Spencer Butte, overlooking the Willamette Valley, Eugene OR (2014)

Approx. read time: 1:45 min.

I glance at my stats. Book sales are flat—nothing new there. And post-Covid speaking gigs remain hard to come by.

I’ll admit. My message is not easy. I take the Gospel personally. So, why do I continue on this lonely path?

As a Christian, living in the American milieu, I write, I speak, because the people have been lied to. For seventeen hundred years, institutional Church has lied to the people, because it has lied to itself.

In embracing Constantine’s offer, it purchased the belief that Empire would now protect it, not persecute it. Church imagined that a mutual accommodation could be made. We’ve stayed faithful to the Devil’s bargain.

The result? Most of us Christians blend right in with the rest of an undiscerning, Mammon-driven culture. We’ve lost our prophetic edge. We hand over our human dignity, our money, and our prophetic spirit for a shot at stayin’ alive and livin’ the dream.

Jesus lived publicly in the midst of his times: aware, engaged, refusing to meet violence with violence, ever mindful of the totalizing cost of his mission to accomplish “on Earth, as in Heaven.”

And this is what it means to be “political”—to be fully, publicly given to a good beyond self, willing to stake your name, your life, on defending the integrity of the whole and the dignity of each one.

I write and speak often on the urgency of living daily with a nonviolent heart, and the discipline required to cultivate such a heart.

Do you ever hear this message on Sunday mornings? Still, the Gospels are clear: We’re meant to “go public with our fire,” as Jesus did! We now stand in his place. He shows us how it’s done.

Church today needs fearless truth tellers, wisdom bearers, doers of just and compassionate deeds. Let’s be light, and salt. Yes, pushback will come. Be fearless, anyway.

Fortify yourself with my book Gospel Vulnerability: The Key to Costly Love. It’s packed with insight, encouragement, and strength for our times.

Be well. Live in peace. Love one another. And please, forward this post!