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When Did We Become Comfortable With This?

Reflections on the things we are learning not to feel.

There was a time when certain things troubled us.

Not because we were weak.

Not because we didn’t believe in justice, or consequences, or the responsibility of a nation to protect its people.

But because somewhere deep within us, we understood that there are things human beings should never learn to enjoy.

I’ve been thinking about that this week.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently announced plans to livestream the execution by firing squad of a man responsible for the horrific murder of thirteen people at Fort Hood.

Thirteen lives. Thirteen families forever changed. A terrible act of violence that deserves justice.

And yet, somewhere along the way, someone decided the rest of us should be invited to watch another human being die by execution .

And I find myself pondering…

When did we become comfortable with this?

Not the question of capital punishment. That’s an important conversation, but it’s not the one I’m having here.

I’m asking something beneath that.

Something about us.

About what happens to a people when the public display of death begins to feel like a demonstration of strength.

What is happening to us when punishment becomes performance, and the taking of a life becomes something to broadcast.

And perhaps what troubles me most is hearing Christians defend something I would have hoped our faith would cause us to question.

I understand the argument for justice. I understand the desire for accountability. I even get the deep anger that arises from within when innocent lives are ruthlessly and violently taken.

What I don’t understand is how followers of Jesus have become so comfortable confusing the public display of power with moral courage.

Those are not the same thing.

There is a strange thing that happens to us when we spend enough time around cruelty.

At first, it shocks us.

Then it becomes familiar.

Then we find reasons to explain it.

Eventually, if we’re not careful, we start applauding the very things that once disturbed us.

And the frightening part is that we rarely notice the change.

We just call it being realistic.

Being strong.

Standing for what is right.

But I wonder if something else is happening.

I wonder if we are slowly losing our capacity for reverence.

Reverence for life. For human dignity. For the sacred responsibility that comes with power.

Even when that life belongs to someone who has committed unspeakable evil.

Especially then.

Because dignity is not something we bestow upon people once they have earned our approval.

It’s something we recognize because they are human.

And if our understanding of human dignity only extends to people we consider worthy of it, then perhaps we have misunderstood dignity altogether.

Which brings me to something that has been bothering me even more.

Jesus.

The center of our faith.

A man publicly executed by the governing authorities of his day.

His death/execution was meant to send a message.

To demonstrate power.

To warn others.

To make an example of someone.

The Romans knew what they were doing. Public execution was never simply about ending a life. It was about shaping the imagination of everyone watching.

This is what happens when you challenge our authority.

And the astonishing claim at the center of Christianity is that God was present in the one being executed.

Not in the spectacle.

Not in the machinery of power.

But in the suffering human being.

I wonder what would happen if we really allowed that to sink in.

If we allowed the story of Jesus to shape not just what we believe, but how we see the world.

Maybe we’d be a little more careful about celebrating the humiliation and death of another human being.

Maybe we’d be quicker to recognize when violence is being presented as strength, or cruelty is being dressed up as righteousness.

And maybe, before joining the applause, we’d find ourselves asking whether any of this actually looks like Jesus.

And yet here we are.

Living in a moment when some of the loudest defenders of Christian values seem increasingly willing to defend things that bear so little resemblance to the Christ whose name they carry.

I don’t say that glibly.

I say it with sadness.

Because I believe the Church has something profoundly beautiful to offer a world that seems determined to keep lowering the bar of what it means to be human.

We are supposed to be people who help lift the human imagination.

People who remind the world that strength and cruelty are not synonyms.

That justice does not require spectacle.

That accountability does not demand humiliation.

That power is most trustworthy when it is restrained.

And that the measure of a nation’s greatness is not simply what it has the power to do, but what it has the moral wisdom to refuse.

Maybe that’s what troubles me most about all of this.

Not simply the decision to broadcast an execution.

But how quickly we can find ourselves defending the indefensible when the people making the decisions happen to be on our side.

And before we point fingers too quickly, perhaps that’s a question for all of us.

What have I learned to excuse?

What no longer troubles me that once would have?

Where have my loyalties quietly begun to shape my conscience, rather than my conscience shaping my loyalties?

Those are uncomfortable questions.

But discomfort is not always something to overcome, sometimes it’s the soul reminding us that we haven’t lost our way entirely.

That there is still something within us capable of recognizing when we are becoming less than we were created to be.

I want to believe we can recover that.

Not by becoming louder.

Not by finding another group of people to condemn.

But by refusing to surrender our humanity in the name of defending it.

By recovering a deeper reverence for life.

By remembering that the way of Jesus has never been about proving how powerful we can become.

It’s about revealing what love looks like when power is placed in its hands.

We can believe in justice without becoming fascinated by death.

We can hold people accountable without turning their suffering into a public event.

We can grieve the victims of terrible violence without allowing that violence to determine the kind of people we become.

And we can love our country enough to say, without embarrassment or apology:

We are better than this.

Or at least, we should want to be.

Because the real question isn’t whether we have the power to broadcast a man’s death.

It’s what happens to us when we want to watch.

And what happens to our souls when we no longer know why that question matters.

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Labor Day

When Work Remembers The Worker

Tomorrow we celebrate Labor Day.

For most of us, that means a long weekend, a barbecue, maybe one last trip before summer disappears. But Labor Day began with a much more disruptive question:

What is a human being worth?

Not what can they produce. Not how much can they accomplish. Not how efficiently can they work.

What are they worth?

By the late 1800s, America was exploding with possibility. Railroads were crossing the continent. Factories were filling cities. Steel was rising. Industry was booming. Fortunes were being made.

America was becoming an economic powerhouse.

But underneath all that prosperity were millions of people working incredibly long hours, often six or seven days a week, sometimes twelve or fourteen hours a day. Children worked. Factories were dangerous. Job security was almost nonexistent. Workers had few protections and very little power.

The system was creating enormous wealth.

But it was also raising a question we are still asking:

Who gets the benefit of the system?

In 1882, about 10,000 workers walked through the streets of New York City in what became the first Labor Day parade.

Think about that.

They stopped working.

And walked.

Together.

Their presence was the message:

Look at us. We are here. We built this. We matter.

There is some debate about who first imagined Labor Day. Peter McGuire, a carpenter and labor leader, often gets the credit. Matthew Maguire, a machinist and union organizer, may actually have been the one who proposed it.

Maybe there is something fitting about not knowing exactly whose idea it was.

Because Labor Day was never really about one person.

It was about the people whose names don’t end up on buildings… the carpenter, the machinist, the railroad worker, the seamstress, the miner, the factory worker, the immigrant. The person who shows up every morning, does the work, goes home tired, and does it again tomorrow.

And somewhere in the middle of that history another idea began gaining momentum:

Eight hours for work. Eight hours for rest. Eight hours for what we will.

That phrase gets me.

Because buried inside it is a deeply spiritual idea:

You are more than what you produce.

You need work. But you also need rest. You need relationships. Play. Worship. Time when you aren’t accomplishing anything at all.

Which sounds remarkably like something God said thousands of years earlier.

Six days you shall labor.

And then…

stop.

Sabbath.

It is striking that one of the commands God gave Israel after freeing them from Egypt concerned their work.

Egypt had taught them another way.

Pharaoh’s economy said:

More bricks.

More production.

More output.

And when the people couldn’t keep up?

Take away their straw and demand the same number of bricks.

That is Pharaoh.

More.

Faster.

Again.

So God leads these slaves into freedom and says something revolutionary:

One day every week, you stop.

You don’t make bricks. You don’t build cities. You don’t increase production. You don’t prove your worth.

You rest.

And not just you. Your children rest. Your servants rest. The immigrant rests. Even the animals rest.

Because Sabbath wasn’t simply a day off.

It was a declaration:

You are not a machine.

You are not property.

You are not what you produce.

Your worth does not come from your productivity.

Your worth comes from God.

Perhaps this is why Labor Day matters more than we realize.

By 1894, after years of strikes, violence, organizing, conflict between corporations and workers, and growing social unrest, the United States made Labor Day a federal holiday.

The nation was trying to say something:

Workers matter.

The people doing the work matter.

Human dignity matters.

And over the decades that followed, the labor movement helped secure things most of us now barely think about: shorter workdays, weekends, restrictions on child labor, workplace safety, overtime protections, minimum wage, and workers’ compensation.

Those changes did not happen because powerful people suddenly decided they were good ideas.

People struggled for them.

People marched.

People organized.

Some lost jobs.

Some were beaten.

Some died.

That makes Labor Day considerably more interesting than a mattress sale.

And maybe there is another question worth asking.

Because Pharaoh hasn’t disappeared.

Pharaoh just changes clothes.

Sometimes Pharaoh is a corporation. Sometimes it is an organization. Sometimes it is a church.

And sometimes…

Pharaoh lives inside us.

More.

Accomplish more.

Build more.

Grow more.

Earn more.

Answer another email.

Take another meeting.

Prove yourself again.

Until somehow we begin believing that exhaustion is evidence that our lives matter.

It isn’t.

I say this as someone who loves vision, movement, possibility, and the next thing. I can turn even meaningful work into something that consumes me if I’m not careful.

Which is why perhaps Labor Day is not merely a celebration of work.

Maybe it is also a reminder of the limits of work.

Work is good. Meaningful work is a gift. Creating something matters. Building something matters. Serving people matters.

But work makes a terrible god.

Because eventually it will always ask you for one more brick.

Jesus offers another way:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Not increased productivity.

Rest.

Maybe that is the word worth carrying into Labor Day.

You have work to do.

Absolutely.

There are things in this world only you can contribute. Places where your gifts matter. People who need what you carry.

But you are not valuable because you work.

You work because you are already valuable.

There is an enormous difference.

So tomorrow perhaps we raise a glass to the workers who came before us – the people who marched, organized, struggled, and insisted that human beings were worth more than the economic value they could produce.

And then perhaps we practice the freedom they fought for.

We stop.

We eat.

We laugh.

We sit around a table.

We take a walk.

We notice the people we love.

We receive the world again.

And for one day, at least, we leave the bricks where they are.

Because there will always be more bricks.

But there is only one life.

And it is far too sacred to spend all of it working.

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The Slow Violence of Division

Reflecting on Proverbs 6:16-19

There are things that fracture the soul.
Things that unravel a people from the inside out.
Not all at once.
Usually slowly. Quietly. Like rot beneath the floorboards of a house that still looks beautiful from the street.

And Proverbs says God hates these things.

Not because God is angry in the fragile, explosive way humans are angry.
Not because God is easily offended.
But because God sees what these things do to people.
To families.
To communities.
To the human heart.

So…what are these things?

“Haughty eyes…”

That posture where a person begins to stand above others instead of beside them.
The subtle intoxication of superiority.
The need to be right. To win. To be seen as more enlightened, more spiritual, more important.Pride rarely enters the room announcing itself.

It usually arrives dressed as certainty.

And once pride takes root, people stop listening.
They stop learning.
They stop loving.

“A lying tongue…”

Because language creates worlds.
Every word spoken builds something.
Trust or suspicion.
Healing or division.
Life or death.

A lie is never just a false statement.
It’s an assault on reality itself.
It bends the fabric of trust that holds human relationships together.
And eventually… people no longer know what is real.

Or who is safe.

“Hands that shed innocent blood…”

Violence is not only physical.
There are ways we crucify people without ever touching them.

A rumor.
A betrayal.
A public humiliation.
A character assassination disguised as discernment.

There are bloodless forms of murder we baptize in religious language.

“A heart that devises wicked plans…”

Notice the progression.
This isn’t accidental brokenness.
This is cultivated darkness.

A heart rehearsing harm.
Strategizing destruction.
Feeding resentment until it becomes identity.

We become what we continually contemplate.

“Feet that hurry to run to evil…”

Some people sprint toward chaos.
They move fast toward outrage.
Fast toward offense.
Fast toward gossip.
Fast toward division.

Because evil has a gravitational pull when the soul has not learned stillness.
And then the proverb lands on the final line like a hammer:

“One who sows discord in a family.”

Interesting, isn’t it?
Of all the sins listed, the culmination is division.

Because the enemy’s oldest strategy has never changed:
separate people from God,
and then separate people from each other.

Divide marriages.
Divide churches.
Divide friends.
Divide brothers and sisters.

If you can fracture trust, you can fracture a people.
And this is why unity is so sacred in Scripture.

Not uniformity.
Not pretending.
Not silence.

But the hard, holy work of remaining connected in truth and love.
Because every gathering of humans moves in one of two directions:
toward communion,
or toward fragmentation.

Every conversation.
Every email.
Every whispered comment after the meeting.
Every social media post.
Every private resentment we nurture instead of heal.

We are always either sewing garments of peace…or sowing seeds of division.

And maybe the deepest invitation of Proverbs 6 is not merely to avoid evil, but to become the kind of people who heal what evil fractures.

People whose eyes are humble.
Whose tongues tell truth.
Whose hands protect life.
Whose hearts imagine goodness.
Whose feet run toward mercy.
Whose presence reconciles rather than divides.

Because this is the way of Jesus.

The One who stepped into a world addicted to accusation and violence…
and refused to return evil for evil.
The One who shed His own blood rather than demand ours.The One who came not to scatter humanity further…but to gather us home.

I sense the question sitting underneath Proverbs 6:16-19 is not simply:

“What sins should I avoid?”
But:
“What kind of presence am I becoming in the world?”

Because every one of us walks into rooms carrying something.
Some people carry anxiety.
Some carry suspicion.
Some carry ego.
Some carry hidden violence.

And when they enter a room, the temperature changes.
People brace themselves.
Armor goes up.
Trust leaks out of the walls.

But then there are other people.

People who walk into chaos and somehow peace arrives with them.
People who tell the truth without needing to wound.
People who are humble enough to listen.
People who absorb offense instead of multiplying it.
People who refuse the addiction of outrage.
People who reconcile.
People who heal.

And you know these people when you meet them.
Because around them, your soul exhales.

This is the invitation of Jesus.
Not merely behavior modification.
Not simply avoiding bad things.

But becoming the kind of human who reflects the wholeness of God back into a fractured world.
A person incapable of sowing discord because Christ has dealt with the discord within them.

Because the truth is:

…we cannot heal division outside us while nurturing division inside us.

And maybe this is why the Spirit spends so much time working beneath the surface.

In motives.
In wounds.
In ego.
In resentment.
In the secret need to be vindicated.

Because long before division appears in public…

it was first rehearsed in private.

And the Kingdom of God comes differently than the kingdoms of this world.
The kingdoms of this world survive by accusation.
By scapegoating.
By fear.
By power.
By making enemies.

But the Kingdom of God advances through peacemakers.
Truth tellers.
Foot washers.
Enemy lovers.
Bridge builders.

The world teaches us how to win arguments.
Jesus teaches us how to heal people.

And perhaps that is why Proverbs says God hates these things.

Because God is fiercely protective of communion.
Of shalom.
Of the sacred thread that binds humans together in love.
God hates whatever destroys His beloved.

So today the invitation is simple:

Pay attention to what you are planting.
Because every thought becomes a seed.
Every word becomes a seed.
Every conversation becomes a seed.
Every post.
Every whisper.
Every grievance left unchecked.

Seeds.

And eventually, the field of your life becomes the harvest of what you planted there.
So plant peace.
Plant truth.
Plant mercy.
Plant humility.
Plant reconciliation.

Become the kind of person who makes it harder for hell to spread.
Become the kind of presence that reminds people what God is like.

Because in a world tearing itself apart…that may be one of the holiest acts left.

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When Stones Fall

A Reflection on Matthew 24 and the end of certainty

The disciples were staring at the stones.

Massive stones. Temple stones. The kind of stones people build their certainty on.

For centuries this temple had stood as the center of Israel’s world…the place where heaven touched earth. It felt immovable. Permanent. Sacred.

And then Jesus says something that must have stopped them cold:

“Not one stone here will be left on another.”

Imagine hearing that.

Everything you trusted… everything that felt stable… everything that seemed untouchable.

Gone.

The disciples immediately ask the question we all ask when the ground starts shaking:

When will this happen?

But instead of giving them a timeline, Jesus gives them something far more important.

A way to live when the world begins to tremble.

______________________________________
Jesus is leaving the temple.

The disciples are still looking back.

You can almost see them pointing.

“Look at these stones.”
Look at the scale of them.
The beauty of them.
The permanence of them.

Herod’s temple was staggering. Blocks of limestone weighing dozens of tons. Walls that seemed immovable. A structure meant to signal something eternal.

God lives here.

At least that’s what people thought.

Jesus looks at the same stones and says something unsettling.

“Not one stone will be left on another.”

It sounds impossible.
Blasphemous even.

But Jesus has a habit of saying things that dismantle what people think can never be dismantled.

The disciples feel the ground shift under their feet.

So they ask the question humans always ask when something stable begins to shake:

When?

How will we know?

What are the signs?

We want certainty.

We want a chart.
A timeline.
A code to crack the future.

But Jesus doesn’t give them a timeline.

He gives them a warning.

“Watch out that no one deceives you.”

Which is fascinating.

Because when the world starts shaking, the first thing people reach for is certainty.

And certainty is exactly what false prophets sell.

I know what this means.

I know the timeline.

I know who the enemy is.

Jesus says:
Be careful.
Deception grows best in anxious times.

Deception grows best in anxious times.

Then he names what the world will look like.

Wars.

Rumors of wars.

Nations rising against nations.

Famines.

Earthquakes.

You read that list and it sounds like the evening news.

But Jesus says something strange.

“These are the beginning of birth pains.”

Birth pains.

Not death pains.

Birth pains.

Which means the chaos of history isn’t necessarily the collapse of God’s plan.

Sometimes it’s the labor of something new being born.

God has always worked this way.

Creation itself began with chaos and darkness.

Then God spoke.

And light broke through.

But Jesus says the real danger isn’t earthquakes.

It’s something much quieter.

“Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.”

Not weaker.

Cold.

The temperature of the human heart begins to drop.

People betray each other.
Communities fracture.
Faith becomes tribal.

And love…real love…becomes rare.

This might be the most haunting line in the entire chapter.

Because the final battle of history may not be between good and evil armies.

It may be a battle over the human heart.

Will it stay warm?

Then Jesus says something remarkable.

“This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world.”

Which means while empires rage…

While wars unfold…

While temples fall…

The kingdom keeps moving.

Quietly.

Patiently.

Across languages.
Across borders.
Across cultures.

The kingdom of God has never depended on a building.

Or a political movement.

Or a religious system.

It moves through people.

People who refuse to let their love grow cold.

The disciples still want signs.

So Jesus gives them images.

Lightning flashing across the sky.

The sun darkened.

The heavens shaking.

This is prophetic language.

Cosmic language.

It’s the Bible’s way of saying:

When God moves, the whole universe notices.

No secret return.

No hidden appearance.

When the Son of Man comes, creation itself will respond.

You won’t need someone on YouTube explaining it.

You’ll know.

Then Jesus shifts.

He moves from cosmic imagery to something almost mundane.

A fig tree.

“When the leaves appear, you know summer is near.”

You can’t control the seasons.

You can only recognize them.

And then comes one of the most humbling sentences Jesus ever speaks.

“No one knows the day or hour.”

Not the angels.

Not even the Son.

Only the Father.

Which should make every confident prophecy teacher pause for a moment.

If Jesus himself says the timeline is hidden…

Maybe… the point was never about predicting it.

Maybe the point was about how we live while we wait.

Jesus says it will be like the days of Noah.

People eating.

Drinking.

Getting married.

Life just moving along.

And suddenly the world changes.

God’s interruptions rarely come with a countdown clock.

They come in the middle of ordinary life.

Grinding grain.

Working fields.

Sharing meals.

Which is why Jesus says:

“Keep watch.”

But not the kind of watching where you stare at the sky.

The kind of watching where you live awake.

Then he tells a story.

A servant placed in charge of a household.

His job?

Feed the others.

Care for the house.

Be faithful while the master is away.

The master doesn’t return and ask,

“Did you predict the date of my arrival?”

He asks,

“Were you faithful?”

History tells us Jesus’ first prediction came true.

Forty years later the Romans destroyed the temple.

Stone by stone.

Just like he said.

Which means the disciples eventually realized something profound.

God was never contained in those stones.

And maybe that’s the deeper point of Matthew 24.

Everything humans build and call permanent eventually falls.

Empires.

Institutions.

Even temples.

But the kingdom of God keeps moving.

Quietly.

Relentlessly.

Through people whose love refuses to grow cold.

So maybe the question Matthew 24 leaves us with isn’t:

When will the end come?

Maybe the question is:

When the stones fall…

Will your love still be warm?

Will you still be feeding the household?

Will you still be awake?

Because one day the sky will split open.

And the Son of Man will come like lightning.

Until then…

The faithful servant just keeps loving.

Keeps serving.

Keeps watching.

And keeps the fire of the kingdom burning in a cold world.

A Question for Reflection

Jesus warned that in turbulent times “the love of most will grow cold.”

Where do you see that happening today?

And more importantly:

What practices help keep your love warm in a world that is growing colder?