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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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The Isms That Are Eating Us Alive

I’ve spent all of my adult life in the church.

I love the church. I’ve given my life to it. I’ve seen people healed in the church, marriages restored, addicts find freedom, lonely people find family, and people discover a God they never knew was looking for them.

Which is probably why some of what I’m seeing right now troubles me as much as it does.

We seem angry.

Not just angry about things. Angry at people… suspicious and afraid.

And I’m increasingly unconvinced that anger is the actual problem.

Maybe anger is the symptom.

Maybe the deeper question is:

What has been forming us?

Because we are all being formed, all the time. By stories and families and churches. By advertisements and algorithms. By politics. By what we fear and what we love. By what we repeatedly give our attention to.

And I wonder if part of the current crisis in Western Christianity is that while we were working really hard to get people to believe the right things about Jesus, we didn’t always pay attention to all the other things teaching us how to live.

Things with names.

Consumerism. Individualism. Fundamentalism. Sectarianism. Sexism. Racism. Nationalism. Politicism. Celebrityism. Tribalism.

That’s a lot of isms.

And I’m not standing outside all of this throwing rocks. I’ve breathed this air too. Some of it has formed me. Some of it probably still does.

That’s the uncomfortable part.

None of these things arrived at the church door one morning and announced, “Hello. We’re here to distort the gospel.”

They came quietly.

They borrowed Christian language. They learned our songs. They quoted our Bible verses. Sometimes we even built theology around them.

And eventually we stopped noticing they were there.

The Gospel According to Me

Consumerism taught us to ask a very simple question:

What’s in this for me?

We shop for shoes, phones, restaurants, experiences, neighborhoods, and eventually churches.

Do I like the preaching? Do they have something for my kids? Do I like the music? Am I being fed? Did I get something out of it?

I understand those questions because I’ve asked them too. None of them is necessarily wrong. But something happens when they become our primary questions.

Consumerism tells us that life is found in acquiring. More experiences. More stuff. More recognition. More options.

More.

And individualism whispers that the most important project in the whole thing is me. My calling. My purpose. My platform. My spiritual gifts. My destiny. Even my personal relationship with Jesus.

There is truth in some of that.

But then I listen to the prayer Jesus taught us.

Our Father. Give us our daily bread. Forgive us. Deliver us.

There is a stubborn plural pronoun running through the gospel.

The first Christians weren’t simply individuals who happened to attend the same religious event. They were learning how to become a people.

Maybe that’s one of the things we’ve lost.

Consumerism says, Acquire.

Individualism says, Protect yourself.

Jesus keeps saying things like:

Give. Share. Forgive. Come to the table. Lose your life.

Those are very different visions of what it means to be alive.

When Being Right Becomes the Point

I grew up in a stream of Christianity that took truth seriously. I’m grateful for that. I still take truth seriously.

But there is a difference between conviction and certainty.

Fundamentalism has sometimes taught us that the more certain we are, the more faithful we are. Questions become suspicious. Curiosity feels dangerous. “I don’t know” sounds weak.

So we define the boundaries, defend the boundaries, and eventually police the boundaries.

And before long we can become more interested in being right about God than actually becoming like God.

That should bother us.

Because Jesus seemed remarkably comfortable with mystery. He answered questions with questions. He told stories that confused people. His own disciples regularly misunderstood him.

And he somehow managed not to panic about it.

Maybe humility is one of the spiritual practices we most desperately need to recover.

“I don’t know.”

“I could be wrong.”

“Tell me more.”

“I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

Those might be deeply Christian sentences.

The trouble is, once we’re certain we’re right, it’s remarkably easy to decide who is wrong.

Then come the tribes.

Evangelical. Progressive. Conservative. Liberal. Reformed. Charismatic. Traditional. Fundamentalist. Deconstructed.

Pick your group. Learn the language. Learn the heroes. Learn the villains.

Eventually we stop seeing people.

We see categories.

I’ve watched this happen in the church. I’ve watched it happen in myself. And I think this is one of the ways otherwise kind people become cruel.

We become convinced that something so important is at stake that our cruelty is justified.

Sometimes we even convince ourselves we’re defending Jesus.

Jesus, strangely enough, never seemed to need that kind of defending.

When Power Gets Baptized

Some of these isms go deeper because they haven’t simply distorted us.

They’ve hurt people.

Sexism is one of them.

For generations, the church could say women and men were equally valuable while constructing systems where women were not equally heard, trusted, empowered, protected, or given agency.

Sometimes we called that tradition. Sometimes protection. Sometimes biblical order.

And then you watch Jesus.

Women fund his ministry. Women sit at his feet as disciples. Women engage him theologically. Women remain near the cross when others disappear. Women become the first witnesses announcing resurrection.

And I find myself wondering:

How much of what we’ve defended as God’s order was actually our order with God’s name attached to it?

That’s not a question I ask casually.

But I think we have to be willing to ask it.

Racism requires the same kind of honesty.

Sometimes racism is obvious. But sometimes it is remarkably polite. It can live in neighborhoods, friend groups, leadership tables, church histories, the stories we tell and the stories we don’t tell.

It shows up in whose pain we instinctively believe. Whose anger we consider understandable. Whose anger makes us uncomfortable. Whose voice sounds authoritative to us. Whose presence feels threatening.

This is where I think we Christians sometimes rush too quickly toward reconciliation.

I believe deeply in reconciliation.

But reconciliation without truth usually means somebody is being asked to pretend the wound didn’t happen.

Jesus never seemed interested in that kind of peace.

He kept crossing lines. Talking to the wrong people. Touching the wrong people. Eating with the wrong people.

Then he tells a story about a man bleeding beside a road and makes the Samaritan the hero.

Wrong ethnicity. Wrong religion. Wrong tribe.

He was the hated “other.”

And then:

Go and do likewise.

Become that kind of neighbor.

When Jesus Gets Wrapped in a Flag

This one is particularly hard to ignore right now.

There is nothing wrong with loving your country. I do. There is nothing wrong with participating in politics. We should. Policies matter because people matter.

But something changes when our political identity begins discipling us more deeply than Jesus does.

Nationalism tells us that protecting our nation is somehow synonymous with advancing God’s kingdom. Politicism tells us every election is apocalyptic, every disagreement is existential, and everyone on the other side is dangerous.

Fear is remarkably effective at forming people.

It keeps us clicking, watching, posting, donating, raging, and coming back tomorrow to find out what terrible thing they did overnight.

I don’t think this is making us well.

And I’m fairly certain it’s not making us more like Jesus.

Jesus lived under an empire. He understood politics. He understood oppression. He understood power.

And yet he announced another kingdom.

A kingdom where enemies are loved, peacemakers are blessed, greatness looks like serving, forgiveness interrupts retaliation, outsiders become neighbors, and power kneels down and washes feet.

Jesus remains incredibly inconvenient for every political party because nobody gets to own him.

I think we need to remember that.

And perhaps this is connected to another strange development in Western Christianity: somewhere along the way, we started confusing visibility with significance.

Big churches. Big platforms. Big conferences. Big followings. Big everything!

Christian celebrities.

And then we were surprised when Christian leaders started building their lives around being seen.

I understand this temptation too. Being noticed feels good. Being invited feels good. Watching something you created succeed feels good.

But Jesus spent most of his life in obscurity.

Thirty obscure years before three public years.

He walked away from crowds. He noticed people who could do absolutely nothing for his platform: children, widows, lepers, the poor, the inconvenient.

Maybe heaven measures influence differently than we do.

I suspect some of the most important things happening in the kingdom of God today will never trend. Nobody will write a book about them. Nobody will invite them onto a stage.

And heaven will somehow be just fine with that.

What Kind of People Are We Becoming?

That’s the question I keep coming back to.

Not: Are we winning? Are our churches growing? Is our theology airtight? Did our candidate win? Are people listening to us?

But:

What kind of people are we becoming?

Are we becoming more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, gentle, self-controlled?

Because those were supposed to be the indicators.

Fruit.

Actual human beings becoming more alive in the Spirit.

And if our version of Christianity continually produces people who are angry, afraid, suspicious, defensive, exhausted, and contemptuous of their enemies, I think we have to be courageous enough to ask what is actually forming us.

And then comes the question every pastor loves:

So what do we do?

My pastor brain immediately wants a strategy. Give me the framework. The book. The conference. The seven steps.

But I’m not sure we need another program.

Maybe the way out is far more ordinary.

Maybe we eat with people.

Not networking.

Dinner.

Invite someone over. Cook something. Pour something. Stay at the table longer than you planned.

Especially with people whose stories complicate your categories.

It’s harder to demonize someone while passing them the potatoes.

Maybe we learn our neighbors’ names. Actually know them. The woman across the street. The guy who makes our coffee. The immigrant family at the park. The person whose history is nothing like ours.

Love becomes much harder to sentimentalize when it has a name.

Maybe we practice enough.

Enough money. Enough recognition. Enough house. Enough success. Enough ministry. Enough followers.

Enough.

Consumerism needs us perpetually dissatisfied.

Gratitude breaks the spell.

Maybe we give some power away.

Listen before defending. Invite voices into the room that haven’t historically been there. Ask who gets to decide. Ask who carries responsibility without authority. Ask who benefits from the way things currently work.

And then be willing to change something.

Maybe we become curious again.

How did you come to believe that?

What has your experience been?

What am I missing?

Tell me your story.

Curiosity may be one of the quiet forms of love.

It says, You are more interesting to me than my assumptions about you.

And maybe we do some things nobody knows about.

Give money. Help somebody. Visit somebody. Fix something. Pray. Serve.

Tell nobody.

There is something cleansing about doing good that cannot become content.

And then walk.

Make things.

Plant something.

Sit in silence.

Put the phone down.

Watch the sunrise.

Stand beside the ocean.

Laugh until your stomach hurts.

Take the long way home.

Pay attention.

Becoming Human Again

I wonder if beneath all these isms is an even deeper problem.

We’ve forgotten that being alive is astonishing.

We keep fighting about how the world should work while barely noticing the world.

Jesus noticed.

Birds and flowers. Seeds and bread. Wine. Children. Weather. Weddings. Fields. Trees.

Ordinary things.

Maybe the kingdom of God isn’t primarily somewhere else.

Maybe it’s hiding in plain sight.

And maybe the great spiritual task of our moment isn’t winning the argument.

Maybe it is becoming human again.

Less angry. Less afraid. Less addicted to being right. Less willing to excuse harm because it comes from our side. Less obsessed with being seen.

More curious.

More generous.

More present.

More willing to listen.

More willing to tell the truth.

More willing to repair what we’ve broken.

More willing to sit at tables with people who complicate our categories.

More willing to say, “I don’t know.”

More willing to love without needing to win.

Because maybe the opposite of all these isms isn’t another ism.

Maybe it’s a way.

A way of walking through the world. A way of seeing people. A way of holding power. A way of opening our homes. A way of paying attention. A way of forgiving.

A way of becoming free.

Jesus called it the kingdom of God.

And he didn’t simply tell us to believe in it.

He said it was near.

Here.

Among us.

Available.

Which means the invitation isn’t to escape the mess we’ve made.

It’s to start living differently inside it.

At our tables. In our neighborhoods. With our money. With our politics. With our power. With our enemies. With our attention.

With the next person standing in front of us.

Maybe that’s how things begin to change.

Not all at once.

Not through another angry movement.

But one human being at a time becoming more fully alive.

And helping somebody else remember how.

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Juneteenth: The Work of Freedom

Today is Juneteenth.

A day that reminds us of a truth we see throughout Scripture and history:

Freedom can be declared before it is fully experienced.

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863. But in many places, people remained in bondage long after freedom had been proclaimed. It took time. It took messengers. It took courage. It took people willing to carry the news.

There is something deeply biblical about that.

The Exodus story is not simply about leaving Egypt. It is about learning how to live as free people after generations of slavery. The Red Sea parts in a moment. Freedom takes a lifetime.

Juneteenth reminds us that liberation is both an event and a journey.

It reminds us that justice delayed is still injustice.

It reminds us that people matter. All people.

And it reminds us that God’s heart has always been for the outsider, the oppressed, the forgotten, and the overlooked.

The Scriptures begin with every human being carrying the image of God. Not some. Not most. All.

The prophets cry out for justice. Jesus announces good news to the poor and freedom for the captives. The church is born when people from every nation hear the gospel in their own language. And the story ends with a vision of every tribe, tongue, people, and nation gathered around the throne.

The Bible is moving somewhere.

Toward reconciliation.

Toward restoration.

Toward a kingdom where human dignity is not debated but celebrated.

Juneteenth invites us to remember that freedom is precious and fragile. It calls us to listen to stories that are not our own. It challenges us to confront the places where barriers still exist. And it reminds us that following Jesus means participating in His work of healing a fractured world.

As I reflect on Juneteenth this year, I find myself returning to a simple word that has been shaping much of my thinking lately:

ALL.

God desires that all would be saved.

Christ died for all.

The Spirit is poured out on all flesh.

The Church is sent to all nations.

And one day, all things will be made new.

That vision leaves no room for indifference. It leaves no room for prejudice. It leaves no room for treating people as less than image-bearers of God.

Freedom is not merely the absence of chains.

It is the presence of dignity.

It is belonging.

It is being seen.

It is being welcomed to the table.

So today, we remember.

We celebrate.

We lament where lament is still needed.

And we recommit ourselves to the ongoing work of becoming the kind of people who reflect the heart of Jesus…a Savior whose love reaches farther than our divisions and whose kingdom is larger than our fears.

Because the story of God has always been moving toward ALL.

And that’s good news for all of us

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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.