Month: March 2026

Christians are about to enter Holy Week, the period between Palm Sunday and Good Friday when we prepare for the glorious celebration of Easter. It is a fitting time to set aside our egos and allow God’s Holy Spirit to fill that space with life-giving renewal and restoration.

That is my introduction to a personal reflection on the unimportance of being recognized.

I may be wrong, but I think every one of us wants our work to be seen as important and our presence valued by others. I know I do. Social media has amplified that desire into something relentless. We are invited—almost compelled—to be followed, praised, and “liked” by as many people as possible. Analytics allow us to check our status minute by minute, measuring success or failure by numbers of clicks and comments.

It is, of course, a rather silly enterprise. These metrics measure very little. Random clicks of a mouse are no true measure of our worth—either to ourselves or to others. Yet they carry the illusion of meaning, and that illusion has real power.

The desire for recognition is as old as humanity itself, and it has always been a stumbling block to emotional and spiritual health. What social media has changed is not the desire, but its velocity and weight—its constant, seductive pressure.

Decades ago, when I was an occasional newspaper columnist, I would look forward to publication day and the quiet satisfaction of seeing my work in print. How many people read it, I never really knew—though from time to time a letter to the editor would arrive to explain my many deficiencies. That lack of immediate feedback did not diminish my desire for recognition, but it did keep it in check. Today, feedback comes instantly and incessantly. We track its rise and fall as if it were a stock portfolio, and far too easily allow our sense of worth to rise and fall with it.

A passage in Paul’s letter to the Philippians tells us that God, incarnate in Jesus, emptied himself—taking on the fullness of human life without clinging to divine status. One implication of that mystery is this: he had no need for recognition to sustain his identity. Freed from that need, he was able to engage others without discrimination and to restore what was broken as a gift of grace—not something measured by approval, attention, or acclaim.

It took his disciples a long time to understand that laying aside the need for recognition is essential to being fully present as agents of God’s healing and redeeming love. Anyone who has read Paul’s letters knows he never entirely set aside his own ego—but he tried, and perhaps came closer than most of us.

Among the medieval saints, Francis of Assisi may have understood this most clearly. He taught his followers that recognition is of little importance compared with the fullness of what God enables us to be. It is a lesson that should resonate with us today.

Martin Luther King Jr. was surely a man of considerable ego, and he was not immune to the satisfactions of recognition. Yet as he approached the end of his life, his words suggest that he had come to see how unimportant such recognition was compared with the work God had given him to do.

That is a lesson we might take into Holy Week.

Would I like to have tens of thousands of subscribers on Substack? Of course I would. I do not, and likely never will. What I continue to learn—sometimes reluctantly—is that the numbers do not count. I am called only to offer what I can, and then let it go.

It helps, I suppose, that my old friends Fred  and  Russ  ––  earnest  right  wingers —rarely fail to puncture whatever ego I have managed to inflate. It is probably a good thing for anyone who ventures into the public square to have a Fred or a Russ close at hand.

And now, for Holy Week.

Bret Stephens is a highly paid conservative columnist for The New York Times. His opinions I generally find tolerable and, at times, useful in sharpening my own thinking. But his column of March 25, 2026, is baffling.

He argues that the war with Iran—measured against similar conflicts—is going just dandy: tactically precise, efficient, and mercifully light in American casualties. One is left to wonder whether he is looking through the wrong end of the binoculars.

The facts he cites may be accurate in narrow military terms. Beyond that, the argument collapses. This war was initiated in violation of American law requiring congressional authorization. It proceeds without a coherent objective—sustained instead by a shifting set of rationales that change with each presidential explanation.

The claim of an urgent nuclear threat is equally unconvincing. By the assessment of Trump’s own intelligence community, Iran posed no imminent danger and lacks the capacity to produce a nuclear weapon in the near term. Even the materials it possesses are now buried beneath the rubble created by American bombs—hardly an imminent strategic threat.

To compare this plainly unlawful war with past American conflicts that have cost hundreds of thousands of lives is not analysis; it is evasion. Each war stands or falls on its own merits. Historians may compare them; they do not justify one by pointing to the greater failures of another.

Yes, the bombing campaign has been precise—so far. It has inflicted damage that may take years to repair. But history offers a consistent lesson: killing leaders, destroying infrastructure, and inflicting civilian casualties rarely produce submission. They harden resistance. Even Iranians who oppose their theocratic regime are unlikely to surrender their national identity or their deep Persian pride. Gratitude to the United States is not a plausible outcome.

Mr. Stephens also downplays the global instability this war has unleashed. He notes that oil prices were higher during parts of the Obama administration without lasting harm. The comparison is misplaced. This conflict has not merely raised prices; it has destabilized supply chains and injected volatility into nearly every sector of daily life.

Nor should it escape notice that carefully timed announcements from the White House have triggered sharp market swings, allowing a small number of well-positioned actors to reap enormous profits, while the broader public absorbs the uncertainty. Markets can tolerate risk; they cannot function on caprice.

Which brings us to trust. The president’s erratic conduct—compounded by the uneven competence of his cabinet—has diminished the standing of the United States among its allies and peers. More troubling, it has eroded confidence in the reliability of American commitments. The result is not simply diminished influence, but a growing suspicion that American power is being exercised without discipline or restraint.

No, Mr. Stephens: this “splendid little war” is not going well. It has diminished the nation’s credibility, unsettled the global order, and will require years of steady leadership to repair the damage.

We had a long and thoughtful discussion recently about DEI—diversity, equity, and inclusion. What follows are my reflections, based more on experience than on any in-depth academic study.

For all the enormous progress the United States has made over the past 150 years in addressing systemic racism, it still exists—perhaps in more subtle forms than in the days of slavery, the Black Codes, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and similar injustices.

White privilege—particularly male white privilege—is not simply an aphorism used by liberals to explain every hint of discrimination. It is real. For many whose minority status is readily visible, it has been extraordinarily difficult to gain access to the best educational opportunities and the possibility of a stable life within the middle or upper-middle class. Since the Civil Rights Act of 1965, we have become more aware of how deeply embedded habits and practices continue to perpetuate inequality.

DEI was never intended to cast blame or aspersions on white people in general, or white men in particular, despite claims to the contrary. Rather, it was an acknowledgment that we still have a great deal of work to do before our society is truly open and equitable for all.

One of the problems with something like DEI is that it can acquire a kind of fashionable popularity. Public, private, and charitable organizations were quick to adopt the language and announce their commitment. Leadership became fluent in DEI terminology and often introduced ambitious-sounding initiatives. But for many organizations, that was largely where it ended. Employees recognized these trends as passing fads. So long as the expected language was repeated, little truly changed.

To be sure, some organizations made visible efforts to round up individuals from underrepresented groups—qualified or not—and then called it done. But that was never the purpose of DEI.

Organizations that approached DEI with integrity sought something more meaningful. They worked to ensure that barriers—both visible and invisible—were removed, and they actively encouraged applicants from historically excluded groups. Some also began to recognize that traditional measures of merit—such as standardized test scores or degrees from elite institutions—are not always reliable predictors of future success. Other, more meaningful measures likely exist, though I do not claim to know what they are.

There has also been a growing recognition that obstacles to higher education have prevented many capable students—especially those from lower-income and minority backgrounds—from realizing their intellectual and social potential.

DEI, at its best, was intended to address these deeper issues. It was never meant to be an overnight solution, but rather a long-term effort to reshape our common life—so that diversity, equity, and inclusion would become ordinary features of American society rather than contested ideals.

In recent years, however, there has been a strong counter-movement. Some—particularly within the MAGA movement, and many white men—perceive DEI not as an effort toward fairness, but as a threat, especially to long-standing assumptions about who is most likely to succeed or to be selected. For some, this feels like a loss of position or identity.

I believe we will move through this period, though not easily. Demographic changes alone suggest that the United States is becoming a nation in which no single group holds a majority. That reality brings both promise and anxiety. One can point to other nations struggling with similar transitions, but that can never serve as an excuse for not addressing them.

These are simply my reflections. I do not expect everyone to agree. I offer them only as a contribution to an ongoing and necessary conversation.

A guest essay in the March 13 edition of The Washington Post by Carl R. Trueman asserted that the future of Christianity is tied to a conservative evangelical interpretation of Scripture used to authenticate its position on issues of human sexuality. His principal concern was the position on transgender rights expressed by Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, which he argued is antithetical to the future of Christianity.

I needed time to reflect on Mr. Trueman’s opinion column before writing a response. His criticism of James Talarico’s understanding of what it means to follow Jesus in the way of the cross reminded me of similar arguments three decades ago, when those holding conservative views on homosexuality sought to justify them by appealing to biblical authority. That was not the future of Christianity then, nor is it now.

To follow Jesus in the way of the cross is to engage the human condition wherever and however we encounter it, guided as best we can by the commandments to love God, ourselves, and our neighbors—the neighbor often being someone who is a stranger, disliked, or distrusted. It is to love one another as Jesus has loved us, demonstrating that love in both word and deed. To follow Jesus in the way of the cross is not to be anxious about the future of Christianity. Its future is in the hands of God and reaches to eternity.

With that as a starting point, we should remember that social and political norms have always defined what is considered acceptable in every society since the beginning of recorded history. These norms are generational and always evolving—sometimes slowly, sometimes with dramatic change. In every generation, conservative voices declare prevailing norms to be the standard by which religious orthodoxy must be judged. That happens repeatedly. Yet to follow Christ in the way of the cross means that social and political norms must always be subject to the test of God’s revealed word, particularly as revealed in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ.

Mr. Trueman assumes the biblical validity of his social norms and then seeks to force Scripture agree. He can make this sound convincing and logical, but that is not how it works. It is his social norms that must be examined in light of God’s eternal word. That leads to several observations about his treatment of transgender persons.

First, he speaks of “transgenderism.” When “-ism” is added to a noun, it often implies an ideology. I see little evidence that such an ideology exists in the way he suggests. Rather, there are people whose lived experience involves questions of gender identity.

Second, while biological norms show that most people are born male or female and are heterosexual, scientific research also demonstrates a broader spectrum within human development. Some people are born homosexual, and others experience variations in gender identity. This diversity appears within the normal distribution of human biology. Such persons are not freaks, aberrations, or sinners who must repent of the way they were born. They are human beings capable of living fully within the Christian faith without denying who they are.

To deny a transgender person access to medical care that can bring physical and psychological unity to their life is, I would suggest, an offense against the law of love that lies at the heart of the Gospel.

In any case, one’s position on this difficult and controversial issue does not determine the future of Christianity, nor does it determine who belongs within it. The future of Christianity rests in God’s hands alone.

A final word: this is a difficult issue in part because it requires ordinary people to grapple with developments in genetics and human biology that lie far beyond most of our training or education. Such discoveries challenge long-held assumptions about how the world works. That process is never easy and often unsettling. Yet Christians who seek to follow Jesus in the way of the cross can trust that the Spirit will guide us as we find our way through it.

—

Christianity’s Future is Not…

It is…

A guest essay in the March 13 edition of The Washington Post by Carl R. Trueman asserted that the future of Christianity is tied to a conservative evangelical interpretation of Scripture used to authenticate its position on issues of human sexuality. His principal concern was the position on transgender rights expressed by Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, which he argued is antithetical to the future of Christianity.

I needed time to reflect on Mr. Trueman’s opinion column before writing a response. His criticism of James Talarico’s understanding of what it means to follow Jesus in the way of the cross reminded me of similar arguments three decades ago, when those holding conservative views on homosexuality sought to justify them by appealing to biblical authority. That was not the future of Christianity then, nor is it now.

To follow Jesus in the way of the cross is to engage the human condition wherever and however we encounter it, guided as best we can by the commandments to love God, ourselves, and our neighbors—the neighbor often being someone who is a stranger, disliked, or distrusted. It is to love one another as Jesus has loved us, demonstrating that love in both word and deed. To follow Jesus in the way of the cross is not to be anxious about the future of Christianity. Its future is in the hands of God and reaches to eternity.

With that as a starting point, we should remember that social and political norms have always defined what is considered acceptable in every society since the beginning of recorded history. These norms are generational and always evolving—sometimes slowly, sometimes with dramatic change. In every generation, conservative voices declare prevailing norms to be the standard by which religious orthodoxy must be judged. That happens repeatedly. Yet to follow Christ in the way of the cross means that social and political norms must always be subject to the test of God’s revealed word, particularly as revealed in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ.

Mr. Trueman assumes the biblical validity of his social norms and then seeks to force Scripture agree. He can make this sound convincing and logical, but that is not how it works. It is his social norms that must be examined in light of God’s eternal word. That leads to several observations about his treatment of transgender persons.

First, he speaks of “transgenderism.” When “-ism” is added to a noun, it often implies an ideology. I see little evidence that such an ideology exists in the way he suggests. Rather, there are people whose lived experience involves questions of gender identity.

Second, while biological norms show that most people are born male or female and are heterosexual, scientific research also demonstrates a broader spectrum within human development. Some people are born homosexual, and others experience variations in gender identity. This diversity appears within the normal distribution of human biology. Such persons are not freaks, aberrations, or sinners who must repent of the way they were born. They are human beings capable of living fully within the Christian faith without denying who they are.

To deny a transgender person access to medical care that can bring physical and psychological unity to their life is, I would suggest, an offense against the law of love that lies at the heart of the Gospel.

In any case, one’s position on this difficult and controversial issue does not determine the future of Christianity, nor does it determine who belongs within it. The future of Christianity rests in God’s hands alone.

A final word: this is a difficult issue in part because it requires ordinary people to grapple with developments in genetics and human biology that lie far beyond most of our training or education. Such discoveries challenge long-held assumptions about how the world works. That process is never easy and often unsettling. Yet Christians who seek to follow Jesus in the way of the cross can trust that the Spirit will guide us as we find our way through it.

—

Two previous columns have explored scapegoating as an ancient and well-documented process by which blame is assigned to a vulnerable victim held responsible for troubles threatening the equilibrium of a community—or the power and position of those in authority. As pervasive as this practice has been, and still is, it can never achieve its purpose. It never truly restores order. It only generates a continuing cycle of violence and victimization.

For scapegoating to succeed, a victim must be found guilty of behavior deeply offensive to the values of the community. The victim must be portrayed as an outsider—an alien in some way. By purging the community of the victim, order appears to be restored, at least for a time.

The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ expose the powerlessness of scapegoating. They also reveal the way those who follow Jesus in the way of the cross are called to resist its seductive promises and to confront, with peaceful courage, the evil it produces.

If this sounds familiar, it is because it reflects, however crudely, the work of René Girard (d. 2015). Girard began as a literary historian but became a profound anthropologist and theologian whose work on scapegoating has influenced many, myself included.

Girard often turns to ancient myths to illustrate his point, but the lesson may be clearer when we look at more recent history.

The Salem witch trials of 1692–93 led to the deaths of twenty people accused of witchcraft—alleged, but never proven. A climate of fear—disease, conflict with Native peoples, economic hardship, and a weakening social order—created the conditions for the community to search for someone to blame. In a kind of collective hysteria, suspicion fell upon men and women whose eccentricities set them apart. They were innocent victims, burdened with moral guilt that justified their deaths as a necessary sacrifice to restore equilibrium. The reasoning was simple: if these “witches” had not caused our suffering, we would not be in distress. Therefore, they had to be eliminated. This is scapegoating in its classic form.

Jewish communities, for centuries, have been among the most frequent and vulnerable targets of scapegoating throughout Europe. There distinctive clothing, unique language, and commitment to ancient Jewish practices or enough to set them apart and target them as the scapegoat to be accused of responsibility for all manner of violence and other troubles.

In the United States, we have found our own victims: American Indians, people of color, immigrants fleeing hardship, and others like them including Jews. Again and again, they have been made to bear blame for conditions for which they held no responsibility, declared guilty, and punished so that the dominant society might imagine itself restored to equilibrium.

It is difficult to comprehend, but ordinary people can participate in the most grotesque forms of scapegoating while believing they have purged threats to their well-being. It is estimated that nearly 4,000 Black men and women were lynched in the United States, with the practice peaking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and continuing into the 1940s. Families could gather to witness a lynching and return home with a sense of self satisfied reassurance that a perceived contagion had been removed.

Jesus himself became the victim of scapegoating. He was condemned for all the usual reasons, yet the authorities could not demonstrate his guilt for the unrest among the people. Even the governor found no just cause to condemn him. He was not only an innocent victim; he was The innocent victim. And yet he refused the role assigned to him. He did not defend himself. He did not condemn those who condemned him. In Luke’s Gospel, he prays from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” In his resurrection, he reveals the futility of scapegoating and the emptiness of sacrificial violence. More than that, he shows that following him in the way of the cross is the only path to lasting hope and to a renewed capacity for peace and mutual concern.

This means that those of us who claim to be Christians are called to reject every form of scapegoating—to refuse participation in mob hysteria demanding vengeance, and to stand with peaceful courage against every force that pushes in that direction.

The old proverb is right: it is easier said than done. Some of the first words we learn are, “I didn’t do it,” “It’s not my fault,” and “It isn’t fair.” The impulse to shift blame is learned early and never entirely leaves us. Even as we mature and become more sophisticated in our thinking, the search for someone or something to blame remains close at hand. We are quick to punish others in the hope that doing so will restore order to our lives. To be sure, some are genuinely guilty, and some are the proximate cause of harm. But that very truth tempts us to assign guilt where it does not belong.

To follow Jesus in the way of the cross is to confess our participation in scapegoating and to recommit ourselves to a life shaped by justice, mercy, and humility before God. It leaves no room for the easy condemnation of others. It also calls us to confront public policies, public opinion, and public actions that depend upon scapegoating—and to do so by refusing to cooperate with them.

In recent weeks, a striking example of this has emerged in the response of many people in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, who have refused to participate in the victimization of immigrant communities. Through peaceful demonstrations, they have resisted being drawn into self-righteous violence. Through organized efforts, many have sought to provide safety and protection for vulnerable neighbors. Were they perfect? Certainly not. They are, like all of us, human. Nevertheless, their actions offer a compelling example of people—whether consciously or not—walking in the way of the cross.

As Holy Week approaches and Easter draws near, this lesson deserves our attention. We will celebrate with joyful hymns and loud alleluias, but the deeper call is to follow Jesus by refusing to cooperate with scapegoating in any form—especially when it appears at the national level.

Donald Trump is a master of the art of scapegoating. His entire life has been marked by avoiding accountability, casting blame on others whenever failure interrupts his path to success. Over the years he has developed a small but well-used vocabulary of humiliating insults to describe the supposed stupidity, incompetence, or disloyalty of those he blames. It has served him well. Each episode of scapegoating sacrifices a victim on whom blame has been cast and restores a measure of order—at least to his public image—and opens the way to new opportunities where the cycle can be repeated.

I doubt he understands the deeper psychological, sociological, and historical importance of scapegoating as a means by which communities try to restore equilibrium when threatened by chaos—whether from disease, famine, war, or unwanted social change. Yet scapegoating has long been used to legitimate witch trials, pogroms, lynchings, and even the Nazi Holocaust. However gifted Trump may be at the practice of scapegoating, he is likely ignorant of its historical role.

Members of his administration, however, are not. Among the dozens of incompetent department heads and senior advisers, Stephen Miller and Russell Vought stand out as men who understand how the process works and how it can be used to unify a nation behind a corrupt authoritarian. They have studied how such tactics have succeeded in the past.

I suspect Trump’s childish impulsiveness, combined with their cooler and more calculated reasoning, lies behind the present confrontation with Iran. None of Trump’s most boastful campaign promises has produced the immediate results he promised. Nearly everything his administration has attempted in the past year has inflicted disruption and uncertainty on what had been a reasonably stable and economically sound nation.

His imperial posture has made him appear less like the opulent Louis XIV—whose gilded palaces he so admires—than like a cartoon version of mad King George III. As television-savvy as he is, Trump must be aware of the ridicule he attracts in the press, the lack of respect shown him by world leaders, and the destabilizing effects of many of his administration’s decisions. He knows, despite his public pronouncements, that the economy is under strain, that his brutal immigration policies have produced chaos rather than solutions, and that many of the people who formed the foundation of his voting bloc are still waiting for the better future he promised but can never deliver.

Following his lifelong pattern—this time on a global scale—Trump has identified Iran as a scapegoat he hoped could unite the nation in patriotic support for victory over a supposed mastermind of worldwide terrorism. Iran has indeed sponsored acts of terrorism, but it poses no imminent threat to world peace on the scale suggested by the administration’s rhetoric.

Trump, Vought, and Miller must be dismayed that the move has not worked. The public did not buy exaggerated claims about Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Nor has the administration been able to articulate a clear purpose, strategy, or end goal. Americans are well aware that the greatest threats to the domestic economy and to their security arise from the policies and decisions of their own government. They also recognize that former allies have little interest in rescuing Trump from the predicament his bluster has created.

This time the public has not been fooled. Indeed, many are beginning to suspect that if there is such a thing as a legitimate scapegoat, it might be Trump himself.

On that point, however, the public may also be misled. Trump and his circle represent a serious threat to the future of American society and to the nation’s place in the world, and the sooner he leaves office the better. Yet he could not have been elected—twice—if certain conditions had not already existed to make his rise possible.

I have written about those conditions before and do not intend to rehearse the entire argument again. Suffice it to say that a significant portion of the American public—typically described as the white working class—has watched the jobs that once provided a path into the middle class disappear. Their frustration has been cultivated for three decades by right-wing propaganda that directs anger toward a succession of scapegoats: “feminist radicals,” coastal elites, the highly educated, immigrants, and anyone with darker skin. The groundwork for a figure like Trump was laid long before he arrived.

When Trump leaves office those conditions will remain, and the propaganda machine will not fall silent. The public, and its responsible leaders, must therefore focus serious attention on what is required for working-class Americans to enter a middle class that cannot simply evaporate because the economic playing field has been tilted so heavily toward the ultra-wealthy.

That will not be easy. It will require confronting industrial barons and billionaires who will do everything possible to prevent reforms that threaten their privileges. Whether the country is willing to undertake that task remains an open question.

My columns normally address one issue at a time, but this one offers reflections on two matters that confront me on a daily basis—and probably confront you as well.

On Trump’s War with Iran

Donald Trump is currently engaged in war with Iran using the military power available to him as commander in chief. He has surrounded himself with a mixture of incompetent toadies and dedicated ideologues who shield him from accountability and indulge his fantasies about domestic and international affairs.

A friend recently remarked that events do not seem to be unfolding the way Trump and his associates planned them. My question is simple: who says they planned anything?

This appears less like a carefully considered strategy than something they simply wanted to do—and so they did it. I doubt they seriously anticipated the consequences, because it may never have occurred to them that serious consequences would follow.

The result has been global economic and moral turmoil. The cost is incalculable: civilian deaths in Iran, destruction of infrastructure, further erosion of the confidence other nations once had in the United States, rising prices at home and abroad, and the growing likelihood that terrorist attacks against Americans will once again become part of daily life.

Commentators have rightly pointed out that the Iranian regime has inflicted brutality on its own people and has financed terrorism throughout the Middle East and beyond. It offers little to admire. But this reckless, irresponsible, and likely illegal war was not the right answer—and the administration’s fumbling execution has made a dangerous situation even worse.

There is also increasing speculation that Trump has functioned less as an independent strategist than as a gullible surrogate for Benjamin Netanyahu. If that proves to be true, it would leave us with the rather cartoonish image of a tail wagging a tail wagging a dog.

On Culpable Ignorance

I was recently listening to a lecture by Richard Rohr on biblical hermeneutics when he used a phrase that wonderfully captures an entire field of meaning: culpable ignorance.

Consider the public record of Donald Trump’s life: decades marked by racism, sexual misconduct, failed businesses, and blatant corruption carried out largely in public view. Add to that the disastrous consequences of his first term as president. Together they form a technicolor mural of misconduct stretching from one end of the country to the other.

Yet he was elected to a second term by voters who said they did not know, or who believed he had changed, or who trusted promises that had no foundation in reality.

That is the very definition of culpable ignorance.

When he is gone, many will claim they did not know about the brutality of immigration enforcement, the detention camps in which people were confined without due process, the destruction of America’s credibility abroad, or the economic policies that consistently favored the wealthy over the working poor.

They will say they did not know.

But they did know. Or they could have known.

We are all culpably ignorant from time to time. But seldom are we ignorant in ways that contribute so profoundly to the destruction of our own nation.

It is often said that politics and religion should be kept apart. In practice, that is impossible. They collide with one another in almost every issue of public debate.

To follow Jesus in the way of the Cross is more than simply declaring one’s faith. It requires engagement with the decisions we make about how we are to live with one another—and those decisions are always political. Decisions made at the state and national levels shape the conditions of our common life more than others, dChristians therefore must evaluate them by the standards God has revealed through the prophets, and most especially in the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day did their best to live disciplined lives of righteousness according to the laws of the Pentateuch. Yet Jesus chastised them for neglecting the weightier matters of justice, mercy, and faith (Matthew 23:23). What God had revealed through the prophets could be trusted to be true—and those truths were not merely private religious insights. They spoke directly to the moral order of society.

A just society, as God reveals it, is one in which integrity is not merely expected but required. Social and economic conditions must be fair and equitable for all members of society, with special concern for the most vulnerable. No one should be prevented from living life to its fullest potential because of discrimination or lack of access to the resources necessary for human flourishing.

In an age when everyone seems to be labeled either liberal or conservative, it is easy for cynics to assume that anyone who invokes the teachings of Jesus in public life must simply be using religion to justify a political position.

In truth, it works the other way around.

Following Jesus is neither liberal nor conservative. The debates of the public arena must be judged against what God has revealed about justice and mercy. Sometimes that judgment may appear liberal; at other times it may appear conservative. Because we are human and cannot see everything clearly, our judgments will always be provisional. Yet they must always be guided more by what has been revealed to us by God than by the shifting winds of political ideology.

Christianity does not belong to, nor is it the possession of, any country, culture, ethnicity, or place. Nor does Christianity give its endorsement to any. Efforts to capture Christianity as the brand of a nation or culture are an abomination to God and an offense to everything for which the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ stand.

The human origins of Christianity are rooted deep in the ancient Near East, where God revealed himself to humanity through a particular people, the Israelites, who were called to bear the light of God’s revelation not for themselves alone but as a sign to the world of God’s presence and purpose. When the time was right, the fullness of God’s revelation to the Gentile world came through the Word of God made flesh, Jesus Christ.

The Jewish people from whom Christianity emerged continue to preserve and protect the tradition that forms the foundation of our shared faith. The worldwide assembly of Christians—that is to say, the Church in its broadest sense—is called to represent in life, word, and deed the good news of God’s saving grace for the whole world, guiding us toward a more just and faithful way of life now while lighting the path toward the fuller life that awaits beyond death.

To follow Christ is to become an agent of healing, reconciliation, and peace, living in accordance with what God revealed through the prophets and sealed through the living Word, Jesus Christ. However well-intentioned we may be, Christians have often gone astray by clothing the good news in the straitjacket of our own cultures and social expectations of what is right and acceptable. If there is any miracle in Christian history, it is that God’s word has spread in spite of our ineptitude and the obstacles we have placed in its way.

The institutional church, as the most visible representation of our shared faith, is more than important—it is necessary. But it is not sufficient. Sufficiency lies in the lives of individual Christians. What we say and do reveals the faith we claim to have.

None of us is completely autonomous. Wherever we are, whatever we are doing, and whatever we are saying, we are always in relationship with others. Every relationship, every interaction, is an exchange of mutual influence that subtly reshapes reality. The adjustments may be incremental or life-changing, but they are always present.

It is relatively easy to recognize the major influences in our lives—family, friends, teachers, coworkers, and the like. Less obvious are the brief exchanges with strangers that fill our daily lives. Yet each of them, no matter how fleeting, can become a moment in which the kingdom of God is near, absent, or quietly rejected.

We may be able to anticipate some of the encounters a day will bring, but certainty is never possible. Chance and randomness are always present. As the physicist John Polkinghorne observed, it is within chance and randomness that God has considerable room to act when and where God chooses.

We would go stark raving mad if we tried to plan every word and discipline every action so that it consciously reflected the presence of God’s kingdom in every interaction. What carries us through the day are our habits of the heart, which guide our words and actions without our having to think about them.

Every person has such habits. Whether they are good habits is another question. Whether they are habits that reflect something of the good news of God in Christ Jesus is another matter entirely.

If the institutional church has any essential purpose, it is to provide the teaching, example, and community needed to form habits of the heart that make Christian discipleship ordinary and unobtrusive.

Such habits must be empty of pride—empty of the assumption that one’s culture, role, or place in society determines the worth of others or the value of their cultures and lives. To put it another way, they must be unaware of their own righteousness while remaining deeply aware of their own vulnerability and of the contributions others have made to their well-being.

A community of Christians formed by such habits of the heart—habits shaped by the way of Christ—is the only authentic source of evangelism available to the institutional church.

A few weeks away for rest and contemplation can be restorative like nothing else. Time away provides the opportunity to decompress—to allow the craziness of the world to pass by unnoticed for a few days so we can return with a fresh, uncluttered mind ready to take on the tasks ahead.

Unfortunately, it does not always work that way. In fact, it may not work that way most of the time, for two reasons. One is personal; the other has to do with the conditions of the reality to which we return.

First, far too many people take a few weeks off for rest and relaxation and manage to accomplish neither. They fill their time with things to do that promise new adventures, new kinds of fun, and pleasures unrestricted by normal standards of prudence and temperance. The result is emotional and physical exhaustion rather than renewal. It is only one example among many variations of the same process lived out in different ways, and you can no doubt think of a few from your own experience.

Even when time away lives up to all expectations, returning home to conditions more chaotic and troubling than the ones left behind can be devastatingly disorienting. I sometimes think it is reality itself that ought to take a few weeks off for the rest and contemplation needed to restore a modicum of sanity.

Thanks to the current president of the United States, we returned to a world in which our beloved nation has been used to inflict what appears to be an unrestricted bombardment of Iran—a country whose leadership has fomented violence throughout the Middle East, often with a special animus toward Israel, but which has posed no serious threat to the United States. It has long been a nuisance to its Arab and Israeli neighbors and a brutal oppressor of its own people. Yet none of that justifies a war with no clear purpose, no clear plan for its conduct, no clear understanding of what an outcome might be, and apparently little concern for the human carnage inflicted on its people—or for the continued deconstruction of a world order that has held the globe in relative peace for nearly a century.

Trump’s lifelong habit has been to keep the blustering and the outrageous flowing, piling one spectacle on top of another without regard for the damage left behind. It has worked well as a scheme for accumulating wealth while evading accountability for a trail of misdemeanors and felonies. In something like a Ponzi scheme, each new outrage must be large enough to displace public reaction to the previous one.

The process has now reached the predictable moment when engaging in an unjustified war involving multiple nations—and utterly destroying America’s remaining credibility—becomes the only move left for a desperate man who knows his time is nearly up.

So much for returning from a few weeks of rest and restoration.

Oddly enough, it is also a moment of renewed hope. The majority of the American public appears to be fed up with him. Leadership among our Western allies is fed up with him. Putin, Xi, and the other strongman figures he admires gloat over the advantages handed to them by his foolishness and floundering. The lunatic fringe of the far right has grown louder and angrier even as it has become smaller and less influential. Even the moral cowards in the Senate and House are probing for the right moment to disengage in a show of righteous indignation.

How long must we wait?

Not long.

On March 25, 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to those who had marched from Selma to Montgomery in defiance of injustice and violence. His words became known as the “How Long? Not Long” speech. In closing, he called on ordinary people to continue their work with courage and determination in the cause of what is right, good, and just.

King ended with words that still resonate today:

“How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long, because you shall reap what you sow.
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
—Martin Luther King Jr., Montgomery, Alabama, March 25, 1965