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Brands, branding, and rebranding are the big deals these days. What’s your brand? Do you even have a brand? Corporations and their products have brands.  Celebrities are said to have brands.  A brand is a label providing superficial information about a business, product or service.  Brands are designed to elicit an emotional response appealing to some value, want or need, while revealing little about the substance of what is behind the label.

It’s all old news.  What’s new is a trend among ordinary individuals to create brands for themselves, or to rebrand the poor image they think others have of them, or they have of themselves.   It’s a new twist on the old “How to Make Friends and Influence People” of many decades ago. It’s not far from the equally old bromide that honesty, integrity and authenticity are important to success, so if you can fake them you’ve got it made. Each of us is conscious about the image we think we present to others and the image we have of ourselves.  It affects our sense of confidence, how we behave with others, and what we want out of it. The hard work of changing beliefs, attitudes and behaviors to develop a healthier life of greater authentic wholeness is seldom taken seriously.  It’s only the new brand or new label with its veneer of credibility that counts often allowing the old behavior to remain.

There are two problems with personal branding being today’s self-help panacea.  First, it’s likely to be nothing more than ineffectual play acting achieving nothing and leaving integrity in the dust.  Second,  it makes image the measure of a person’s worth, demeaning the greater value of the whole person. A few years ago it was all about authenticity, being the real person you were without apology.  Maybe that was too much work with little to show for it.  Branding seemed easier and cheaper.  Pretending to be a better you through branding sounded like more fun, especially when rebranding was always possible if and when last year’s brand became passé.

There is a better way, a brand that delivers what it promises, the only brand that is truth itself, now and forever.  Oddly enough it’s a way that began with branding imposed on it by others who mislabeled what was true as false and what was real as fake.  

Jesus was branded as a dangerous criminal.  His first followers were branded as peasant hicks. Yet it was Jesus who exhibited a living demonstration of everything good about humanity and everything true about God’s abounding and steadfast love for us.   The first decades of Christians were the living demonstration of courage, faithfulness, and integrity lived out in the imperfect way of ordinary people.   

In Christ and through Christ God has called each person and every person into the fullness of who they are as beloved and redeemed. It is the fullness of life forgiven, healed, and restored to wholeness.

The full humanity of each is unique to each, grounded in God’s love.  Different for each person, there’s no set rule or method to be followed.  But there are rules and methods that help open the way to receive the gift of God’s healing grace.  Branded by the sign of the cross Makes it possible for one to be comfortable in one’s own skin, aware of one’s weaknesses and failures, and equally aware of the better way presented by each new day. There is nothing sentimental about it.  Valleys of the shadow of death will be encountered, but they are not dead ends, God is both with us on the way and present at the other end to welcome us into his presence. 

We humans are odd creatures not easy to understand.  While it is true that we are prone to acts of selfishness, greed, envy, and desire for power and place, most of us want to be good people leading good lives, and, for the most part, try to be. 

There is a good deal of truth in both sides of our human nature.  In creation, God declared that we are good and that the good earth is here to be nurtured so that it can nourish us.  The biblical story is a metaphor for each of us.  We are, each of us, Adam and Eve.  There are exceptions, but most of us want to be good and still mess up in ways that hurt others, ourselves, and the communities in which we live. 

I don’t know why but for some reason God loves us, engaging in human life without coercion.  Holy Scripture is the record of continuing engagement with humankind, revealing how we can live with one another in a reasonable degree of harmony that will lead to more fulfilling lives.  It shouldn’t be hard to do but we were created with the freedom to choose and choose we do according to our own devices.  For good or for ill, the consequences of our choices are ours to bear.  Speaking through the prophets God has time and again said of ‘his’ people, “if only they would listen to my voice.” 

The freedom to choose, free will as it were, is not unlimited.  Genetics, mental and physical abilities, circumstances of life and education create boundaries to free will and condition the ways in which choices are made. Within these constraints there remains a tremendous range of freedom.  It is possible to choose to live as best one can according to God’s commandments and to be persons of integrity acting toward godly justice.  As Christians intent on following in the way of Jesus, it is imperative that we do our best to live into God’s supreme commandments: love God with all we have; love others as Jesus has loved us.

We are obligated to live in ways that honor the hard road of faith trod by our ancestors.  We are obligated to live as stewards of creation and all in our possession for the good of others, and the lives of generations to come.  It takes a lifetime with many mistakes made along the way.  We do things that bring great harm into the lives of others.  We discover ourselves to be implicit in evil done on our behalf. Harm comes to us by intention and by chance.  God is present through it all guiding us in confession, repentance, healing, forgiveness and reconciliation, the way forward lighted by the beacon of the commandments to love.  

The power in following Jesus’ way is not in  his moral teaching alone.  There are many teachers to choose from.  In his birth, life, teaching, death and resurrection he is the Word of God made flesh.  His words and deeds illuminate the authority of Almighty God.  With his crucifixion we exercised our free will to rebel against God to establish us as the ultimate authority and arbiter of what is good or bad.  If Satan exists, he is the manifestation of human free will untethered from God.  Jesus is reported to have said from the cross, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”  Indeed we didn’t.  We acted out of hubris mixed with good intentions and fear of each other.

In Jesus’ bodily resurrection, the rebellion was quashed; once and for all time death was destroyed.  The way of Jesus is declared to be what it has always been, the only way of life because God is the source of life, there is no other, and not for us only but for the whole world. It is the thunderous, explosive revelation of eternal truth in temporal time.

All of this raises a challenging question: if we know the truth that sets us free, why don’t we see better results?  I think it is because we are loathe to give up the sense that we can make better moral decisions on our own than with bothering God for guidance. I’m reminded of childhood road trips when dad set aside the map in favor of his intimate knowledge of shortcuts. They not infrequently ended up in some farmer’s back yard.  Humanity’s shortcuts lead more toward betrayal and violence that does real damage to others, to us, and to creation. In other words, the moral evil we experience is of our own making.

I’ve been thinking about the reported rightward shift among Black, Hispanic and Asian voters. The media make it sound like they are on a steep slope sliding toward MAGA.  That seems unlikely.  I suspect for particular segments of the population, it is more a matter of a slow shift from center-left to center-right.

Media also report that “they” are more socially conservative than progressive liberals presumed to be leading the Democratic Party. I suspect that could be partly true.  If and when someone has recognized the value of liberal democracy working for ordinary people, they’re unlikely to drift far from the center.  At the same time, if their life is consumed with what’s needed to get through the week or month while tending to the other demands of daily life, they’re more likely to be socially conservative.  In other words they want to hold onto the stability of existing social standards because the pace and degree of social change they feel is being forced on them is too much to deal while the more important demands of daily life are being met.  Political leaders who appear to push social change to the exclusion of the obvious problems affecting ordinary people will lose support.  Politicians with con-man savvy will be posed to take advantage of that kind of discontent.

Among liberals are many who are passionate about cutting edge issues, especially when they are about redressing old injustices and desperate current needs.  More power to them, but they are easily and angrily disappointed when ordinary people do not share their passion.  Ordinary people, including fellow liberals, may agree about the importance of such matters but are burdened by too many issues of their own. They want to slow down, understand more, and take time deciding.   Push too hard and there will be backlash.

I think that might be what’s going on in today’s world.  It doesn’t seem to have much to do with race or ethnicity but more to do with the onslaught of rapid change. Back in the tea-party days, I ran into a very conservative friend and we had some time for private conversation.  It turned out his tea-party anger was thin, just a way to make his voice heard. All he wanted, he said, was a nice, safe place for his kids too grow up in the middle class.  Society, he felt, was changing so fast that he couldn’t understand why or what was happening and it all just felt threatening. His comment has stuck with me all these years because it was so plainly honest.  I wonder if that conversation speaks to today’s so called shift to the right. 

I’m reminded of another friend, very liberal, passionate about helping immigrants and speaking out against armed conflict everywhere.  He goes to the boarder to volunteer, marches in protest, studies deeply, and encourages everyone he meets to join with him.  It disappoints him when others tacitly agree but don’t share his passion.  They are happy to encourage him. It’s his hurry up, let’s move, time is short, nothing else matters, that pushes center right and left people to respond with “Don’t push me!”

This, I suspect, may be what’s going on now. It has nothing to do with MAGA or its leaders.  It’s just the ordinary way of ordinary people.   It’s precisely what Martin Luther King, Jr. understood well and knew how to manage for the good of society.  It’s also what Reagan’s people understood well and knew how to manage for the good of the wealthy and powerful.  Who understands it well today?

Marjorie Taylor Greene has moved to dethrone Speaker Johnson because, as an NPR newscaster reported, he did not stand firm for the conservative demands of MAGA.  I cannot understand what conservative and MAGA have to do with each other. 

For the last hundred years, to be conservative has meant a restraining force on liberal agendas but not an impenetrable road block.  Conservatives have said they were for smaller government but never reduced its size or power. They wanted less regulation of business, lower taxes on corporations and upper classes, restrictions on union organizing, and as slowly as possible, suggested enacting advancements for social justice and economic security for the less affluent.  It was, said conservatives, a matter of prudent common sense. They were not serious about a smaller government.  A big one was fine with them if it served their needs. Yet, they were adamant about the primacy of individual freedom from government intrusion affecting their property and personal rights.

Strangely enough in the 1980s conservatives began to make a common cause of movements that demanded unconditional adherence to social rules preserving patriarchy, nuclear families, and heterosexuality.  Following those tenets was the only possible way of being a person.  In addition, anti-immigrant nationalism, opposition to abortion under any circumstance, suspicion of expansion of civil and human rights, etc. were also adopted. An odd alliance as self described social conservatives could implement their agendas only if the federal government became more authoritarian, imposed social standards on individual lives and criminalized any deviation. 

Conservative libertarians can’t coexist with social reactionaries.  One will eventually absorb the other.  And so it has happened as the old “Moral Majority” mutated into MAGA leaving no room for conservative libertarians and their kin.  The presence of conservatives has not put any restraint on MAGA extremism.   MAGA intends to rule with an iron fist, and the worst, most blasphemous sin is their claim to do it in the name of Christian nationalism.  There is nothing Christ like or Christian about it.   I suspect God is not amused. 

Palm Sunday begins the Christian holy week by rehearsing Jesus’ entry in to Jerusalem in days that would end with his death and resurrection.  It’s a familiar story.  Jesus rode a young, never before ridden donkey into the city.  Excited people shouted praises for the arrival of the hoped for messiah, paving the way with palms and cloaks. 

It’s hard to know who the people were.  Some were certainly disciples who had some sense that what they were witnessing had meaning far different  from the crowd’s expectations.  Many, I suspect, knew the passage from the prophet Zechariah that the messiah would come riding on a donkey. (Zech. 9.9)  Whether they took Jesus seriously or were poking fun at him is hard to know.  I imagine it was some of each, with a few hopeful that it might be true.  In any case, the joy quickly faded when he did not meet expectations. Besides it was only prudent to keep some distance from a wonder working prophet who had riled up temple leaders, Herodian puppet kings, and their Roman overlords. 

Consider the circumstances: it was a time of social and political disturbance teetering on the edge of total breakdown.  Sadducees, Pharisees, the high priestly family, Herodians and Romans existed in an unstable relationship, each contending for authority and power. In many ways it was a time not so terribly unlike our own, especially in this peculiar presidential election year.

Jerusalem was awash with jostling for who and what was important, and how things ought to be. Into it rode Jesus on a donkey of all things, as if he was the true king, unimpressed with all that was going on about him, offering God’s blessing to all and healing those who sought it.  I imagine the rich and powerful wondered who this country guy was who acted as if they, the truly important people, were of little consequence. He exuded an authority surpassing anything they could hope for and he did it as an expression of love for all.  Nothing gets the goats of the rich and powerful than the presence of all encompassing, healing, reconciling love of godly integrity without guile.  What’s worse, Jesus was unmindful of the deference due to his betters.  Not hat he pretended not to care or even be better still, but that he seems beyond them, emitting a dangerous alien presence. 

I don’t think it’s much different today.  Social and news media go all day every day telling us who and what we should be paying attention to, following, deferring to, or fighting with.   November will decide whether America remains a liberal democracy or becomes an autocracy of the few for the few. Discord is sown by encouraging people of different skin colors to distrust each other, labeling vulnerable groups as the sources of all our problems, and declaring every interest to be in non-negotiable conflict with all other interests. It’s a seductive melee that can suck us in.  It’s easy to forget the hosannas and palms, leaving Jesus sitting alone on his donkey with a few disciples wondering what happened. 

Palm Sunday is a time to choose.  Shout Hosanna but go with the fickle crowd or stay with Jesus. It doesn’t mean avoiding the important social and political issues of the day.  Jesus didn’t.  It does mean engaging, as best we can, in the way of Jesus: frankly confronting injustice, bearing the presence of divine healing, reconciling love, forgiveness of sin, and fullness of life now and everlasting. 

What will it get you to stay with Jesus?  Could be into trouble, but as John Lewis said, it will be good trouble. As scripture says, the way of the cross is the way of life and peace. 

British theologian Paula Gooder is a Pauline scholar who has studied first century life in places Paul worked. In lectures and books she has made the point that social standards of the day were based on a system of honor and shame.  The goal of a Roman citizen’s life was to acquire as much honor as possible, reaching for the next higher level of social standing. Social shame was a path to increasing dishonor that could lead to exclusion from “society.”  

Free non-citizens could not attain honors but could be respected for their work and character.  They could also be publicly shamed sometimes resulting in punishment or exile.  Slaves were not socially respected no matter how important they were to the functioning of society.  They could not be shamed but they could be punished, even killed at will.

The followers of Jesus in the early Christian church upset the social standards of the day because baptized into God’s family as children of God they had all the honor possible, an honor that shaming could not remove.  That, Gooder said, is what enabled them to face attempts at  public shaming, beatings and more with peace filled hearts and minds.  It must have been infuriating not to be able to shame those who didn’t let it change who they were or saw themselves to be.  Even worse, it was difficult to tempt them with the usual menu of honors.  Whether early Chrisians had honors or not was of little personal concern to them. As for slaves, nothing could turn the world upside down more than a Christian slave who acted as if they were free and seemed unresponsive to punishment.

Was that so?  I imagine it was true for some, perhaps many, at least in part.  Human nature being what it is, it’s likely the honor and shame system was hard to resist.   What struck me as I reflected on the author’s thoughts was that times have not changed very much since then. We still live in an honor and shame system even if called by some other name.  We may have a poorly defined and chaotic social hierarchy, but everyone knows there is one and has a sense of what it is and how it operates. It’s what sociologists spend most of their time examining. It’s the fodder of tabloid style news media where the modern way of public shaming is scandal marketed as entertainment.

Today’s honors are doled out in a variety of forms, including the multitude of awards such as Oscars, Nobels, and Bookers, not to mention men and women of the year, employees of the month,, valedictorians and prom queens. There was once a list of society’s 400.  Now we have Forbes list of the ten richest, the billionaires club, and (sigh) influencers. 

The whole mess is kept churning by private and public shaming to remote, humiliate, ridicule, ostracize, and bully.  Tactical shaming is the red meat of negative political ads. Spiteful shaming is the realm of gossip and media sensationalism. Bosses shame subordinates to let them know who’s boss.  Parents shame children to teach them a lesson.  And quite a bit of shame is self inflicted by the consequences of bad choices. I don’t think the Greeks and Romans invented the honor and shame system.  It probably exists in some form in every culture but maybe there are some who employed it with more integrity and respect.  What strikes me is that there should be more Christians adhering to the ancient practice of the early church that rejected the power of shame, was ambivalent about honor, and had unflinching confidence in God’s redeeming love for them in Jesus Christ. 

What we know of Pauline Christians is that they were well aware of sin, especially their own.  But they also knew the healing power of confession, repentance, and forgiveness were theirs by grace through faith, and theirs to offer to others.   It isn’t magic.  It’s always a struggle with one’s own ego amidst  social pressures from all sides, some good, some not.

Paul wrote that we are “not to be conformed to the world but to be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Rom. 12). He meant to be wary of contemporary social standards and expectations. Measure them all by the will of God revealed through scripture and especially in Jesus Christ.  Live in confident assurance that as a child of God, social honor and shame are to be faced with courage and peace of mind.  Let me put it another way.  Society’s honors are often little more than a form of ego enriching bribery.  Beware.  Social shaming is often a form of blackmail demanding the surrender of your soul.  Beware.  In Jesus’ own words, “do not be afraid” you are beloved by God. 

There appears to be an illusion among a significant portion of the population that the U.S. can be a fortress nation isolated from and disinterested in what’s going on in the rest of the world. Perhaps some of it is due to exhaustion; America has been the world’s leader long enough, let someone else take over. Others, I suppose, think America is a super power so unrivaled that it can both get along on its own without others and can also dictate conditions by which others have to behave.   It’s obvious that many believe saving white hegemony, whatever the cost, is the only way to keep America, America. 

We’ve been there before with the Know Nothings movement in the 1850s, the Ku Klux Klan in post reconstruction years, and the pro-Nazi America First movement of the late 1930s.  The MAGA movement is simply another recurrence of a chronic pathogen that goes into remission for decades but never dies. The difference today is that it has a serious contender for the presidency who may very well win and who has promised to remake America in his own undemocratic image. 

It is unclear that enough voters are sufficiently aware of the danger.  Too many happily vote MAGA candidates into Congress and state houses thinking they will be for the little guy, the forgotten and dishonored, and they will stick it to the hated coastal elite.  It’s a tragic choice based on artful constructions of “others” responsible for all their troubles, and more “others” looming on the horizon to do evermore damage.  The first “others” are the so called elites and national media, all labeled as radical left wingers.  The second wave of “others” are immigrants, especially immigrants of color coming across the southern border who are accused of being the worst of the worst of really bad countries. 

It’s a tactic honed to near perfection by Nazis in the run up to WWII, and MAGA leaders have strengthened its effectiveness with every tool of technology and psychology at their disposal. And to what end?  Certainly not to help the little guy, the people whose well programmed anxieties are maintained at high levels by MAGA leaders reminding them that they are forgotten and dishonored, and that those same MAGA leaders point out who is to blame for their plight. 

The goal is power, not simply the power of position in a democratic society, but power itself to do with society what it wants for the benefit of those who hold power.  And what of the people?  They are the pawns needed to win, gullible, used, and not worth worrying about. 

It sounds a very sophisticated plan and in some ways it is, but it’s an old script with predictable results.  If it succeeds, the U.S. will quickly drift into low second rate global status aligned with other “strong man” countries.  It’s former allies will offer condolences and get on with life, a little sad at the demise of a once great nation.  Conformity to MAGA dictates will be called freedom, and freedom will be called rebellious treason. 

In a curious twist the supreme leader, at least for now, is an unintelligent, largely uneducated man with a mobster’s mentality.  His rallies are dominated by long rambling speeches, sometimes incoherent, that complain about how unfair he is being treated, just like all of his supporters are, how he is one of them, and how he will take revenge on their behalf when elected.   Yet he shows no affection for them and belittles them behind their backs.  As for the strong man leaders he so admires, he has no interest in or knowledge of economic and social conditions in the nations they lead or have led.  Questions about ethics and morality appear never to cross his mind. I fail to understand why so many commentators continue to try to give him the benefit of the doubt. 

As Christians prepare to enter Holy Week, the week preceding Easter, the church faces its most dangerous time of the year.  The Gospel of John is the most commonly used text during these days, and its language evokes every anti-Jewish prejudice that has haunted western civilization for two thousand years.  At its worst it has ignited pogroms in which Jewish neighbors were exiled and murdered. 

No one knows why John labeled Jews as the opponents of Jesus.  Jesus was a Jew.  All his disciples were Jews.  With the exception of some Romans and a few others all the people in John’s gospel are Jews.  And it’s reasonably clear that the text was written for a community of Jews throughout the eastern Mediterranean who followed Jesus.  It doesn’t matter how often pastors and theologians try to explain the narrative’s context and history.  The plain reading of the text by people who have been carefully taught to dislike Jews will use it to justify their hateful prejudices. 

It’s the reason many pastors proclaim a cautionary warning to their congregations each year.  This year, with the meteoric rise of anti-Jewish rhetoric and behavior, it is more important to make the warning a public condemnation of all forms of antisemitism.  There is no room for it in Christianity.  Any form of antisemitism is abhorrent to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, in these most holy of days, it is incumbent on Christians to stand as solid walls against all forms of antisemitism.  In Christ there is no Jew or Gentile, man or woman, black, brown or white, no East or West. All are one with God in Christ.  

That does not exempt Israel’s leadership from criticism of the way they are executing the war against Hamas.  Vengeful retribution against an entire population is never justified.  Hamas’s cowardly and inhumane attack on an Israeli kibbutz on October 7 is equally condemned.  Every “civilized” nation on earth has been guilty of the same unspeakable behavior at one time or another. None are free of guilt, but all understand deeply how morally wrong it was, so there can be no moral justification for it anywhere on earth today.

Remember, John’s gospel also declared that God so loved the world that Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, came to save it, not condemn it.  There can be no better time than Easter for Christians to proclaim that saving truth for all peoples in every place, and to participate as they are able in God’s healing and reconciling work. 

I recently listened to a lecture by Sam Wells on the differences between working for and working with versus being for and being with. It was a theme that fit in nicely with David Brooks’s recent book, “How to know a Person.”

Working for the needs of the other generally assumes you know what the need is,  believe you know how to meet it, and have the resources to help make things happen.  Working with assumes the same but you, the advantaged one, work with the other, the disadvantaged one, offering guidance, support, and a modicum of supervision to assure resources are well used.  Both ways have their uses and are frequently employed.

Being for assumes the other has all the agency needed to succeed, and in companionship with the other strives to remove systemic obstacles through lobbying, community organizing, engaging in grass roots demonstrations and the like.  It eschews overt leadership roles in favor of leadership from the other.   Being with is the simplest and most difficult.  It means to enter a relationship of mutual trust and affection in which, in Brooks’ terms, leads to knowing each other without prejudice or expectation.

Each of these ways has its strengths and weaknesses but Wells pointed out, we are prone to use them in ways that emphasize their weaknesses, which is one reason why so many well intentioned projects go awry.  Working for and working with imply that the other is disadvantaged, has little agency of their own.  Working for/with generally makes little effort at getting to know the other in any intimate way but tends to rely on studies, observations, prejudices and untested assumptions.   The dignity of the other is subsumed under good intentions.   It’s also the most common tactic used by truly well meaning people really wanting to address serious social problems.  Well meaning helpers are dumfounded when messages of “look what I’ve done for you” don’t resonate with gratitude from the intended beneficiaries.  Regrettably, attempts at being for and with can too easily slide into crowning one’s self with a halo of sacrificial goodness while accomplishing little.

There is a common weakness.  It is to reserve a place of superiority over the other, that no matter what else might be true, one is at least not as needy as the other. I wonder if that is part of the reason for the incarnation.  Jesus came to us utterly dependent on his mother Mary, Joseph and the people of Nazareth.  Even in his young adulthood he was a Galilean not a proper Judaean. Wasn’t it commonly said that nothing good could come out of Nazareth?

Being for and being with is how Jesus entered into his earthly ministry.   He surrendered his oneness with God to become one with humanity. He was being with when he entered the waters of John’s baptism and invited his first disciples to “come and see.”  He spent his entire ministry being with the people he encountered as one of them. Even his works involved being for and with. It was only in his crucifixion and resurrection that he revealed the fullness of his divinity and the redeeming work he had done for all humanity.  He was, and is, being with us, being for us, working with us and working for us, in that order. 

It should be instructive as a guide for our own engagement with the other, whoever it might be. It should but seldom is.  Good may come of our efforts, but will not produce the gratitude we so often think we deserve. In David Brooks’s terms, it’s a gap that can be bridged only by getting to know the other as a person.  He offers sage advice on how to get to know the other that involves listening without judgment, asking without prejudice, and sharing openly of one’s self with the other.  It requires a kind of giving up of our own sense of power, position, or superiority.  It also requires us to be willing to receive the gifts the other can offer us.

Being with/for and working with/for are important in the realm of daily life to the ways in which we deal with employees, bosses, customers, friends, casual acquaintances and family. It makes us more aware of how often and in what ways we are the one in need of what only the subordinates and disadvantaged can provide.

The practical application for congregations, pastors, and Christians in their everyday lives is to be with, be for, work with, work for insofar as one is able. There are limits of course.  Each way has its legitimate uses, and unlike Paul’s boast, we cannot be all things to all people. Perhaps the best we can do is work for by donating money. That’s OK.  There are also times of such urgent need that providing it as quickly, efficiently and effectively as possible leaves little room for developing relationships with any intimacy.  What we are called to do is follow the way of Jesus with the people we encounter.  

I’ll end with advising against making it too complicated.  Keep it simple.  You and I are not here to fix what we think is troubling others, nor to force help when it’s unwanted and unasked for.  We are not saviors, Jesus is.

Jobs, inflation, and economic growth data are announce each month.  Corporate financials are reported every quarter.  But first, analysts project their expectations well ill advance.  When results come in better than expectations they are attributed to unexpected circumstances.  When they come in below expectations blame is accredited to management blunders. On the rare occasion results and expectations are nearly equal, all the kudos go to the perspicuity of analysts.  It’s always someone else who fails, never the analysts.

Truth be told, analyst expectations are little more, and probably much less, than SWAG (scientific wild ass guesses).  I’m reminded of several demonstrations used by W. Edwards Deming many decades ago that revealed the foolishness of rewarding success and punishing failure for events over which an agent’s actions have little effect on outcome..

It isn’t that corporate decisions and government policies are not important, they are.  But the best they can do is influence modest changes in the flow of events over which they have little real control.  Canny observations may spot opportunities others fail to see, but they don’t create the opportunities.  A certain ruthlessness can out maneuver others to advantage, but only for a moment, and that based on good luck, in other words, on favorable random outcomes.   Deming’s point was that people, leaders in particular, are often distracted by trying to control random outcomes when they should be doing something else.  What else?

They should be scanning the environment’s horizon with unprejudiced eyes to spot emerging trends that will change the course of the usual way of things. The old saying that basing future actions on historic trends is not destiny should be reworded to say that it is never destiny.  What drives fundamental changes in the direction of society is the discernment of previously unasked questions that must now be asked.  Here are a few rough examples to suggest the general idea.

Nineteenth century robber barons seized opportunities to build industrial empires, but they never asked how their mistreatment of employees and customers would redirect trends undermining their own successes. Prime Minister Chamberlain knew how European politics always worked but never asked how the emerging wave of fascism would turn it upside down. Post war America believed a new, permanent, prosperous equilibrium had been established, but never asked how the disadvantaged and disenfranchised would react to being left out. It would be wrong to blame leaders for everything. The general public is exceedingly stubborn in its desire to keep things the way they used to be while denying the obvious changes and dangers lying ahead in plain sight. It’s what enables movements such as fascism and MAGAism to gain momentum.  Fear of losing what little they have moves some people, sometimes whole nations, to give authority into the hands of a leader who promises to keep them safe, even give them a new paradise. It never works.  The people always suffer loss.

What is the responsible way forward?  There are guiding principles that point the way without giving specific directions.  Those are for us to work out as best we can.  Perhaps most important has been pointed out by Rowan Williams when he said there is no such thing as “dead material.”  All creation is alive in its own way in the creating and sustaining presence of God who is both imminent and transcendent at the same time.  For Christians it means creation and creatures are in some sense sacred, and we, as humans, are accountable for our stewardship of them. The Word of God incarnate in Christ Jesus declares that every person, no matter who or where, is beloved of God,  none more than another.  Christians are compelled by God to declare that truth, live into it, and do what they can as they are able to influence corporate decisions and public policies toward godly justice for all.   It’s that simple but not easy.

Jesus said the fullness of life hangs on two basic commandments: love God fully and without reservation; love others no matter who they are.  How?  He said to love others as he loves us, and the gospel narratives describe what that means if we allow the Spirit to speak through them into our minds and hearts. Is that just his opinion? No. It is from God’s mouth to our ears, not an opinion but plain black and white eternal truth.  In other words, it is the answer to the question, what is God’s plan for us? It is by this truth that we are more able to make plans and navigate random contingencies with fewer blunders.  An old saying says that fortune favors the prepared mind and following in the way of Jesus is the way of a prepared mind.