it differently, data is discerning what we already know to be true based on the words of scripture.

Maybe the data isn’t surprising at all.
Maybe it’s simply measuring what happens when people remain in Christ.

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The Data—and the Reaction

In recent years, data has circulated showing that conservatives tend to be happier and more content in life than liberals/progressives.1 At this point, that’s become common enough that it hardly needs citation.

What’s been more surprising is the reaction to it.

A few weeks ago, I shared some data from showing that church attendance correlates with better mental health. I was struck by how quickly people tried to push back on it—even dismiss it outright. As I texted a friend, it’s surprising how many “we believe in science” progressives struggle to accept findings that don’t align with their assumptions.

And yet, even among self-identified liberals, those who attend church weekly are far less likely to report a mental health condition.

Trying to Explain It Away

So I started digging further.

I came across a research article2 attempting to explain the gap. It suggests the difference may be due to “Conservatives’ greater levels of justifications for and acceptance of the current state of the world (e.g. inequality)” serving as a pacifying factor, or even “due to stigma” around reporting mental health struggles.

The study goes on to say:

“One explanation for this ideological gap in mental health could stem from differing ideological justifications for the state of the world. Conservatism is a system-justifying ideology that seeks to rationalize the existing political, economic, and social order.”

I’m not a conservative, but it’s not hard to see why claims like that contribute to skepticism toward academia—especially when they read less like neutral analysis and more like heavy-handed interpretation.

After all, the entire Make America Great Again movement is built on the assumption that the current political, economic, and social order was not working. So the idea that conservatism simply “rationalizes” the status quo feels incomplete at best.

To its credit, the study does acknowledge:

“We cannot rule out the possibility that there is a real gap between mental health and overall mood ratings among conservatives but no such gap among liberals.”

And even more directly:

“Since 1972, conservatives have consistently reported greater levels of happiness compared to liberals.”

But then it pivots, suggesting that “liberals lack an ideological rationalization which frames inequality in a positive or neutral light,” and again that “Conservatives’ greater levels of justifications for and acceptance of the current state of the world serve as a pacifying factor for their own mental state.”

Those conclusions read less like neutral findings and more like interpretive framing.

What the Data Actually Shows

What seems more straightforward is correlation.

“Conservatism is positively correlated with a number of traits that are traditionally associated with better mental health and well-being, such as religious faith, patriotism, marriage, higher incomes, and old age.”

“It is also true that conservatives in the United States are more likely to be religious than liberals. Thus, at least some portion of the ideological mental health gap may actually be caused by religiosity.”

In other words, church attendance is associated with positive outcomes—not universally, not in every case, but often enough to take seriously.

The study itself acknowledges these realities. Conservative Americans are “more likely to get (and stay) married, more likely to be financially secure, and tend to be older”—all factors tied to improved mental health.

Conversely, “liberal Americans are younger, less likely to be religious, more likely to be members of socially ostracized groups, and less likely to marry. Liberals are also more engaged in politics, participate more, and more likely to find meaning in political activism, but involvement in politics appears to have a negative impact on well-being” (my emphasis).3

That last line is particularly striking.

Even after attempting to control for these variables, the study still concedes that “even controlling for a wide variety of alternative factors the ideological mental health gap still persists.”

The Real Question

Which raises a different question.

Why is this particular conclusion so difficult to accept?

Why are so many progressives—especially progressive Christians—so eager to downplay or explain away the apparent benefits of church?

Seeking prayer, community, and support within a church isn’t a replacement for medical care—but it is a meaningful form of social and spiritual support. As a hospital chaplain, I regularly encourage people to draw on those kinds of resources.

Some of the alternative explanations offered from the study feel less convincing. For example:

“conservatives…may inflate their own mental health ratings to avoid confronting a negative image of themselves.”

But isn’t part of mental health the ability to cope, to reframe, to maintain resilience in the face of difficulty?

Similarly, the attempt to argue that liberals are “actually” happier includes this line:

“Liberals may be more likely to demonstrate signs of happiness: liberal politicians expressed more positive emotional language as well as smiled more intensely and genuinely, and liberal Twitter users were more likely to tweet out positive words and messages than conservatives on Twitter.”

Those words actually made it into an academic paper. That kind of reasoning doesn’t clarify much.

Formation Beneath the Surface

More broadly, I do wonder about the formation happening beneath all of this.

In recent years, parts of progressivism have leaned heavily into emphasizing injustice, marginalization, and structural critique. There is real importance in naming those realities.

But there is also a difference between acknowledging suffering and organizing one’s entire outlook around it.

At times, it can feel like we are encouraging people not just to recognize hardship, but to remain within it—to interpret their lives primarily through that lens.

The study itself hints at this dynamic when it notes that liberals are more politically engaged, more active, and more invested—while also acknowledging that such engagement “appears to have a negative impact on well-being.”

There may be something there.

A constant “hermeneutic of suspicion” doesn’t just analyze systems—it can begin to shape how a person experiences the world, often in ways that cultivate mistrust and resentment.4

A More Personal Question

Which brings me to a more personal question.

When so many people—especially liberal Christians—question the value of church attendance, are they evaluating it clearly? Or are they, like all of us at times, influenced by the assumptions of their broader ideological environment?

More and more, it seems like many of us—across the political spectrum—are susceptible to a kind of ideological capture. A reluctance to seriously consider that our own frameworks might be incomplete or even wrong.

That dynamic is not limited to one side. It’s part of the broader moment we’re living in.

Looking in the Mirror

There are, of course, real concerns worth naming.

Data shows that increased church attendance can correlate with stronger political conservatism. More, churches are increasingly becoming the domain of the well and educated upper-class financially.

Those are not small issues.

But for me, those concerns don’t negate the data—they invite deeper reflection.

They push me not to dismiss the mirror, but to look into it more honestly.

The Question We Have to Face

This isn’t about defending one ideology over another.

It’s about asking a harder question:

What is actually helping people flourish?

And are we willing to follow the answer—even when it challenges what we want to be true?

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The Setup

Lately I’ve been thinking about ’s Seven Primal Questions, his framework for understanding the deep need that drives each of us. Around the same time, I happened to hear For King & Country’s remake of Michael W. Smith’s classic “Place in This World,” featuring a cameo from Smitty himself.

It struck me: maybe the reason that song has always resonated with me is because my own primal question is #7 — Do I have purpose? That realization made me curious. If “Place in This World” connects so clearly with my question, what 90s CCM songs might connect with the others?

So I did what any nostalgic 90’s youth grouper with a blog would do — I asked ChatGPT to help jog my memory. Together, we built a little mixtape of the Seven Primal Questions, set to the songs so many of us had on repeat back then.

Mike Foster’s Seven Primal Questions

1. Am I safe?

2. Am I secure?

3. Am I loved?

4. Am I wanted?

5. Am I successful?

6. Am I good enough?

7. Do I have purpose?

1. Am I safe? 🛡️

Song: “God Is in Control” – Twila Paris
This was the youth rally anthem of reassurance. Even when the world looked uncertain, Twila’s soaring voice promised: God’s still got this.

Also, bonus points as I bought my then middle school girlfriend, now wife, a Twila Paris album years ago!

2. Am I secure? 🔒

Song: “Great Is the Lord” – Michael W. Smith
Smitty’s worship classic reminded us that real security wasn’t about money or stability, but about the unshakable greatness of God.

Also, this is more probably classic 80’s with the synthesizers, but this is my list!

3. Am I loved? ❤️

Song: “Love Song for a Savior” – Jars of Clay
Half worship song, half alt-rock ballad, it gave words to the teenage longing to be seen, known, and loved — not just by anyone, but by God.

I was never a HUGE jars fan, but I definitely remember this song.

4. Am I wanted? 🤝

Song: “Friends” – Michael W. Smith
The graduation slideshow anthem. Every time it played, we were reassured: you belong, you’re wanted here, and God’s presence makes friendship forever.

I mean, honestly, how can this song not be on the list!?

5. Am I successful? 🏆

Song: “For the Sake of the Call” – Steven Curtis Chapman
When SCC strapped on his guitar and sang about leaving it all behind, he reframed success for a generation. It wasn’t about climbing ladders; it was about answering God’s call.

I was always more a MWS fan than SCC, but there has to be a SCC on the list (yes, I know there probably should also be a Rich Mullens song too, but he tragically passed before I really got into CCM).

6. Am I good enough? 🙇

Song: “Mercy Came Running” – Phillips, Craig & Dean
The altar-call question of all altar-call questions: Am I really okay? Do I measure up? This ballad reminded us the answer was always grace.

Christian vocal groups other than Christian southern gospel was surely a 90’s phenomenon, right? 4Him, Point of Grace, etc?

7. Do I have purpose? 🌍

Song: “Place in This World” – Michael W. Smith
Here’s mine. Even now, this song undoes me. As a young, idealistic believer, the ache for meaning and direction found its perfect soundtrack in Smitty’s ballad.

The song that inspired this blog! I also liked the version that was featured on the Netflix Christian camp movie.

Closing Thought

Mike Foster is right — we’re all driven by one primal question. For me, it’s purpose. For you, it might be safety, security, or love. But looking back, it’s striking how the 90s CCM soundtrack we grew up with was already asking (and answering) these same questions.

So maybe all along, those cassette tapes and CD binders weren’t just nostalgia. Maybe they were the soundtrack to our souls trying to work out their deepest longings.

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In Family Systems Theory, anxiety isn’t just a feeling—it’s a force. It spreads, it escalates, and it shapes the behavior of entire groups. In anxious systems (or societies), people gravitate toward certainty not because it’s true, but because it’s soothing. Moral clarity, even when oversimplified or inaccurate, becomes a coping mechanism.

That’s what I see playing out in so many of today’s public controversies.

The Certainty Illusion

Take the recent news about CBS and Stephen Colbert. Is this the silencing of liberal voices, or just late-night TV evolving in a streaming era? Depends who you ask—and their answer likely reflects their emotional need for certainty more than any serious analysis.

Or consider the WNBA pay debate. Is it pure sexism, or the natural economics of a growing league? The truth is probably both. But social media and cable news thrive on either/or answers, not both/and tensions.

Even the NPR funding conversation is laced with anxiety. Is it a vital public service or a liberal echo chamber? Is this about bias or budgets? These are complex questions. But in anxious systems, complexity feels threatening. So we rush toward clarity—even if it’s false.

When Certainty Becomes a Weapon

There’s another cost to this compulsive certainty: it alienates. When we treat every issue as morally obvious, we make it nearly impossible for those who are undecided—or even slightly questioning—to stay in conversation. There’s no room for doubt, no space for nuance, no grace for process. You're either fully in, or you're suspect.

In that environment, good-faith disagreement is confused with bad character. Curiosity looks like compromise. Asking questions is mistaken for being part of the problem. So people stay silent—or walk away.

And here's why that matters: in high-anxiety environments, belief isn’t just about ideas anymore—it’s about group cohesion and fitting in. As David Zahl writes:

“If we are leaning on a specific cause or ideology for social acceptance, then the most accepted will be those who espouse their views the loudest. Belovedness will be bestowed in proportion to the strength of our commitments. In such environments, hesitation and doubt become grounds for rejection, which incentivizes entrenchment, escalation, and even radicalization.”
— David Zahl, The Big Relief

It should also be said that in midst of our “attention economy,” it pays to speak loudly or forcefully, which creates perverse incentives. The social media algorithms rewards engagement, and nothing seems to drive engagement more than outrage. Everyone needs to be freaking out about something online in order to gain attention. Therefore, we on the consuming end feel the constantly escalated tension because things indeed are always ratched up by one person or another to gain clicks and views.

Not All Clarity Is Bad

Let me be clear: some things do offer absolute moral clarity. There are moments in life and history when the right thing to do is unmistakable. The civil rights movement offered a clarity grounded not in emotional reactivity but in moral vision, patient suffering, and long obedience. When we call something “wrong,” we don’t need to hedge. And when we name injustice, we should do so plainly.

But even moral absolutes can have complexity in how they’re applied. Take “Thou shall not kill.” A clear command. And yet most traditions make ethical space for situations like self-defense, just war, or protecting the vulnerable. That doesn't mean the commandment is relative or optional—it means that applying moral truth in real life often demands wisdom, not just slogans.

This isn’t an argument for moral relativism. It’s an argument for virtue ethics—the belief that there is always a right and just path, but discerning it often requires maturity, courage, and careful attention to context. It’s about formation, not just rules; character, not just clarity.

The overuse of moral certainty—in every headline, every controversy, every tweet—cheapens its power. It turns what should be a moment of ethical conviction into a mood of self-righteousness. And it leaves us unprepared for the real work of moral discernment: listening, learning, wrestling, holding tension.

What Healthy Systems (and Leaders) Can Do

Whether in families, churches, or societies; what Family Systems Theory reminds us is that healthy systems are marked by leaders who can tolerate ambiguity. Healthy leaders can hold the tension without needing to resolve it immediately. They can resist emotional reactivity and stay grounded in purpose rather than panic.

In one episode of his podcast The Non-Anxious Leader, Jack Shitama uses a helpful metaphor: leaders should act like electrical transformers. Just as the power grid relies on step-up transformers to move energy long distances and step-down transformers to safely reduce voltage for home use, society needs leaders who can convert emotional energy into something useful and sustainable.

Sometimes, people need to be told: “Stand up. This matters.” Other times, they need to hear: “Calm down. We’ll get through this.” For instance, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. essentially told Americans—especially white Americans—stand up, this matters. Whereas in the midst of what was surely a serious crisis in WWII, the British government told people to “Keep Calm and Carry On.”

Emotional intelligence means knowing which kind of energy transformation is needed—and when. Or, as Jack Shitama would say, we need leaders who will take principles stands.

Too many leaders today, however, have defaulted to one setting: full voltage, all the time. Instead of regulating anxiety, they reflect it. Or worse, they exploit it. They don’t calm the crowd or challenge it—they just tell people to keep freaking out.

We need something different. We need leaders, thinkers, and citizens who are willing to say, “This is complicated,” not as a cop-out, but as a commitment to doing the hard work of discernment. We need people who know when to raise the stakes—and when to lower the temperature.

Because clarity that costs us truth isn’t clarity—it’s reactivity disguised as confidence.1

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In an effort to sound humane, the church has slowly forgotten how to sound authoritative—and the result is a moral language that persuades less and collapses faster. Said differently, the problem facing many moral arguments today isn’t that they lack compassion—it’s that they’ve been stripped of the authority that once gave compassion weight.

I recently recorded a podcast interview with sociologist Josh Packard—his conversation on Future Christian should release a few weeks after this post goes live. In it, we talked about metanarratives versus micro-narratives. His point, if I understood him correctly, was that while we often assume metanarratives have collapsed, that’s not quite true. Instead, young people are forming micro-narratives—smaller, more personal stories of meaning—but these are often assembled from many sources rather than rooted in a single, shared framework.

That conversation has stayed with me.

I’ve been thinking lately about why certain moral arguments—especially around immigration, justice, and public policy—have lost their persuasive power. In an effort to remain credible in a pluralistic society, many moral claims have been reframed primarily in the language of compassion. That move was meant to broaden appeal. But by loosening those claims from authority, formation, and obligation, they’ve become easier to dismiss—and harder to defend.

What many leaders have attempted, I think, is to reason almost entirely from micro-narratives rather than metanarratives. Practically speaking, this looks like trying to build consensus around shared instincts—kindness, compassion, inclusion—assuming most people already carry an internal story about what it means to be a good person and how that story should be enacted.

The problem is that micro-narratives without a strong moral grounding—without a metanarrative that orders them—are fragile. They dissipate easily. They are easily distracted, redefined, or overridden by competing instincts.

An illustrative example: sanctuary cities

I should be clear up front: I’m not a lawyer or an immigration policy expert. What follows is not a legal brief, but an illustration—meant to clarify how moral language functions when it replaces moral authority rather than rests on it.

Consider the debate over so-called “sanctuary cities.”

These policies are often described publicly as acts of compassion—cities refusing to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement out of moral concern. What many people believe is happening is fairly simple: Democratic-led cities arrest undocumented individuals and then release them, refusing to cooperate with federal authorities because they want to be “welcoming.”

What is often actually happening, as I understand it, is more technical—and more constitutional.

In some jurisdictions, local law enforcement processes undocumented individuals like anyone else. The point of conflict comes after local charges are resolved—when bail is posted, a sentence is served, or charges are dropped. At that point, ICE may issue a detainer request asking the local jail to hold the person longer. Many cities decline unless there is a judge-signed warrant, arguing that continued detention without one risks violating the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable seizure.

That is a legal argument. A constitutional one.

But here’s the complication: cities rarely lead with that explanation. Instead, these policies are often framed publicly in the language of compassion, welcome, or justice.

That framing matters.

When legal restraint is explained primarily as a moral posture, it can sound discretionary—like bending the rules rather than obeying them. Constitutional obligation is translated into ethical sentiment. Critics, hearing moral language where they expect procedural clarity, respond by accusing cities of lawlessness, even when the underlying policy is an attempt to follow the law carefully.

What’s happening here isn’t unique to immigration policy. It mirrors something I’ve watched unfold in the church.

The same pattern in the church

This dynamic feels familiar because I see it in progressive Christianity and the Mainline more broadly.

Over the past several decades, many Mainline leaders intentionally reframed the church’s moral claims in language that could resonate beyond explicitly Christian commitments. Appeals to compassion, justice, dignity, and inclusion allowed the church to remain publicly engaged without requiring shared belief in Scripture, doctrine, or even God.

The goal was not to abandon theology, but to extend the church’s reach—to ensure its moral voice could still be heard in a pluralistic public square.

That strategic choice made sense at the time.

But as with most strategic choices, it carried consequences.

From shared authority to shared sentiment

Over time, shared moral reasoning has increasingly given way to shared moral sentiment. Moral agreement is sustained less by a common account of authority or purpose and more by whether a position feels compassionate or just to a particular community. As long as those intuitions align, the framework holds. But when they diverge—as they inevitably do—the church has fewer internal resources for navigating disagreement beyond appeals to empathy, goodwill, or posture.

This shift doesn’t eliminate moral concern; it reshapes it. Compassion and justice remain central, but the theological scaffolding that once explained why they mattered, how they were defined, and what they were ordered toward becomes less explicit.

What fills the gap is moral intuition—powerful, sincere, and deeply felt, but also variable.

The unintended outcome

One implication of this shift is that disagreement becomes harder to navigate. When moral claims are grounded primarily in shared sentiment rather than shared authority, disagreement often feels less like a difference in reasoning and more like a failure of empathy or goodwill.

Another implication is that the church’s moral voice becomes harder to distinguish from the surrounding culture. When the church speaks in the same moral grammar as secular institutions, it may gain initial resonance—but it loses a clear account of why its claims are specifically Christian rather than simply humane.

In trying to speak to everyone, the church risks speaking from nowhere in particular.

This isn’t an indictment so much as an observation about how moral language functions when it is detached from formation, theological anthropology, and a shared sense of telos.

Why this matters

I don’t see this as a failure of intent. It’s a reminder that actions have consequences, and that strategies shape outcomes in ways we don’t always anticipate.

Compassion remains essential. Justice remains central. But without a clear account of authority, formation, and purpose, those virtues struggle to persuade beyond communities that already share their assumptions.

What was meant to broaden appeal can, over time, weaken durability.

That feels less like a moral failure than a cautionary lesson—one worth paying attention to as the church continues to discern how it speaks, and from where.

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I agree that when Christianity becomes indistinguishable from politics, it hollowes itself out—but far-right evangelicalism won’t collapse the way Progressive Christianity has. Progressive Christianity weakened itself by failing to explain why the church must exist at all. Conservative Christianity, for all its distortions, persists because it still binds people through guilt, high expectations, and a dense cultural ecosystem. What then does that leave for the rest of us?

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I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the past couple years critiquing Progressive Christianity—often to the discomfort of some who assume that critique must mean a slide toward reactionary politics or theological retrenchment. It doesn’t. My concern has been far more basic: Progressive Christianity, as it has often taken shape in Mainline Protestant spaces, has struggled to articulate why the church itself must continue to exist.

That struggle matters. In practice, it has meant worship becoming optional, theology giving way to ideology, and the church increasingly understood as unnecessary overhead—useful only insofar as it advances social outcomes that could just as easily be pursued elsewhere. Over time, that logic doesn’t reform churches; it dissolves them. And in many cases, it has. People haven’t been driven out by strict doctrine or moral demands, but by a quiet, persistent question left unanswered: Why bother with church at all?

It’s from within that line of critique that I’ve been listening carefully to a recent claim made by Carey Nieuwhof, drawing on research from sociologist Ryan Burge. Nieuwhof suggests that the current rise of far-right evangelicalism may eventually collapse the same way Progressive Christianity did—fracturing, losing credibility, and hollowing out from within. Burge’s data strengthens part of that case, noting that a growing percentage of Americans who identify as “evangelical” rarely, if ever, attend church. The label itself has become as political as it is religious.

There’s truth here. When Christianity becomes indistinguishable from a political ideology, there is, as Nieuwhof notes, “nothing left to convert people to.” I agree with that diagnosis. Where I’m less convinced is the conclusion that the far-right evangelical movement will therefore fade in the same way Progressive Christianity has.

Sociologically and theologically, the two are not the same.

1. Guilt Still Functions as a Binding Agent

One of the underappreciated differences between progressive and conservative Christian cultures is the role of guilt. In progressive spaces, sin is overwhelmingly framed as systemic rather than personal. While that insight is often correct and necessary, it has an unintended consequence: there is very little mechanism for personal moral obligation to the community. Asking why someone hasn’t been in church can feel judgmental. Naming personal responsibility can feel suspect. As Andrew Root and Christian Smith both hint in different ways, moral exhortation itself becomes difficult to sustain.

Conservative Christianity, for all its problems, does not lack this mechanism. Personal guilt is real, operative, and formative. Having grown up in those spaces, I’m under no illusion that this is harmless—religious guilt (or really religious shame) can wound deeply and should never be minimized. But sociologically, it binds people. It keeps them tethered to communities even when belief wavers. It creates an internal pressure toward participation that progressive spaces largely lack. Conversely, I would also add I don’t think guilt is inherently bad, sometimes people need to be reminded that they are not living up their stated values. But conservative Christianity is far more practiced in utilizing guilt—for good or ill—than progressive versions.

2. High-Control Culture Produces Durability

Closely related—but distinct—is the presence of high-control culture. Conservative Christianity has long normalized practices like accountability partners, pastoral authority, and explicit expectations around attendance, giving, and behavior. Leaders are expected to speak directly into people’s lives. Congregants, in turn, expect to be challenged—even corrected.

In progressive contexts, such practices are often viewed with deep suspicion, and for understandable reasons. Power has been abused. Authority has harmed. But the result is a culture where strong claims are difficult to make at all. A progressive pastor telling congregants they ought to attend worship regularly or give sacrificially is often met with silence or exit. In conservative settings, the same exhortation may produce resistance—but also compliance, conviction, or renewed commitment.

High-control cultures can become coercive. They can also, paradoxically, sustain institutions. I would also add, high-expectation and high-control don’t have to be the same thing. I’ve argued in the past for high-expectation churches, but such can certainly slip into high-control—especially if, as Smith notes in his book, the point of Christianity is simply about making people be good.

3. The Ecosystem Is the Real Difference

This, to me, is the most important distinction—and the one least acknowledged in comparisons between the progressive left and the evangelical right.

Conservative Christianity is not just a set of beliefs or churches. It is an ecosystem.

There are schools, colleges, seminaries, publishing houses, media outlets, podcasts, conferences, political organizations, legal advocacy groups, homeschool networks, worship industries, and donor pipelines. Belief is reinforced across multiple domains of life—education, family, politics, entertainment, and economics. One can drift from church attendance and still remain deeply embedded in Christian subculture. There’s a reason why Charlie Kirk was understood as a Christian martyr—because these systems are so intertwined.

Progressive Christianity has never developed anything comparable. Its institutions were largely inherited, not built. Its cultural infrastructure was thin. As ideology displaced theology, there was little ecosystem left to sustain belonging once worship lost its central place. Think about many influential progressive Christian voices like Rob Bell or Brian McLaren, both of whom have de-emphasized their Christian convictions and commitments. Remember, McLaren quite literally wrote a book, Do I Stay Christian?

So Will Far-Right Evangelicalism Collapse?

It may fracture. It already is. It may lose moral credibility. It should. But collapse is not inevitable in the same way, because the sociological scaffolding is different. Guilt binds. Control disciplines. Ecosystems endure.

None of this is an argument for far-right evangelicalism. It is an argument for realism. If we want a church that resists both ideological capture and institutional decay, we need to understand why some movements disappear quickly while others persist—even when deeply compromised.

Progressive Christianity has faded not because it cared too much about justice, but because it could not convincingly say why the church should exist beyond the causes it championed. I’ve tried to argue that its core mistake was grounding itself in secular ideology rather than biblical theologically—which I think uncategorically supports justice and equality.

Far-right evangelicalism, for all its distortions, has not made that same mistake, though time will tell as the far right drifts farther into Christian Nationalism, even going so far as sometimes questioning the efficacy of the Beatitudes, and the legitimacy of famed leaders like Ed Stetzer, Beth Moore, and the late Tim Keller.

So What Remains?

The question for those of us who reject both paths is whether we can recover a church that is neither ideological nor authoritarian—one rooted in worship, thick enough to endure, humble enough to repent, and faithful enough to remain distinct.

I can imagine a more genuinely middle-road—or politically “purple”—expression of Christianity beginning to take shape, not as a bland compromise but as a deliberate refusal of extremes. This would require Christian leaders to set aside partisan allegiance and instead coalesce around shared convictions centered on Christ himself. That kind of convergence will not be easy. It will demand humility, patience, and real flexibility—especially around questions like LGBT inclusion. But I don’t think this is wishful thinking. The theological and pastoral pathways already exist, particularly among leaders who are increasingly weary of being told they must choose between left and right orthodoxies.

Time will tell whether such a church can emerge with enough coherence and courage to matter. It almost certainly won’t generate the same attention or outrage as the loudest voices at the edges. But that, perhaps, is the point. The far edges of our discourse are far smaller than their amplified presence on social media suggests. Most people are not looking for ideological purity or culture-war dominance—they’re looking for a church that is faithful, honest, and real.

And that quieter work—forming communities shaped by worship, repentance, and hope—may yet prove more enduring than any movement built on outrage or fear.

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Quick Editorial Update: The morning I have this set for release Ryan Burge just posted some very intriguing data related to this topic. I don’t think it contradicts my conclusions here, though I do hope to engage with it further at a later time.

Graphs about Religion

The Political Takeover: Why Ideology, Not Faith, Drives the Culture War

No term takes me back to my graduate school days like the “Culture War.” And for good reason: it was one of the biggest methodological debates in political science. Two camps emerged—one argued that polarization had completely infiltrated American society. It wasn’t just a phenomenon of the chattering class, but it was also clearly evident among rank an…

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5 months ago · 33 likes · 5 comments · Ryan Burge

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I’ve written in the past about the necessity of a moral ecology—a moral foundation rooted in Christianity.

I’ve also written about the Black Church, particularly its leadership during the Civil Rights Movement, as a model worth recovering today: deeply rooted in Scripture, spiritually grounded, morally serious, and unflinchingly committed to justice.

At the same time, I’ve expressed concern about grounding the actions of the American church primarily in secular theories—especially those that reduce moral life to a struggle for power. When power becomes the dominant explanatory frame, dehumanization can never be far behind.

This is why I get nervous when I see or hear slogans like “f*ck ICE.”

I understand the outrage. I share much of it. I don’t question the anger that arises when injustice is blatant and lives are lost. A Substack reader commented that initial outbursts of “f*ck ICE” is understandable. I agree. Another suggested that such language is meant systemically—“f*ck the system,” not individual people. Fine, perhaps.

But I’m not convinced our moral imaginations—or our nervous systems—actually make that distinction in practice.

When people chant “f*ck ICE” in the streets, or when videos circulate online with those words emblazoned across them, the message does not land as a nuanced critique of systems of power. It lands as an expression of hatred—often directed, explicitly or implicitly, toward human beings.

I do believe in lament. I’ve written previously about lament as a necessary Christian practice—one that refuses denial and resists injustice. And I can imagine how such chants might function, at least initially, as a form of raw lament.

But I grow uneasy when those chants become repetitive, habitual, and central—because I also know how human beings work.

There is a reason Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us—not because injustice is excused, but because hatred corrodes the soul of the one who carries it.

What I’m ultimately grieving here is not simply a breakdown in tone or strategy, but the eclipse of Christian moral formation itself. In many spaces—both secular and religious—the grammar that once shaped Christian resistance has been replaced by a framework almost entirely concerned with power, struggle, and domination. That framework can name injustice, but I’m unconvinced that it can reliably form people to resist injustice without becoming distorted by it. Part of why I continue to point back to the Black Church and its leadership during the Civil Rights Movement is not nostalgia, but grief: a recognition that America has largely lost a shared moral ecology capable of sustaining costly, disciplined, non-dehumanizing resistance.

As warned of several years ago, if many are alarmed by the excesses of the Christian right, they should be equally—if not more—concerned about what emerges when moral restraint, transcendence, and formation disappear altogether. We are clearly seeing that a politics untethered from any thick moral or spiritual tradition does not become gentler; it becomes rawer, crueler, and more efficient in its capacity to harm.

And again, this is why I found myself returning to the wisdom of the Black Church and to a few books pulled from my shelf: Why We Can’t Wait by Martin Luther King Jr., Hope and History by Vincent Harding, and Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman.

Thurman’s reflections on hatred are especially clarifying. It’s important to say at the outset that—assuming I am reading correctly—he is not writing to excuse oppression, nor to shield oppressors from accountability. He is writing to those who are disinherited—to those whose lives are constrained, threatened, or crushed by unjust systems.

“Hate,” Thurman writes, “is another of the hounds of hell that dog the footsteps of the disinherited” (74).

One of Thurman’s most piercing and prescient insights is that hatred can masquerade as moral clarity. It can offer what he calls “a dimension of self-realization,” where “the illusion of righteousness is easy to create” (82). Over time, hatred becomes “a device by which an individual seeks to protect himself against moral disintegration” (83). In other words, hatred does not simply react to injustice—it can become the moral framework through which a person understands the world.

And this is where Thurman’s warning becomes especially relevant for our moment.

We see this all around us. When hatred becomes the motivating force—as it has for many in our current administration—creativity dies, imagination collapses, and cruelty hardens into policy. Thurman names this dynamic with chilling clarity, warning that hatred “tends to dry up the springs of creative thought in the life of the hater” (88). Hatred does not simply oppose injustice; it corrodes the inner life, narrowing vision and foreclosing the possibility of newness.

What Thurman is diagnosing is not partisan—it is human.

And it is here that I want to make a contemporary observation of my own. When anger and vitriol become the primary animating energy on the left—even when that anger is understandable or morally justified—the danger Thurman names still applies. As he cautions, once hatred takes hold, “resourcefulness becomes completely focused on the negative aspects of the environment” (88). The imagination contracts. Creativity gives way to reaction. Resistance becomes defined more by what it opposes than by the life it seeks to bring into being.

This is why Thurman insists that hatred ultimately produces death, not life. “Hatred bears deadly and bitter fruit,” he writes. “It is blind and nondiscriminating…once the hatred is released, it cannot be confined to the offenders alone” (86). It spreads. It metastasizes. And eventually, it consumes even those who believe they are wielding it justly.

This is precisely why Martin Luther King Jr. could say, without sentimentality, “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” And why Thurman insists that Jesus rejected hatred not as weakness, but as faithfulness:

“Jesus rejected hatred because he saw that hatred meant death to the mind, death to the spirit, death to communion with his Father. He affirmed life; and hatred was the great denial” (88).

Jesus’ command in Matthew 5—to love enemies and pray for persecutors—is not naïve idealism. It is a refusal to let dehumanization become the engine of action.

None of this denies injustice. None of it excuses evil. I do not want to pretend that what our current administration and many ICE officers are doing is anything other than morally reprehensible. Anger and rage are sometimes appropriate. We should be angry when a mother is killed unnecessarily.

But the point I am trying to make—and perhaps I am wrong—is this: action rooted in hatred will not bring new life.

What I long for instead is a recovery of the moral and spiritual posture exemplified by the Black Church during the Civil Rights Movement—deeply grounded in Scripture, disciplined by prayer, committed to love of neighbor, and yet utterly uncompromising in its pursuit of justice.

Justice and accountability matter profoundly.
But so does the way we speak.
So does the way we imagine.
So does the kind of people we become along the way.

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Drawing on Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination, this post reflects on how modern political power—especially in its totalizing forms—seeks to control people through numbness and despair. I argue that Trumpism in its current form mirrors what Brueggemann calls “totalism”: demanding absolute loyalty while crushing imagination and hope. Against this, the prophetic task of the church is not spectacle or outrage, but faithful resistance—offering an alternative vision of reality rooted in grief, moral clarity, and the conviction that no political regime is ultimate. We need to feel again. Only then can we hope.

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I just finished reading—again—Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination. Having read it about five years ago, I decided to pick it back up, and I was not disappointed in the endeavor.

For those unfamiliar, from the book description on Amazon: Brueggemann offers a theological and ethical reading of the Hebrew Bible. He finds there a vision for the community of God whose words and practices of lament, protest, and complaint give rise to an alternative social order that opposes the “totalism” of the day. Brueggemann traces the lines from the radical vision of Moses to the solidification of royal power in Solomon to the prophetic critique of that power with a new vision of freedom in the prophets. Linking Exodus to Kings to Jeremiah to Jesus, he argues that the prophetic vision not only embraces the pain of the people, but creates an energy and amazement based on the new thing that God is doing.

There are so many powerful and compelling points in the book that I cannot even hope to adequately touch on more than a few here—it may yet require further posts. For the purposes of this one, I want to briefly examine Brueggemann’s reflections on despair and the “royal consciousness”—or what, in his 2017 edition, he further clarifies as “totalism,” lest there be any confusion about his intentions.

Brueggemann notes that within the “royal consciousness” (or totalism), the way of keeping people down essentially takes one of two forms: numbness or despair. On numbness, he writes, “[In the royal program], God has no business other than to maintain our standard of living” (37). On despair, he observes, “The royal consciousness leads people to despair about the power to move toward new life” (59). In short, people will either feel nothing or feel everything—and thus be unable or unwilling to seek a better, different way. As he puts it, “Numb people do not discern or fear death. Conversely, despairing people do not anticipate or receive newness” (60).

As I write this, we are approximately twenty-four hours out from the Trump administration essentially invading a foreign country and deposing the leader of that nation—something shocking and, by almost any past standard of American foreign policy and military diplomacy, unheard of. For someone old enough to remember that even Bush/Cheney respected the process enough to pretend there were WMDs at stake in Iraq, what is most striking here is how totalitarian the messaging has been, especially from within the party itself. There is no uncertainty, no questioning—only unflinching loyalty.

And I think this marks the stark difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0. Whereas the first administration was chaotic and disjointed, this version has operated with cold, ruthless efficiency—from Russell Vought to Stephen Miller to Kristi Noem, the latter two even recorded dancing to the tune of “ICE, ICE Baby…” at a New Year’s Eve party. The only acceptable posture is unwavering obedience and acquiescence. Those who dare refuse to bend the knee face vengeance and blowback, as my home state of Colorado is experiencing, with Trump & Co. vetoing bipartisan legislation to provide clean drinking water to rural, red districts in eastern Colorado and seeking to shut down the NCAR laboratory.

Trump, much like the royal consciousness—or totalism—Brueggemann describes, seeks to pump up the economy to keep half the country numb and comfortable, while overwhelming any opposition into despair, shame, and defeat.

It has been especially disappointing to see so many conservative Christians march in lockstep with his every action—and worse, respond vengefully when anyone dares to question. While I am hesitant to label every instance of support among conservative Christians as Christian Nationalism, there is no doubt a strong and foundational undercurrent shaping much of what now passes as politics and Christianity.1 And it is no wonder that questioning the system provokes such hostility, for as Brueggemann writes, “The reason for hostility, rather, is because the enunciation of the God of the covenant renders the claims of the totalism penultimate, while every totalizing regime (as in ‘Make America Great Again’) presents itself as ultimate. Prophetic deconstruction dismisses the ultimacy of allegiance and submission expected by the totalism. The enunciation of this God undermines all such pretensions” (129).

So then, what can be done?

In our time and culture, we are obsessed with big, bold acts. But as Brueggemann suggests, what is needed is not spectacle, but faithfulness. “The prophetic ministry does not consist of spectacular acts…[but] of offering an alternative perception of reality” (116).

What, then, might it look like to offer an alternative perception of reality in a time of totalism? Not dramatic gestures or viral resistance, but daily practices that quietly refuse to acquiesce, numb, or despair. The other day at the hospital, I held the hand of an older women gripped by despair—she asked to hold my hand, and I imagined she was longing to feel again. This past Sunday, I read Psalm 46 in small group: God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea… And nearly every day, I try to remind my kids about doing the right thing, being kind, and understanding history and how we got here (oh, and I do occasionally email and call my congressman).

I remember posting something to this effect a few months ago on Substack, and I was frankly offended. But then I realized—that my reaction was precisely the problem. That is what the royal consciousness wants: for us to be so despairing that we assume an alternative, hopeful future is impossible. As tired as I get of endless talk about the political horse races of 2026 and 2028, I do think such conversations can function as an alternative perception of reality. Trump is not forever. The royal consciousness is not forever. God is living and active in the world, still working and willing justice into being.

One final note. Brueggemann emphasizes the importance of grief and death, themes I’ve also encountered in Andrew Root’s work—connections I hope to explore in future posts. For now, the point to take from Brueggemann is this: when we grieve, we feel. Working as a hospital chaplain, I see daily how many people have numbed themselves through alcohol or other addictions, or have sunk so deeply into despair that they can no longer imagine another life for themselves. Grief restores feeling.

We need to feel. When we feel, we know we are alive. When we know we are alive, we know there can be a future.

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The Massacre of the Innocents is not an awkward add-on to the Christmas story—it’s the first sign that the incarnation threatens violent power. Matthew 2 reveals a God who is found with the vulnerable, the fleeing, and the grieving—not with those enforcing order at the cost of innocent lives. When Scripture is reduced to a book of principles or political props, we miss its central witness: God’s unmerited grace saving action. If our reading of the Bible leaves us comfortable with state violence against migrants, we are not misreading Scripture—we are telling a different story altogether.

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Reading Matthew 2 After Christmas

Having just seen the 60 Minutes segment on El Salvador’s CECOT prison pulled by CBS News shortly before airing, I have no qualms saying this: our current administration would rip the baby Jesus from his mother’s arms, send Joseph to be tortured in another nation, and leave Mary weeping and alone in a detention center.

That may sound extreme. But it is also precisely the story Christians tell at Christmas—if we bother to keep reading.

It’s often called the Massacre of the Innocents, the story recounted in Matthew 2:13–23, where, fearing the Magi’s words that a king has been born, Herod “sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under.” Earlier in the story, Joseph is instructed by an angel:

“Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt… for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”

As things go, this text is appointed in the Lectionary for the Sunday after Christmas1 in most Protestant churches. It lands at an awkward and emotionally complicated moment. Many pastors—having just run the gauntlet of Advent, Christmas Eve, and often a Longest Night service—take that Sunday off. So do many congregants, exhausted from travel, family, and worship packed into a few short days.

What often happens instead is that an associate pastor, a seminarian, or even a volunteer is tasked with preaching what amounts to one of the most difficult Lectionary texts there is: the slaughter of children.2

13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt…”

16 Then Herod sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem…

18 “A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children…”

While it’s understandable that so many miss this Sunday, it’s also a shame—especially this year—as we are witnessing, in real time, this text being lived out before our very eyes.

What the Bible Is—and Is Not

In Unpacking Scripture in Youth Ministry, Andrew Root explores how Scripture is meant to shape ministry and faithfully form those entrusted to it. Root begins by clarifying what the Bible is not.

It is not a divine reference book.
It is not primarily a history textbook.
And it is not, at its core, a book of principles.

Instead, Root insists:

“The Bible is primarily a story—the story of God’s action. It doesn’t primarily reveal a set of principles, but an agent” (65).

Scripture witnesses to who God is and how God acts. And in reading it, we are invited to discern how God is acting now.

This is why Root pushes back against a purely academic approach to Scripture—important as historical and cultural context may be.3

“Reading the Bible,” he writes, “should direct us not into the world behind the text, but into our world where God acts” (102).

The central question becomes: What does this story tell us about who God is and where God is found?

When I Read Matthew 2:13–18

When I read Matthew 2:13–18, I cannot escape the conclusion that God is found with the innocent—among the fleeing family, the grieving mothers, the terrified children.

God is not neutral here.
God is not abstract.
God is not standing above the violence, weighing principles.

God is present in the suffering, and judgment is reserved for those who would sacrifice innocent life to preserve power.

The Bible’s authors intentionally included this story to say as much.

Nativity Scenes and Moral Incoherence

In recent weeks, some churches have drawn criticism for displaying incomplete Nativity scenes—Jesus or the Holy Family absent, replaced with signs suggesting they are in hiding due to threatened deportation by ICE.

These displays are often dismissed as “political.” I would argue they are something more precise: they are theological. They are attempts—however imperfect—to take Matthew 2 seriously.

If Scripture tells us who God is and where God is found, then we should be very clear: God is not found with ICE or with the government officials ordering these actions.

And this is why I continue to appreciate Root’s insistence on taking Scripture seriously without reducing it to slogans. There are many Mainline and Progressive Christians who rightly protest the mistreatment of migrants while simultaneously weakening Scripture’s authority elsewhere. That inconsistency matters.4

At the same time, I am utterly confounded by the number of Christian pastors and influencers who claim biblical justification for our current immigration policies. This is where Root’s warning about treating the Bible as a book of principles becomes painfully relevant. If Scripture is reduced to rules, one can cherry-pick Romans 13 and conclude that migrants deserve whatever consequences come their way for violating the law.5

A Yard in My Neighborhood

This disconnect feels especially close to home for me.

In my own neighborhood, there’s a house with a Trump 2024 sign still prominently displayed—and, in the very same yard, a Nativity scene.

I don’t say this flippantly or even angrily; I say it with a kind of stunned sadness. What strikes me is not hypocrisy so much as moral incoherence. The two symbols sit side by side without any apparent awareness of the tension between them.

And I wonder if that’s because Scripture has been reduced, in many contexts, to a political prop—a book of principles selectively taught and interpreted so as to align neatly with one party’s talking points.

When the Bible is flattened this way, it no longer confronts us; it confirms us. And once that happens, even the image of a refugee child fleeing state violence can be rendered invisible—standing quietly beneath plastic shepherds and a glowing manger.

Principles or Presence?

Root reminds us:

“In real life—and the Bible is only concerned with real life—principles must be violated on occasion, sometimes even out of obedience to God” (66).

Jesus himself says the Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.

So when “Bible-believing Christians”—and notice again that for Root the Bible is not something we believe in so much as a witness to who God is—argue that innocent migrants should be rounded up, detained, and deported in the name of law and order, they reveal what they believe Scripture ultimately is:

a book of principles to be enforced, not a story of God’s saving action among the vulnerable.

Grace, Not Return on Investment

I was listening recently to an episode of my good friend and colleague ’s podcast Church and Main, where he hosted a conversation with Todd Brewer, a PhD and New Testament scholar. At one point in the conversation, Brewer made an observation that stopped me cold. What made early Christianity so radically different from its surrounding Roman culture was the sheer recklessness6—my word, not his—with which Christians gave to the poor.

Brewer contrasted this with the Roman philosopher Seneca, who understood gift-giving as a kind of strategic investment. You gave gifts to those who could return the favor, or at least benefit you down the road. Giving to the poor made little sense in that framework. There was no real return on investment. It was inefficient. Foolish, even.

And yet, this is precisely where early Christianity broke ranks with its culture.

Brewer also noted that in the New Testament, the word for gift is deeply connected to the word for grace—charis. Early Christians understood their generosity not as calculated benevolence, but as overflow. They gave because they believed they themselves had received an overwhelming, undeserved abundance of grace in Christ. Their generosity wasn’t strategic; it was a testimony.

Which makes me wonder this.

As I sit here editing this post yet again on Christmas Eve, with a $25 gift card next to me that I’ll send off to a local teen moms ministry, I can’t help but ask: have I—have we—really experienced grace?

I’m thinking here of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his insistence that grace is costly. And I wonder whether American Christians—myself included—have developed such a cheap understanding of grace that it no longer disrupts us. Maybe that’s because we’ve flattened God into this immanent frame. Or maybe it’s because of our quiet pride and hubris—the assumption that we’re, all things considered, pretty good people. Deserving people. Worthy recipients.

And if that’s the case, then like Seneca, we can afford to be careful. Measured. Prescribed in our generosity. We can give, yes—but only within limits that preserve our sense of control.

Which brings me back, again, to Root’s central point.

If the Bible is merely a book of principles—rather than the story of God’s overwhelming grace and mercy toward humankind—then it makes perfect sense that Christians would treat it as a collection of precepts we can selectively apply. We remain in control of the narrative. We decide where grace stops.

But if Scripture is truly the witness to God’s unmerited favor and reckless generosity, then the only faithful response is to live out of overflow. Out of abundance. Especially toward those who have been named as “vermin,” “garbage,” “human refuse,” or “the worst of the worst.”7

I realize I’m belaboring the point. But this is precisely where theology matters.

If we are already pretty good on our own, and grace is merely God’s stamp of approval, then our restraint makes sense.

But what if the biblical story is right?

What if we were all, as Scripture says, “aliens and strangers… having no hope, and without God in the world”?8

Well—
that changes everything.

In Closing

The Massacre of the Innocents is not an embarrassing footnote to the Christmas story. It is the first sign that the incarnation is a threat to the powers of this world.

And if the story we are telling at Christmas leaves us comfortable with state violence against the vulnerable, then the problem is not that the gospel is unclear—it’s that we’ve stopped listening to it.

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