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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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When the Slippery Slope Becomes Sacred Ground

There is a phrase people use when they are afraid.

“That’s a slippery slope.”

You hear it in boardrooms. You hear it in churches. You hear it when someone raises a question that makes the room uncomfortable. You hear it when an old system begins to feel the pressure of a new work of the Spirit.

“That’s a slippery slope.”

And sometimes, of course, they are right.

Not every new idea is wisdom. Not every open door is from God. Not every cultural shift is something the church should champion and call faithfulness. Some slopes really are dangerous. Some compromises really do begin small. Some decisions really do carry consequences nobody wants to name at the beginning.

So discernment is important.

But here is what I have been thinking about: sometimes the cry of “slippery slope” is not discernment. Sometimes it is fear wearing the clothes of faithfulness. Sometimes it is anxiety using spiritual language, or a refusal to listen because listening might require us to change.

And that is where it gets dangerous.

Because fear has a way of making us feel righteous.
Fear can convince us we are protecting truth when we are actually protecting comfort.
Fear can tell us we are defending holiness when we are really defending familiarity.
Fear can make the familiar feel sacred and the unfamiliar feel suspicious.

Before we know it, we are not asking, “Is God in this?” We are asking, “Will this threaten the world I already understand?”

Those are not the same question.

One is discernment…The other is self-protection.

The Bible is full of people standing at the edge of what looked like a slippery slope.

Moses stood in front of a burning bush in the wilderness. A bush that burned but was not consumed. Strange. Unexplainable. Disruptive. And when he turned aside to look, God said, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”

Holy ground did not look like holy ground at first.

It looked like an interruption. It looked like a problem. It looked like something outside the normal categories. Moses could have kept walking. He could have said, “This is strange. This is unsafe. This is not how God usually speaks.”

But he turned aside…pay attention to that phrase…He turned aside.

He allowed his attention to be interrupted. He allowed wonder to disrupt certainty. He allowed God to speak from a place he had not planned to visit.

And that strange ground became sacred ground.

Isn’t this how God so often works?!

God meets people outside the controlled center.
God speaks from wilderness places.
God calls people across boundaries.
God sends prophets to kings, fishermen to nations, women to tombs, persecutors into apostleship, and the church into rooms it never expected to enter.

And almost every time God does something new, somebody nearby is nervous.

When Jesus healed on the Sabbath, people called it dangerous. When Jesus ate with sinners, people called it compromise. When Jesus touched lepers, people called it unclean. When Jesus welcomed women as disciples, people called it inappropriate. When Jesus told stories where Samaritans were heroes, people called it offensive. When Jesus forgave sins, people called it blasphemy.

From the outside, the kingdom often looked like a slippery slope.

But it was sacred ground, a holy moment.

Not because Jesus abandoned holiness, but because Jesus revealed that holiness was never supposed to be a fence built around fear. Holiness was the fire of God moving toward the wounded, the excluded, the forgotten, the complicated, the unclean, and the afraid.

The problem was not that Jesus ignored truth.

The problem was that Jesus embodied truth in a way that threatened people who had confused control with faithfulness.

That still happens.

A church begins to ask honest questions about who is missing from the table, and someone says, “Careful. That’s a slippery slope.”

A leader begins listening to people who have been harmed by systems, and someone says, “Careful. That’s a slippery slope.”

A board begins to wonder whether its policies are protecting the mission or just preserving power, and someone says, “Careful. That’s a slippery slope.”

A denomination begins to wrestle with culture, justice, race, gender, leadership, mission, and the Spirit’s activity in unexpected places, and someone says, “Careful. That’s a slippery slope.”

Again, maybe…

Maybe there is a real warning there. But maybe there is also an invitation.

Maybe the question is not, “Could this become a slippery slope?” Almost anything can.

The better question is, “Could this be sacred ground?”

Could God be speaking here? Could the Spirit be revealing something we have not wanted to see? Could our fear be louder than our obedience? Could our need for certainty be keeping us from discernment? Could our instinct to protect the past be preventing us from participating in the future God is bringing?

Peter had to face this.

In Acts 10, Peter sees a vision of a sheet lowered from heaven, full of animals his tradition had taught him not to eat. He hears a voice say, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”

Peter says no.

Not because he is rebellious, but because he is faithful. At least, faithful to what he understood.

He says, “Surely not, Lord.”

Which is one of the most honest and revealing prayers in Scripture.

Surely not.

Lord.

We want Jesus to be Lord, but we also want to tell him where the boundaries are.

Surely not, Lord. Surely not them. Surely not that conversation. Surely not that change. Surely not that new wineskin. Surely not that person. Surely not that table. Surely not that movement.

But the voice says, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

Then Peter is sent to Cornelius, a Gentile. An outsider. A person Peter had been trained to avoid. And suddenly Peter realizes the vision was not just about food.

It was about people.

It was about the gospel crossing a boundary Peter thought was fixed. It was about God moving ahead of Peter’s theology and inviting Peter to catch up.

That must have felt like a slippery slope.

But it became sacred ground.

The Spirit fell. The outsiders were welcomed. The church was stretched. The gospel was larger than they thought.

And here is the part we must not miss: Peter did not abandon discernment. He did not simply say, “Everything is fine now.” He paid attention to the Spirit. He listened. He watched for fruit. He testified to what God had done.

That is the difference.

Fear reacts.

Discernment listens.

Fear labels.

Discernment tests.

Fear protects the familiar.

Discernment seeks the presence of God.

Fear asks, “What could go wrong?”

Discernment also asks, “What might God be doing?”

We need both caution and courage. Caution without courage becomes paralysis. Courage without caution becomes recklessness. But Spirit-led discernment holds both. It refuses to be naive, but it also refuses to let fear sit at the head of the table.

Because fear is a terrible pastor.

Fear will keep the church safe, small, suspicious, and slowly dying. Fear will make sure nothing gets out of control, including the mission. Fear will preserve the wineskin long after the wine is gone.

Fear will call it wisdom. Fear will call it faithfulness. Fear will call it “guarding the truth.”

But Jesus did not give the church a spirit of fear.

He gave us the Spirit of truth.

And the Spirit of truth is not fragile. The Spirit can handle questions. The Spirit can handle complexity. The Spirit can handle hard conversations. The Spirit can lead us into all truth, but that means we have to be willing to be led.

And being led means we are not always in the place we started.

That is the part we often resist.

We want God to guide us without moving us. We want revelation without disruption. We want renewal without repentance. We want growth without discomfort. We want mission without crossing boundaries.

But the God of Scripture keeps calling people to leave what they know.

Abram, leave your country.

Moses, go back to Egypt.

Esther, step into the risk.

Mary, carry what no one will understand.

Peter, go to Cornelius.

Paul, preach to the Gentiles.

Church, go to the ends of the earth.

At some point, obedience almost always looks like risk. At some point, faithfulness almost always feels like leaving the shore. At some point, the place we fear may be the place where God is waiting to meet us.

So maybe before we say, “That’s a slippery slope,” we should pause.

Take a breath.

Tell the truth about our fear.

And ask better questions.

What exactly are we afraid of?

Are we afraid of losing the gospel, or are we afraid of losing control? Are we protecting orthodoxy, or are we protecting a system that has benefited us? Are we listening to the Spirit, or are we listening to anxiety? Have we confused tradition with God? Have we confused discomfort with danger? Have we confused change with compromise?

And maybe the most important question is this:

Are we willing to take off our sandals long enough to see whether this ground is holy?

Because sometimes the slippery slope is real.

But sometimes the place we warned people not to step is the very place where God has started a fire.

Sometimes the conversation we avoided becomes the doorway to healing. Sometimes the people we were taught to fear become the ones who show us Jesus. Sometimes the question we tried to silence becomes the question that saves us. Sometimes what looks like a threat to our faith is actually an invitation into deeper faithfulness.

Not a faithfulness rooted in fear. Not a faithfulness rooted in nostalgia. Not a faithfulness rooted in control.

But a faithfulness rooted in the living God.

The God who still speaks. The God who still disrupts. The God who still sends. The God who still says, “Behold, I am doing a new thing.”

The challenge is that new things rarely feel safe at first.

They feel uncertain. They feel costly. They feel like wilderness. They feel like fire. They feel like a slope.

But if God is there, then the call is not to panic.

The call is to pay attention.

The call is to discern.

The call is to remove our sandals.

The call is to listen deeply enough that our fear no longer gets the final word.

Because the ground we are most afraid to stand on may be the ground where God is asking us to finally become brave.

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Perception & Love

Perception is real. Perception is powerful.

Perception can be leaning towards truth as well as away from truth toward error.

Perception creates closeness and distance, love and hate, tenderness and toughness.

Perception defines security and threat, friend or foe, lover or litigator.

Perception is like air. There are many types of air:

  • Polluted and unhealthy air…
  • Mountain fresh air…
  • Salted sea air…
  • Damp and musty forest air…

Our perception determines what air we think we are breathing. The troubling part of this is that it makes it extremely hard to convince others that a different air exists.

Even ultimate Perception is tainted by the various forms of air we encounter in our daily life.

Those who are cultivating the growth of their soul interrogate the reality and truthfulness of the air they breathe. The soul pilgrim knows that public opinion is biased polemically stretching us apart from each other.

When the Gospel is at work it changes everything. It draws us together dispelling the brutality of perception with the unity of Love.

~Monty

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In Praise of the Earth

There are those who see God most clearly in creation. Their eyes breathe in the Divine glory and know that everything good comes from the Father of Lights. Francis of Assisi saw God as the Master Artist, visible in all that He made. Francis’ first biographer, Thomas of Celano, wrote:

“Saint Francis praised the Artist in every one of his works; whatever he found in things made, he referred to their Maker. He rejoiced in all the works of the Lord’s hands, and with joyful vision saw into the reason and cause that gave them life. In beautiful things he came to know Beauty itself. To him all things were good. They cried out to him, ‘He who made us is infinitely good.” By tracing His footprints in things, Francis followed the Beloved wherever He led. He made from created things, a ladder to His throne.”

In the Genesis creation poem it is abundantly clear that humanity has been given the privilege to steward, or care for the earth. Of all people, those who trust the Scriptures should be the first to embrace a theology of ecology, restoration, healing and care.

While I have not fact-checked this next statement, it seems to makes sense to me. That, with the global shut-down brought about by the COVID19 crisis, there has resulted a new healing of the earth. There has been a dissipation of large amounts of air pollution, clearing of water pollution, and wildlife returning to their habitats. While I am not sure of the statistics around this, it makes sense that as we are not able to consume as we have been consuming, there are many positive natural results. Something we should all consider post-COVID.

For Earth Day 2020 I offer you the following blessing penned by John O’Donohue in his book, “To Bless The Space Between Us.” meditate on it and then go for a walk in the wonder of God’s creation.

“Let us bless,
The imagination of the Earth.
That knew early the patience
To harness the mind of time,
Waited for the seas to warm,
Ready to welcome the emergence
Of things dreaming of voyaging
Among the stillness of land.

And how light knew to nurse
the growth until the face of the Earth
Brightened beneath a vision of color.

When the ages of ice came
And sealed the Earth inside
An endless coma of cold,
The heart of the Earth held hope,
Storing fragments of memory,
Ready for the return of the sun.

Let us thank the Earth
That offers ground for home
And holds our feet firm
To walk in space open
To infinite galaxies.

Let us salute the silence
And certainty of mountains:
Their sublime stillness,
Their dream-filled hearts.

The wonder of a garden
Trusting the first warmth of spring
Until its black infinity of cells
Becomes charged with dream;
Then the silent, slow nurture
Of the seed’s self, coaxing it
To trust the act of death.

The humility of the Earth
That transfigures all
That has fallen
Of outlived growth.

Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth
For all our sins against her:
Four our violence and poisonings
Of her beauty.

Let us remember within us
The ancient clay,
Holding the memory of seasons,
The passion of the wind,

The fluency of water,
The warmth of fire,
The quiver-touch of the sun
And shadowed sureness of the moon.

That we may awaken,
To live to the full
The dream of the Earth
Who chose us to emerge
And incarnate its hidden night
In mind, spirit, and light.