God takes charge - the Second Sunday of Advent

Malachi is the last of the Jewish prophets in the Christian ordering of the Jewish scriptures. In the Hebrew Bible, Malachi’s book appears in a different place. The order of the books in the Hebrew Bible is a little different from that of our Old Testament, but the texts are word for word the same. 

Like pretty much all the prophets of old, Malachi calls the people of Israel to return to faithful living within their covenant with God. Malachi sees the religious devotions and practices of the people as being entirely too lackadaisical, especially the priests. As a result, the way that the people live together day to day lacks holiness of character. Even their social occasions and ordinary interactions have become corrupted because they are so slack in their religious commitments. 

God, says Malachi, is greatly grieved and upset by all this and is determined to do something about it. So, God sends through Malachi something of a good-news, bad-news message. 

Malachi 3:1 4:

    See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you  seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. 

     2But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; 3he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. 4Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.

The good news is that God basically says, "I am taking matters into my own hands. I am sending my messenger ahead of me to prepare the way and then I myself, whom you seek, will suddenly come.”

The bad news is, “But you won’t like it when I do. Do you think you will be able to endure it? You cannot. Do you think you will stand blameless before me when I appear? Don’t count on it."

The passages for the second Sunday of Advent focus on the prophecies foretelling the coming of God’s redemption, of whom John the Baptist is the greatest, according to Jesus. Christians have understood Malachi’s messenger to be John, whose ministry immediately preceded Jesus. Malachi’s prophecy is a tough one with a hard message. It does not put us in the “Christmas spirit” or inspire us to make merry.

Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was killed by the Nazis in Dachau for plotting against Hitler, took on that very challenge in an Advent sermon he preached in 1928:

     It is very remarkable [he said] that we face the thought that God is coming so calmly, whereas previously peoples trembled at the day of God... We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God's coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God's coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, [affirming] only the pleasant and agreeable of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.

    Only when we have felt the terror of the matter can we recognize the incomparable kindness. God comes into the very midst of evil and of death and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, God cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with grace and love.

Can we welcome the judgment? I knew a detective who told me that the real value of polygraph exams was to gain confessions. Polygraph exams cannot be used in a trial, but a confession during the exam is admissible if it is followed up by a written, signed statement. The detective told me that wrongdoers often are eager to confess. Unless one is a career criminal, the burden of guilt is often great, and the polygraph provides an excellent excuse to unload. 

“What would really surprise you,” he told me, “is how many suspects are completely changed by their confession. At the beginning they are afraid to take the test, even though they can end it at any time. Then, if they confess, they can become giddy with relief and happy that they don’t have to carry that burden of guilt anymore.”

 If we comprehend the character of God and the nature of God’s righteous judgment, we can understand how we should both dread it and welcome it. Malachi tells us we must go through the fires of refining, like gold or silver. Why? Because refining forces out the impurities, the dross that has to be shed to be fine gold or silver. God refines us in order to redefine us. We have to face facts about ourselves that we’d rather leave buried deep inside. There are occasions of the church seasons that may work for us as the polygraphs do for the shamefully guilty – bring us to confession before God and be relieved of our guilt.

The trick is to be willing to be refined. A man I knew, a good, decent fellow, told me once of a violent storm one night that toppled a giant tree in a park. The splintered stump showed that the tree fell because it was rotten at the core from insects that had eaten away at its heart for years.

“I am that tree,” my friend said. “From outward appearance all is well with me, but I know of the rot inside. I ask myself why I am not a better man, and that tree showed me the answer. I am not a better man because I don’t want to be. But I wish that I did.” 

The fear of the refining overwhelms the desire for moving on to perfection. A few years ago, Robert Wuthnow published a detailed study of two thousand Americans that discovered that we are, as a culture, spiritually adrift in making decisions in economics, career choice, workplace commitment, consumerism, charity. Even those who described themselves as committed churchgoers often have their materialistic and workaholic tendencies reinforced by their beliefs or faith training. They admitted they live “pretty much the same as those who have no faith at all.”

It is natural to shrink from being refined. We are a fallen people who like our fallen state. We know that if we really embrace the teachings, person, and the divinity of Jesus Christ, we’ll have to change. We’ll have to cease putting our own desires first. We’ll have to start managing our time and money and resources differently. We’ll have to stop swearing or telling off-color jokes. We’ll have to stop gossiping. We’ll have to help other people succeed instead of exploiting their failures.

 We live in the center of our own self idolatry. We are afraid to admit that all we treasure could be a house of cards, and we know that Christ will blow the cards down into a heap. And then where will we be? 

If we are lucky, truly blessed, we will find ourselves filled with a creative and Spirit-filled discontent with the status quo. 

To be refined by God is to come to a spiritually barren place where we know that before a righteous and holy God, we have nothing to commend us except the willingness to confess and be redeemed. Martin Luther said it is the nature of God that he makes something out of nothing. Thus, God heals only they who know they are sick, gives no one sight but those who admit they are blind. God brings no one to life except the dead, makes no one pious but sinners, makes no one wise but the foolish. 

God has no mercy on anyone but the wretched and gives no one grace except those who have not grace. Consequently, proud persons cannot become holy, wise or righteous, or become the material with which God works, or have God's work in them. They remain in their own works and make fabricated, false and simulated saints out of themselves. 

“Who can endure the day of his coming?” We cannot endure even the day of Christmas if we really understand that the infant Jesus in the manger is the incarnation of God’s righteous judgment upon us. We should flee in terror from Bethlehem and all that it portends. How can we possibly celebrate Christmas when it means that from now on, we have no excuse?  

Only this way: the judgment God brings is to purify us and refine us like gold and silver, until we can present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. 

Here is the judgment of the holy and righteous God of power: that he so loved the world that he gave his only Son, and that anyone who accepts and follows him as the guarantor of life now and for eternity, will never perish. This is his judgment, says John, that Christ’s Light has come into this world of darkness, but we love the darkness rather than the Light. 

Even so, God will never stop loving you, never stop reaching to you, never stop being who he is. God is our Creator, our Sustainer, our Redeemer, our Savior. And all of these things are God's judgment upon us, for God adjudges us in love to be in his image, he adjudges us in love to be adopted as his sons and daughters, God adjudges us to be able to spend eternity in his company, to be able to love him and one another both in this life and the next. God adjudges that you can do all things good and holy through his strength, that you are both loved and love-worthy, and that you can live with a peace that you will always enjoy even if never fully understand. 

God will never redact this, never revoke it, never turn his back on you, never change his mind. And remember, God has a fuller knowledge of what "never" means than we do. 

God has told us mortals what is good and what he requires of us: Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.

Second Corinthians 5 says,

Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them (2 Cor 5:17-19).

Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given. And the judgment of God is that, “On him God has laid the iniquity of us all. … And the Government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”

Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? All of us can who love the Lord, who lift up our hearts to God, and know to rejoice, for our redemption is drawing near. 

"A Christmas Carol" movies you can watch right now, free

I have 18 movie versions of Charles Dickens' novel, A Christmas Carol, in my personal collection. And I watch all of them each Christmas season. Here is where you may find as many versions of the movie as I can find online for free viewing. They are listed in the order I found them, not according to my personal rating of their worth. 

First up, from 1984, starring George C. Scott as Scrooge, free on YouTube and hence embedded here:

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Nest is Scrooged, starring Alistair Sim. This movie has received high marks for Sims' performance as Ebenezer Scrooge.

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Next is is Patrick Stewart playing Scrooge from 1999. This one has become an almost instant classic. 

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This version stars Guy Pearce as a younger Scrooge than we usually imagine. And it is more based on the novel's theme than its narrative, although the character's names are the same. Hence it is a reboot of sorts, rather long (almost three hours) with many added scenes, and Marley's ghost has a much larger part. But I give it good marks for staying faithful to Dickens' themes. 

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Here is the first movie of the novel with sound, 1935's Scrooge, starring Seymour Hicks.

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1938's version, starring Reginald Owen:

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A Christmas Carol (1954), starring Frederic March and Basil Rathbone: 

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Here is An American Christmas Carol from 1979, starring Henry Winkler:

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From 2015, starring Anthony D.P. Mann, one of the shortest versions at 59 minutes:

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From the BBC in 2000, one of my favorite versions, set in modern London with Scrooge being a young hoodlum loan shark, starring Ross Kemp. 

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And last, a musical version starring Albert Finney and Alec Guinness, Scrooge, from 1970.

Have fun, and remember the lesson the story tells so well!

Judgment and Advent

 A reflection for the first Sunday of the season of Advent

    Advent is the season of the church calendar that begins four Sundays before Christmas day. That Sunday, which is today this year, is also New Year's Day on the church calendar. The purpose of Advent is not to get ready for Christmas. It is to prepare for the coming of the Son of God into the world. The Christmas season on the church calendar begins, reasonably enough, on December 25 and the season of Christmas lasts a short time after then.

    Traditionally, the passages for first Sunday of Advent are not about Bethlehem or the manger or the wise men or shepherds or any of the things we usually think about when December gets here. This Sunday is about the judgment of God upon the world through Christ. Often the passages make us look well beyond the manger to the return of Christ into the world in power. Jesus taught a lot about the final judgment. Today’s passage from Luke is one example, which seems to start the season rather depressingly:

Luke 21:25-28

   25 "There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. 26 People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 27 Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory.

   28 “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."

We should stop to ponder just what the Good News really is as we head into Advent. I would advise not to think too much ahead to either Santa Claus or Bethlehem; the gospels show it is not an easy trip. Let Advent be a time to look inward at our souls to discern whether we are preparing ourselves for the coming of Christ. The Scripture passages for Advent emphasize the prophecy of Christ’s coming, the fact of Christ’s coming, and the promise of Christ’s coming again. Passages of the return of Christ are full of images and metaphors from another time and place. I don’t understand them all. Their origin is a people whose fundamental way of understanding reality was very different from ours.

But I think that this passage and the others like it in the Bible to compel us to ponder a critical question: What do we expect from the future?

Jesus paints a picture of creation coming loose. The order and regularity of the natural world so painstakingly explained in the first two chapters of Genesis is cast to the winds. God is shaking things up now, which Jesus and his hearers already knew would happen. The prophet Haggai wrote, “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the LORD Almighty” (Hag 2:6‑7). (You may recognize this passage as the text of the fifth piece of Handel’s Messiah.)

Luke’s signs and portents point to fear and foreboding, and people faint. Yet even in such times, God remains steadfast. God comes with power and glory. We are not to faint when God shakes things up but are to stand and raise our heads because our redemption is drawing near. Even in chaos, redemption.

What do we expect from the future? Luke says that one day the end will come but that the end is one of hope for everyone who follows Christ. To hope for the future requires a point to the present. Advent should make us face how we understand the fundamental condition of humankind: that there is something about human existence that makes salvation, however defined, necessary. That is to say:

·      what are we saved from?

·      what are we saved to?

·      and what are we saved for?

Here is what I think.

We are saved from a life of unconscious relationship with God to a life of conscious relationship with God. All of creation exists in relation to God. Human beings are always in relationship to God. The question is how whole and healthy that relationship is. We are saved from broken, sickly relationship to restored, repaired relationship through the initiative of God’s grace and our response to grace.

We are saved from meagerness of life to abundance of life. Jesus said he had come so that we may have life more abundantly. Being the materialists that we are, we tend to misunderstand what abundance means, no time more so than at Christmas: you know, the stuff. At Christmas it’s easy to ignore Jesus’ caution that, “a person’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). Abundant life is more than that. The abundant life is one in which unholiness is being swept away and holiness of life is being nurtured. Abundant life means to turn from ways of death to ways of life.

Isaiah wrote that human beings have a "covenant with death" and an "agreement with the grave" (Isa 28:16‑18). This condition goes beyond the simple fact of individual mortality. It is not merely persons who are being saved by God, it is societies, politics, the human community itself.

 Individual persons are often quite admirable. But collectively, communally, nationally, as a species, we are inbred to strife, warfare, criminality, domination and oppression at every level. No individual can escape it no matter how pure in heart. Every person participates no matter how devoted to right. Yet the promise of salvation is that the destructive and self-destructive side of human nature can be quelled, and that the better angels of our nature can flower in God’s grace. “Jesus Christ [is] liberator of every dimension of life” (ABD).

So we are saved from destruction and violence to creation and peace.

We are saved from the temporary to the eternal. The idea of salvation in Christian faith has always included the promise that the grave is not the end for Christian people. We will be raised to live again in a new creation, just as Christ was raised, and we shall be like him. “For those who have no faith and no knowledge of God, death stands as a final denial of life. All that we may attempt or do is eventually swept away by time.

   On the other hand, the [Good News of Advent is] that beyond the end of time stands the Lord, who has come among us in the person of Jesus. Those whose lives are lived under Jesus’ Lordship can live expectantly, filling each day with activity that is meaningful because of its divine mandate and its contribution to the fulfillment of God’s purposes for human life. Similarly, neither the end of life nor the end of time itself holds terror “for those who know God’s love because they know the one who determines the reality that lies beyond” the here and now. “Thus those who know Christ as the Son of God can approach the end with heads raised high, knowing that their redemption is near” (21:28) (NIB).

Those are only some of the things we are saved from and saved to. But just as importantly, what are we saved for? This question is an urgent one if we are to avoid being so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good.

Paul wrote in First Corinthians, “. . . we are God’s fellow workers. . . ” (1 Cor 3:9a), and in Philippians, “for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Phil 2:13). We are saved for a reason, for a purpose. The way I best understand it is what you have heard me say before: We are saved to be the body of Christ in this time and this place, to do what Christ would do if he were here. Just as Christ in his incarnation represents us to God, so do we in our adoption by God as Christ’s brothers and sisters represent Christ to humankind and the rest of creation. The redemption of creation is the ongoing work of God.

We are called to be fellow-laborers with heavenly forces in the renewal of the world, we are to be living letters of God to the world, individually and collectively through the church. Through worship, prayer and devotion, through acts of charity and in struggling for divine justice in human affairs, we envision and work for a world free from anguish, suffering, and despair, a new order in which there will be justice and peace for all creation.

Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. The return of Christ is the “God‑provided goal . . . toward which all life should be directed.”

“The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” That day has come in the person of Christ. Prophecies have already found their fulfillment already in the life and work of Jesus Christ, in whose grace we await the culmination of God’s history with the world.

The praises of Hannah and Mary

The story of a woman named Hannah is related in First Samuel. Hannah was married to Elkanah, a Levite and a priest. For many years Hannah was childless. Hannah spent her years in tears and bitter disappointment. Finally Hannah reached the end of her rope. She prayed near the temple, in her day a rough building of wood, for Hannah lived a long time before King David, who built the first grand Temple. 

Hannah prayed, "O LORD Almighty, if you will only look upon your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the LORD for all the days of his life... ."

The prophet Eli happened to be sitting in a chair nearby and saw her utter the words but did not hear her voice. He thought she was drunk and told her, "How long will you keep on getting drunk? Get rid of your wine."

Like Zechariah (Elizabeth's husband), like Joseph, like Abraham, Eli just didn’t get it. Hannah explained what she was doing, and then Eli gave her his blessing. 

Hannah did give birth to a son, Samuel, whom she turned over to Eli when Samuel was about three years old, so he would be brought up exclusively in the service of the Lord, as Hannah had promised. Then Hannah was overcome with gratitude and joy, leading her praise God.

Hannah prayed and said, "My heart exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in my God. My mouth derides my enemies because I rejoice in your victory. There is no Holy One like the LORD, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.

Talk no more so very proudly; let not arrogance come from your mouth, for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on strength. Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry are fat with spoil. The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children is forlorn.

The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up. The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low; he also exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and on them he has set the world.

He will guard the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked will perish in darkness, for not by might does one prevail. The LORD! His adversaries will be shattered; the Most High will thunder in heaven. The LORD will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king and exalt the power of his anointed.

As an adult, Samuel led the people against the Philistines and selected Saul as the first king of Israel. He later anointed David as Saul’s successor. Pretty important guy in the history of the Jews!

Luke's Gospel relates that Mary, betrothed to a man named Joseph, was visited by the angel Gabriel, who told her that she had been selected by God to bear the Son of God into human birth. Joseph was not consulted about this but later learned the truth, that as Gabriel had told Mary, she would be with child by the Holy Spirit. 

Shortly afterward, Mary went to visit her relative, Elizabeth, and upon greeting her, burst into a canticle of praise that has endured through time as Mary's Magnificat.  

For centuries Christians have remarked on how much Mary’s Magnificat resembles Hannah’s song of praise. And so I have combined them as a responsive reading. 

Responsive reading: the praises of Hannah and Mary (Lk. 1:46b-55; 1 Sam. 2:1-10)

 Hannah: My heart rejoices in the LORD; in the LORD my horn is lifted high. I delight in his deliverance.

Mary: My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

H: There is no one holy like the LORD; there is no one besides him; there is no Rock like our God.

M: He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

H: The warriors’ bows are broken, but those who stumbled are made strong. 

M: God shows mercy to those who fear him, from generation to generation.

H: The LORD brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up.

M: He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. The LORD sends poverty and wealth; he humbles and he exalts.

M: He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.

H: He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor.

M: He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever.

H: The foundations of the earth are the Lord’s; upon them he has set the world. He will guard the feet of his saints, but the wicked will be silenced. 

H: It is not by strength that one prevails; those who oppose the LORD will be shattered. 

H: The LORD will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to his king and exalt his anointed. Amen. 

America’s Crisis Questions

John 18.28, 33, 36-38a:

   28 Then they took Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate’s headquarters. It was early in the morning. They themselves did not enter the headquarters, so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover. 

   33 Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

   36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

   37 “You are a king, then!” said Pilate.

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

   38 “What is truth?” retorted Pilate.

The question Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” is, I think, the second-most important question in the Bible, hence the second-most important question facing all humanity all the time. The most important question is the one Jesus asked his disciples one day on the road to Caesarea-Philippi: “Who do you say that I am?” Unless we answer that one rightly, we will never answer the second one fully. 

Pilate was a politician. He had already answered the first question – who is Jesus – by saying he had been told that Jesus was a pretender to the kingship of Judea. Jesus answered, “My kingship is not of this world,” which Pilate seemed to take as Jesus’ confession of some kind and, hearing Jesus’ explanation, simply waved it away as irrelevant. 

I think one lesson of this passage is that we should not let politicians define what truth is. 

That we as a nation have been allowing that for many, many years is not bearing good fruit for us as the election looms only two days away. It does not take a Nobel laureate to observe that America is not today a “United” States. So I will try to explore what we as disciples of Jesus Christ may do and say that promotes peace and exhibits the spirit of Christ in this tense time. 

I must say at the outset that there is a very high probability of violence following the election, perhaps starting Tuesday night, a matter that I wrote about on Oct. 30, quoting assessments by Foreign Policy, NBC News, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and the Biden administration's  Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The risk of lethal, destructive violence in our cities after election day is very real, though I pray God I am wrong. So what do we, who profess to follow Christ, do until then? 

 

I think our beginning point is to look in a mirror. Jesus said in Matthew 7, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote a “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” in which he lamented,

The contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent, or often vocal, sanction of things as they are.

This we must not do. America will not be better until Americans are better. In the 1830s, French historian Alexis de Tocqueville visited America and later wrote, “America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” He attributed America’s goodness to its churches. While we should not ascribe too much goodness to our forebears of 180 years ago, we probably can agree that we will not “make America great again” unless we, not politicians, decide to make Americans good. 

And that, I think, relies on how we church people give answer in the way we live, what we do, and what we say to the two most important questions facing the country today: 

1. Who do we say Jesus is?

2. What is truth?

Today, I will address the second one. 

There is a scene in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark that makes my first point: 

"Archaeology is the search for facts, not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Doctor Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall." 

Truth and fact are closely related, of course, but they are not the same thing. People rarely fight over facts. What they argue about is what the facts mean, what is the Truth that the facts indicate. Both sides have the same facts, but both arrive at a different "truth."  

Truth is important and so is truth's relationship to facts. Every one of us operates every day on what is known as the "correspondence theory" of truth. For example, when doctors make diagnoses, they correspond symptoms and test results to disorders, ailments, or diseases. So do mechanics when determining what makes the pinging noise under the hood of your car. In either case the decisions about health or auto repairs rely on a correspondence between certain facts and certain conclusions that are true, or most likely true. Correspondence of facts to truths means that some conclusions must be false. Falsehoods don't correspond to facts. 

But two other claims about what is truth are alive and well in America today. One is relativism, the notion that something can be "true for you" and another thing "true for me." We can each have our own personal truth regardless of facts. But relativism is tolerable only for trivial matters. You may love cauliflower while I despise it. "Cauliflower tastes good," is true for you and its opposite, "Cauliflower is awful," is true for me. And we're both right. But it does not matter. 

However, when the stakes of truth are significant, we all drop all pretense of relativism. Horace and Edna may be wallowing in relativism when it comes to cauliflower, but if Horace is a University of Tennessee graduate and Edna a University of Georgia graduate, and it's football season, well ... . 

This relativism has become today rooted in emotionalism, the insistence that truth is a consequence of how someone feels about a topic, and ensuing hostility toward anyone who crosses that line. A law professor wrote that it is increasingly difficult to teach classes about law relating to sexual crimes such as rape because of the emotional, hence hostile, reaction of students. Lucia Martinez, an English professor at Reed College, wrote, “I am intimidated by these students.” 

“I am scared to teach courses on race, gender, or sexuality, or even texts that bring these issues  up in any way—and I am a gay mixed-race woman,” she wrote. “There is a serious problem here… and I’m at a loss as to how to begin to address it, especially since many of these students don’t believe in either historicity or objective facts.”

Some people think that the truth of a statement is related to whether it "works." So a religion may be true for Horace if he sees some benefit to it, but false for Edna if she sees none. The danger of thinking truth is whatever works is that the perceived benefit might really be bad. "Cigarettes are good" works in the sense that many smokers report a soothing or relaxing sensation when they smoke, but the fact remains that cigarettes can kill. 

 

Vladimir Lenin refined the Marxist idea of Revolutionary Truth, which means that any claim that brought the Revolution closer or more successful was truth, even if it contradicted an earlier statement. Nazi propaganda was the same way. Surely nothing more need be said about that understanding except it is sadly alive and well in American politics today. 

 

Christian faith and practice rely on correspondence, not relativism or utility or the idea that truth is whatever supports our cause. On the first Easter morning, the women went to the tomb and observed certain facts: the stone was rolled away, the tomb was empty, they saw Jesus alive. So they told the disciples, "He is risen!"

  

Yet more than corresponding facts to truth is necessary. As the apostle James pointed out, even the demons know that Jesus rose from the dead, yet demons they remain. John Wesley admonished that we may affirm the truth of one, twenty or a hundred creeds and yet have no saving faith at all. 

 

Life throws us many ways for us to affirm what we think is true. But the majority of them do not challenge us to live transformed lives. Acknowledging propositions is one thing, probing what we believe and for what we will stand firm is quite another. How do we discern what we believe, whether in religion or politics or other endeavors? What we believe is crucial because what we believe impels what we do. Belief, like truth, should correspond to facts but in believing we seek not only to know what is true, but who and what we can trust. 

 

But there is such a thing as a moment of truth, when we have to confront what we trust and are compelled to decide how deeply we hold our beliefs.

Pilate told Jesus, "Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?" Such a bald statement of power would certainly have been a moment of truth for me. Jesus answered him, "You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above." It was not a diplomatic answer but a naked challenge to Pilate's power and authority. No one, Christian or not, can doubt that Jesus believed completely what he had claimed about himself and trusted that God would deliver.

 

Moments of truth are fraught with risk, forcing is the issue: What do we believe? Who do we trust? What shall we do? What shall we risk? What do we fear? What do we love? And I think that as a nation, those questions loom before us disciples of Jesus Christ this political season.

 

Bonnie Kristian, a columnist at Christianity Today, wrote before election day in 2020,

[Disciples] should proactively “seek peace and pursue it” (Ps. 34:14), but making peace is not a project that begins when battle lines are already drawn. Ideally, it begins in time to keep us from drawing them at all. The word Jesus uses for “peacemaker” in the Sermon on the Mount appears just once in the New Testament, but its [root words] show up together one other time, in James 3:18.

“Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness,” James says, and to be a peacemaker is to live with the “wisdom that comes from heaven” (v. 17). This wisdom rejects “bitter envy and selfish ambition,” which lead to “disorder and every evil practice.” It is “peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere” (vv. 14, 16–17). In worldly politics of animosity, selfishness, domination, disdain and rotten fruit, prejudice, and bad faith, that is the wisdom we need.

What do we believe, we Americans? Do we really believe that the truth is self-evident that all persons are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that governments are properly instituted to secure these rights, as our Declaration of Independence says? Do we say that this declaration corresponds to facts about the nature of God and God's purposes in creation? Do we trust that this American experiment will endure and indeed expand?  

Yet even mounting apathy, dismissal, and indeed enmity toward the American idea is not my greatest fear. Revelation chapter two records the words of Christ as revealed to John: 

1 “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: . . . 2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate the wicked, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name and have not grown weary. 4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.” (Rev 2:1a-4)

Sometimes I wonder whether we American Christians often treat our religion as a mere commodity, to be swapped in or out of our lives according to what suits us at the time. Have we adopted religious relativism, where niceness and tolerance are prized more than truth and faithfulness? Has politics itself become America’s main religion? Could it be that Christ holds something against us, in spite of our good works, because we have forgotten that he is to be our first love? 

John 21 records Jesus and his disciples one morning not long before Jesus died. 

 15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." He said to him, "Feed my lambs." 16 A second time he said to him, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." He said to him, "Tend my sheep." 17 He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep. 18 Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go." 19 ... And after this he said to him, "Follow me."

My greatest fear is that we will not feed or tend Christ's sheep, and that when he leads, we will not follow. I think that is why Jesus asked Peter three times whether he loved him. He was setting Peter up for a crisis moment when Peter would have to confront what he believed about Jesus and his love for him.

We all have the same challenge. So here are the things I try to remember in this political season:

1. Jesus does not endorse any candidate. To my fellow Christians who will vote this November I say: Vote for the candidate of your choice. Vote your conscience. Vote your convictions. But do not pretend for one second that it is even possible to vote the Gospel this Tuesday. 

2. My enduring purpose must be to glorify God, not politics or politicians.  

3. I must get the plank out of my own eye before I worry about the speck in others’. Am I promoting peaceful resolution and reconciliation, or am I part of the discord and anger engulfing our country today? 

4. Do I pray fairly and inclusively for all? I may not urge God to crush the other side of my political aisle! 

Finally, let us remember John Wesley’s advice to the people called Methodist in October 1774.

Let us pray both as citizens of America and of the Kingdom of God that we will hold fast to what is true and good. May we have courage, resolution, commitment, and wisdom as a nation, but especially as ones to whom Christ has said, "Follow me."

A link for FB readers.

If you are here by following the link I posted on my FB page on Oct. 31, concerning what we can expect after the election, no matter who get the most votes, then please click here to go to the actual essay, since FB's robots kicked it off when I posted to it directly because it was, they said, spam.

Post-election violence is coming

Several links here. I will excerpt from each, but I hope you will read them all. My prediction (and I am hardly a lone voice here) is that the time following the presidential election will see widespread violence in our country. Not necessarily on election day (though that is possible now seems certain, see second update at end) or immediately thereafter, but at minimum on and after Dec. 17, which is when the electoral college votes. 

That violence will follow next week seems almost certain to me, starting closely after the news media announce which candidate has gained 270 or more electoral college votes.

And most Americans agree: "Many expect post-election violence, most blame media."

“The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 51% of likely U.S. voters believe it’s likely there will be a violent reaction if Vice President Kamala Harris is elected, including 26% who say such a reaction is ‘very likely.’ However, 47% also think a violent reaction is likely if former President Donald Trump wins, including 23% who say violence is ‘very likely’ to follow a Trump victory,” said the survey analysis.

Which begs the question: "Could Civil War Erupt in America? The United States is now showing preconditions for political violence, scholars say. Here’s how it can prevent disaster." (Foreign Policy, paywalled):

... the U.S. Civil War was highly, highly unusual. Most civil wars look like insurgencies and guerrilla warfare and tend not to be fought by large armies. They are fought by small militias or paramilitary groups. And sometimes those groups are working together, and sometimes they’re actually competing against each other. And the reality is they don’t want to engage the government soldiers. They’re trying to avoid battles and avoid direct fights with the government because in most cases, governments are much, much more powerful than these ragtag groups of insurgents or militias. And so they tend to take the violence to civilians.

Terrorism is one of the main tools of 21st-century civil wars. Think about the IRA in Northern Ireland. By the definition of civil war, that was a civil war. But most Irish Catholics were not fighting. They called it the Troubles. This fight was by a minority of citizens on the ideological extreme.

One of the reasons why skeptics have said this can’t happen here again is because the model they’re using is the first Civil War. And that is true. That is never going to happen again here. Something different, however, could easily happen here.

How might it start? Well, the 2016 election's aftermath gives us a clue:

But anti-Trump or anti-Harris rioters are not the only snakes in the woods: "U.S. Adversaries Could Stoke Post-Election Unrest, Intel Report Warns. Iran and Russia may seek to foment violence after the vote, according to a newly declassified analysis."

U.S. adversaries are likely to try to undermine confidence in the outcome of the upcoming presidential election, stoke unrest, and boost their preferred candidates even after polls close on Nov. 5, according to a newly declassified assessment released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on Tuesday.

“Iran and Russia are probably willing to at least consider tactics that could foment or contribute to violent protests, and may threaten, or amplify threats of, physical violence,” according to the assessment, which was prepared on Oct. 8. 

The seven-page memorandum also says Tehran’s efforts to assassinate former President Donald Trump and other former U.S. officials are likely to persist after Election Day regardless of the result.  

In fact, FBI Director Christopher Wray has been warning of foreign terrorist threats inside the US for at least a year:

Foreign terrorists targeting US 'increasingly concerning': FBI director

Foreign adversaries and terrorist groups are sharpening their aim at the United States -- targeting cyber operations, security and "mafia-like" tactics in an "increasingly concerning" way, FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a speech on Tuesday.

At the American Bar Association luncheon in Washington, D.C., Wray said the agency is working to prevent a coordinated attack from terrorist groups such as ISIS-K, an affiliate of ISIS.

"Foreign terrorists, including ISIS, al-Qaida and their adherents, have renewed calls for attacks against Jewish communities here in the United States and across the West in statements and propaganda," Wray said. "The foreign terrorist threat and the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, like the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russia Concert Hall a couple weeks ago, is now increasingly concerning. Oct. 7 and the conflict that's followed will feed a pipeline of radicalization and mobilization for years to come."

The warning comes as experts predict ISIS will try to carry out an attack on the United States.

"We should believe them when they say that. They're going to try to do it," retired Gen. Frank McKenzie told ABC News' "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz last month.

Director Wray's Opening Statement to the Senate Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies:

When I sat here last year, I walked through how we were already in a heightened threat environment. Since then:

1. We’ve seen the threat from foreign terrorists rise to a whole 'nother level after October 7;
2. We continue to see the cartels push fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into every corner of the country, claiming countless American lives;
3. We’ve seen a spate of ransomware and other cyberattacks impacting parts of our critical infrastructure and businesses large and small;
4. Violent crime, which reached alarming levels coming out of the pandemic, remains far too high and is impacting far too many communities; [and]
5. China continues its relentless efforts to steal our intellectual property and most valuable information.

And that’s just scratching the surface.

Looking back over my career in law enforcement, I’d be hard pressed to think of a time when so many different threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated all at once, but that is the case as I sit here today.

There are many more such links. One question is: Will foreign operatives take advantage of homegrown post-election violence to carry out potentially devastating attacks, using homegrown violent actors as cover? Such attacks need not cause massive casualties to be devastating. Attacking our civil infrastructure such as power grids and transportation hubs would cause untold chaos. 

America is more divided now than ever, including the years leading up to the Civil War. The coming weeks or months will be critical in determining whether the inevitable post-election violence will accelerate this country's political and social dissolution, or whether Americans still have enough sense of national unity to overcome and rebuild. I personally am not optimistic.

Update: After VP Harris's speech at the Washington ellipse early this week, a pro-Hamas crowd demonstrated there, calling for intifada. Intifada is an Arabic word for a rebellion or uprising, or a resistance movement, according to Wikipedia, and has been the term used for many years to describe violence by Muslim Arabs against Jews and Israel generally. This image is a grab, the link to the video on X here here: https://x.com/TPostMillennial/status/1851427970189242510

Last summer, Richard Pollock wrote, "Palestinian Storm Troopers on the Potomac?" which seems now hardly to deserve the question mark. Well worth reading the whole essay. 

[Ryan] Mauro says the militants are trying to create an emotional and violent “new paradigm” that is part of an aggressive political “eco-system” designed to deliver harsh attacks against all Americans - Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, Christians and Jews. 

“These aren’t just critics of Israel,” Mauro told me in an interview. “They’re not Republicans or Democrats. They’re not liberals. We really have to think of these groups as a new paradigm because they’re communists, anarchists, radical Islamicists and anti-Americans. It really sets them apart from the categories of people that we’re used to dealing with people like liberals and those demonstrating for women’s rights. No, this is separate. This is an eco-system that is against both political parties, against liberals and conservatives.”  ...

So Mauro warns one of the most troubling things about the Palestinian groups is their tendency toward aggressiveness, and eventually, violence.

He says of all American protest groups, the Palestinian organizations “are the most aggressive.”

“They’re not the type of people out there who are interested in positive, civil discourse that brings back healing and unity to the country. They’re terrible bomb throwers that like to cause conflict and they are ferociously anti-American too. That’s what’s often forgotten. Just as much as they hate Israel, they explicitly hate the United States and have actually called for the U.S. to no longer exist.”

Ryan Mauro "follows extremist groups for the nonprofit Capital Research Center in Washington, D.C. Prior to his work at CRC, he served as the Director of Intelligence for the Clarion Project, a counter-extremism organization."

Richard Pollock was one of the founders of the New Left movement in the 1960s and served as it chief tactician (meaning he taught New Leftists how to riot, literally). As he says elsewhere, "For the hard Left, violence has been part of their political religion. I know, as I once was a hard Left activist as I was a roommate with Chicago 8 defendant Rennie Davis. I personally became friends with Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and hard-left lawyer Bill Kuntsler. I understand that political violence is part of the Left’s DNA."

Update, 1 Nov: Richard Pollock, yesterday: "Anti-Trump Protests Are Being Readied in the Nation's Capital - National Park Service Records Disclose Protest Plans."

Donald Trump’s opponents appear to be planning potentially violent demonstrations that could rock the nation’s capital if the former President should win the 2024 election.

This dark prospect emerges from current requests for demonstration permit I obtained from the National Park Service (NPS), the federal agency which regulates legal demonstrations in Washington, D.C.

NPS permit records show that nearly all the post-election and Inaugural Day permits have been filed by leftwing anti-Trump groups, including pro-Palestinian and “defend democracy” groups.

The applicants claim about 15,000 protesters could descend on Washington, D.C. on election night and up to 200,000 anti-Trump protests could arrive leading up to and including Inauguration Day, when the next President is sworn in.

Also, Portland, Ore., businesses are boarding up their windows (just as they are doing in D.C.) and expecting the worse. 

The Portland Police Bureau says it has received no specific threats, but it has extended shifts to cover for Portland's unique "peaceful" transfer of power. In other words: likely violence.

The PPB said it would not tolerate: 

• Impeding transportation by blocking streets and vehicular traffic. 
• Lighting fires and burning materials.
• Vandalizing and damaging property.
• Assaultive behavior.
• Unlawful weapons possession and/or use.

PPB Chief Bob Day told attendees of a presser, “Everybody’s talking about Portland. Everybody wants to know how we’re going to show up, how we’re going to be. I think this is our time.”

Portland is where two ballot drop boxes were broken into a few days ago, vandalized, and burned, where the still at-large arsonist left the messages including, "Free Gaza," and "Free Palestine," hardly the script of a rightwing Trump supporter.