“Whenever we place a higher priority on solving problems than pursuing God, we are immoral.” Larry Crabb Finding God.
Just when I think we couldn’t get any dumber, under the guise of emptying self in pursuit of God’s blessing, our wise leader quotes the above placing the quote within the context of apparent immorality of trying to first better our circumstances rather than ‘allowing God to better us.’ I’ve heard this kind of thing before; on the surface it may sound good, but it bugs me every time I hear it. He continued by asking the question if we would like to see revival in us by allowing God to ‘better us,’ which would lead to revival sweeping across the globe. I’m going to unpack a few reasons why the good sounding idea of pursuing God to better us, because it is commonly understood within the context of Christian Nationalism, is driving people away from God and the church.
The Bible, from which the doctrines of Christianity are commonly believed to be drawn from, is a very human document. Reading any significant part of it literally requires the acceptance of an enormous number of contradictions. Even biblical ‘literalists/fundamentalists’ pick and choose what they will regard as ‘literal’ and blur the rest. The teachings of Christ, which even many non-Christians admire, clashes with a good part of the misogyny, racism, and sheer brutality of a good part of the Old Testament, and with the primary focus of evangelical church today to grab up as much political power to in turn force people to behave the way we’ve been taught by our illustrious leaders that everyone ought to behave—to God’s glory of course. Christian Nationalism, as we’ve been fooled into believing is ‘biblical,’ (preaching from the book of Nehemiah is a common local pulpit tactic; but this is lesser as FoxNews, the Christian media machine, and the echo chambers of social media do most of the rest,) is itself brutal and racist. Within our environment of nationalism, revival would be very beneficial to us personally; if there was worldwide ‘revival,’ so that our white-supremacist based faith would then be firmly placed in hearts and minds of everyone, ‘we’ would not have to deal with all the messy, violent, rebellion and contradiction-creating problems of employing force to make people behave while still preaching to them they have ‘freewill’ as a gift from God. Oh, how selfless we are!
Force is now our game. Don’t talk to me about doctrine; it’s a rare Christian who gives (or knows) two-shits about that anymore. Theology has been jettisoned for political action. Our illustrious leaders, hand-picked by God, in conversational relationship with Him, can, for example, now openly fraternize with the likes of the Unification Church and various other ring-wing organizations like Sean Moon’s AR-15 church without any risk of blowback—the only thing that matters is that politically we’re syncing up to fight what the right-wing desperately fears. This is pursuing God to the Christian Nationalist. Obviously, there are many factors involved but fear and a need to uphold a sense of supremacy serves as a motivator to morph the ‘gospel’ away from solving social problems (after all, we are a society in which people can choose to solve, or to create, problems for each other) towards something much more individual and personalized—hence the ‘better us.’
We are now ‘immoral’ for trying to solve problems in our ever so personalized faith. Ever wonder why we poo-poo science? Scientists try to solve problems; they focus their attention on them. How evil is that? Crabb’s quote didn’t pop out of a vacuum, but out a very self-centered worldview. According to today’s Christian worldview, problems are handled by the proper (patriarchal) authorities as established by God’s Word, which, funny enough, was compiled by men in power who included what was needed to provide divine authority to back the ‘natural’ order of things. The Bible answers everything, don’t you know? Oh yeah, if it doesn’t specifically cover a particular problem then the ‘bible’ says to obey those whose authority has been ‘biblically’ established. All the wonderful ambiguities covered by the simple saying, “Everything happens for a reason according to God’s plan.” All evil accounted for; case closed. Questioning the group identity gets you shut out quickly.
The ‘holy’ thing to do now is create problems for others. For example: ‘Purity’ culture, a multifaceted ‘standard’ in evangelical culture which establishes ‘clear’ roles and a plethora of prohibitions (and inhibitions) regarding anything related to sex, according to scientific data collection and analysis, not only does not work to achieve its various stated goals (to make a ‘better us’, i.e., virgins) but does serious long-term mental, emotional, and sexual damage to those subjected to it. Sensitive souls will be plagued by confusion, guilt, and shame by what are demonstrably false teaching concerning who we are; what and why we feel what we do and how we function as humans is to be ignored and/or suppressed. We are to pretend; that is holy. Sociopaths, those who don’t really care much for the well-being of others (but know how to pretend to do so,) can take advantage of these ‘purity’ teachings to suppose themselves to be ones who ought to be in power since they possess the ‘aggressive’ qualities required (in the Dobsonian universe) for leadership as they are less likely to held accountable for their ‘indiscretions’—by either their peers or those they rule. Hence, considering the almost daily scandals of our leaders diddlin’, boning, groping, molesting, screwing, skewing, covering for each other as they hide behind a veil of authority, the very sins our elites are guilty of are conveniently projected upon the demonic opponents of ‘God’s’ rule—the ‘groomers,’ and ‘child-rapists’ who would like to teach science-based sex ed (and liberals in general.) The science says that early sex education provides, for example, both the vocabulary and sense of self-ownership which makes it much more difficult for molesters to operate. This is an established fact. You Puritans out there may be well intentioned, but you have been fooled into supporting a predatory system in which those we are supposed to protect are deliberately being kept ignorant—and hence, helpless. Humans are not pure, period. We never will be. We hurt. We struggle. We question. We lust. Why can’t we just cut the shit, and refuse to judge, regulate, crush, stifle, obfuscate, posture, control, deny, and starve desires to just try to enter each other’s experiences and hurts to try to help a fellow human being? That’d be painful, wouldn’t it?
In our efforts to pursue God, a nebulous, subjective, feelings-based, highly personal endeavor (so we won’t be immoral,) let’s extend our purity culture, which fucks up our own youth, to employ the might of the government to heavily regulate the speech of everyone thus creating more demonstrably objective problems for the whole of God’s great country. Let’s move to freedom (for the elite few,) shall we? The harmful, arrogant idiocy of the various ‘don’t say gay’ bills being proposed is simply stunning. The extent and depth of the possible impact of the possible legislation is massive. (This isn’t FoxNews, conjured out of thin air bullshit about voter fraud, stealing elections, and Muslim take-overs; this a real, matter of public-record, examinable pieces of religiously motivated proposed legislation restricting the free speech of millions of people.) Where to even start? Without getting too deep in the weeds, one big thing the holy ones are clearly saying (one does not have to think too hard on this,) that only some children are worth protecting because you find it unholy to talk about ‘icky’ human things that many children are struggling with. The ‘holy’ thing is to refuse and deny, ignoring the massive suffering of many, all to make you feel better about yourselves. To assuage the holy fear of ‘the others,’ the Christians are telling a lot of suffering people that they are not even worthy of the dignity of an acknowledgment, let alone a conversation. Ignore a problem and it just goes away, right?
Shame and isolation are your weapon—this literally brings death. Refusing the humanity of a suffering human being alienates and isolates that human being making them even more vulnerable to abuse, bullying, and suicide. The ‘evil’ scientists working the problem to try to help the vulnerable, but your minds, what ‘they,’ the immoral, are thinking about what is forbidden and hence evil. Could it be that ya’ll not clever enough to figure out how to help in any other way? (Oh yeah, that might be painful too.) Reject me as a traitor all you want and keep ‘pursuing God’; I’m siding with the scientists.
Forbidding speech (and even thoughts) you don’t like refuses to even address the underlying struggles and problems real people have, much less caring enough to attempt to render aid. You are telling people that you find ‘icky’ that they do not matter and that they should just shut up. It’s inhumane. It’s elitist. It’s hateful. It’s authoritarian. It’s selfish. The holy ones are harming children, God’s children, to make yourselves feel better to sooth your fear, because a whole predatory system of ‘holier-than-thou’ elitists, who want to protect their power, taught you that this strategy of shaming and silencing is what ‘God’ wants. You even find utility in lying to kids in you own sex ed curricula to shame and scare them straight. Utterly despicable. Purity culture is an extremely harmful, human hating, racist, misogynistic, elitist, authoritarian crock of shit.
I am trying to hold on the teachings of Jesus; the church is making it very difficult for me to do so. Jesus claimed to speak for the Father; how do I know He wasn’t blowing smoke? His values were generally in line with the values found in the gentile forms of humanism. He ministered to the sinners and outcast. He suffered and denied the use of political power. His followers suffered and died attesting to something they were able to know was an actual lie or not. But men love their power and so Jesus’ teaching has been corrupted to uphold the power of men. Should I be willing to give many of the authorized repeaters of the ‘Word of God’ the benefit of the doubt— ‘they know not what they do’?
It’s difficult to not think the program from the pulpit is not consciously aware of its support of Christian Nationalism. Week after week, from what used to be my home church (they still haven’t given me my letter of release,) the teaching from the pulpit can be easily placed into the nationalist worldview. We’ve been admonished, in the face of all the division in these days, to focus on our similarities rather than upon our differences, which means the minority should just shut up and get with the program. The last sermon’s point was that sin separates relationships. How convenient. The one, like me, who has passionate issues with the destructive aspects of the group’s identity must be the one who’s guilty. This would help the herd’s conscience in letting certain troublesome people go. No self-examination necessary; nothing to see or think about here. I am the one who is immoral. Simple. Dismiss.
There was a time when Christian Humanism wasn’t a dirty phrase. We today enjoy the consequences of adopting a lot of the ‘enlightenment’ values which includes the desire to solve human problems and increase human flourishing in all areas of life. Why would God have a problem with this? God went all out in trying to reach us, which should give us some clue as our importance—as depraved as we’ve been told we are. As far as solving problems goes, even little ones matter. Jesus, for example, made wine for a wedding. Are there Puritans out there who might have some problems with the priority of this miracle? In what way was Jesus pursuing God when He solved this little social problem? Why was the problem so important? Was the action motivated by what Jesus believed about people and their problems?
Show me someone’s actions and I can get some general idea of what they believe. Show me someone in their Sunday best, dining out after church and being rude and cheap with the wait staff—that shows what he or she believes about people and the order of things. (Yes, this is a peeve of mine.) Show me someone who whines about immigrant invasion, and I have some idea that that person is afraid the immigrant may cost them something. May that cost, in that person’s mind, mean impeding the development of a ‘better self’ within that person’s identified tribe? Talking about a ‘better us’ leaves us vulnerable to what the culture’s image of what ‘better’ is. The idea of the ‘better us’ is nebulous and always at-risk—a fragile idea bouncing around in hostile, threatening environment. Our feelings about what God may be thinking about this or that in terms of our being ‘better’ or ‘best’ are not sufficient to fill the gap—people have done, do, and will continue to do terrible things because they honestly believe God told them it was for the best. It’s a trap.
Thinking about a ‘better us’ conjures up a reaganesque image of the ‘city on a hill.’ The vision imagined here is one of power and beauty which entices the world’s people to be like us. It is a demanding and arrogant vision which has born fruit to suppose what the ‘better’ is. The vision trains us to view anything outside of the realm of what the true ‘patriots’ and Christians (as the concepts have merged) claim as their own as being in the valley of darkness. For example: Men have their God-given role—masculine and aggressive. Women their roles—feminine and submissive. The Roe leak shows clearly what the ‘better’ role of woman is according to Christian culture—submissive wife and mother. Men will decide how that is enforced. The ‘better’ is a world of enforced hierarchy to impose order, lest we give our ‘approval’ to what we deem is evil. I don’t see Jesus teaching this view of human interaction. Jesus, as God, had (and has) the power, being omni-everything, to make us behave. He doesn’t. Does this mean He gives His approval to all the evil men do? This should be obvious but sadly it isn’t. And sadly, we don’t realize all the evil our concept of ‘better’ brings to the world.
The ‘liberal’ attempts to escape the idea of the ‘better’ to some idea of equality among people who are profoundly different from one another. A mind which clamors for order and control sees the quest for diversity in equality as a recipe for chaos. Is it? Think of what Jesus did. He dined with sinners and tax-collectors. He valued women and children. He rejected political power. He criticized arrogance and mere religious observance. He took upon Himself the form of a servant serving others even to the point of suffering a horrifying death. This, to the liberal, is a path away from concept of the ‘better.’
Many powerful discussions of what plagues Christian thought, which leads to ‘Christian’ action, occurs within the horror-drama Midnight Mass. The limited series warrants its own discussion, but in short, one of the themes is the (mis)use of religious authority to justify the bringing about of a ‘better’ world by using an angel’s gift to make a better immortal human thus defeating death. The most beautiful, yet horrifying, examples of love came from those who rejected authority, force, and control to rather sacrifice themselves to both death and the unknown to give others a choice and a chance. I cried several times. (How masculine is this?) The church has yet to escape the path to great evil as allegorically depicted in Midnight Mass. We do our best to bring about the future we want, under the cover of our understanding of what God wants for our future. Our certainty ensures us that it is indeed God doing the talking about what He wants us to do. This is a mistake with serious consequences.
Human existence is one of doubt and struggle—doubt is pain. In order to alleviate this pain, many of our leaders offer us certainty, making us extremely dangerous to literally everyone around us. The ‘better’ self is supposedly fixed by the obvious truth of scripture—so we are told. Some of this danger can become both physically and psychologically harmful as we become militant in enforcing our certainty; some of this danger involves risking our emotional investment in each position should we be challenged. There are strategies to address the threat. According to the Right, the ‘liberal’ version of the ‘better’ in equality in diversity is not only a recipe for chaos but also a call to depravity. This doesn’t make any sense to me, both according to reasoning regarding the availability of power (to God,) and according to the common dictum that ‘all things work to the glory of God.’ To which I reply, who oversees enforcing the ‘better’ anyway? Who really is in charge? Is God calling the shots or are you all? Who resolves all the conflicts regarding what ought to be taken literally in the Bible? Judging by all the infighting among those who claim to speak for God as to what His Good and Perfect Will is, nobody does. Who decides what God’s Will is concerning those matters where the Bible is completely silent? There is no shortage of hypocrisy on any side; considering this I still believe the ‘better’ is to reject the idea of the ‘better’ altogether in favor of just accepting what is different—and working to differentiate what is evil, and what is our business, from there. No easy task. Ethics are messy.
Relative power works into the acceptability equation determining if one is merely tolerating something he or she believes is a sin and applauding the sin (Romans 1:32) by showing active support for the practice of that sin. Example: Paul Gosar and Margorie Taylor Greene went to a AFPAC meeting (one of many Christian Nationalist organizations to funnel money from and channel supremacist rhetoric to the masses) and stood alongside Nick Fuentes, a very well-known white supremacist who is, among many things, a holocaust denier, and believes white violence on January 6th was justified while the BLM violence was unacceptable. The GOP leadership said that there is no place in the GOP for white supremacy and that Greene and Gosar would get a stern talking to. Wow. Lip service. Gosar and Greene are still getting money from the GOP for their campaigns proving there is room in the GOP for white supremacy. Another GOP asshat defending two sitting members of Congress cavorting with Fuentes sent a picture of Al Sharpton saying we’ll talk about Fuentes when democrats start talking about Sharpton—implying an equivalency. Greene defended her actions using ‘Jesus, God, and Country’ rhetoric identical to that employed by the KKK in their heyday in the 1920’s. (For the sake of brevity, look all this shit up yourself if you don’t believe me—it’s a matter of public record.) In other words, the GOP and the White Christian Nationalist establishment is collectively arguing that Gosar and Greene are justified in hanging out with these white supremacist sinners just as liberal democrats claims to be justified in hanging out with sinners at, let’s say, a Pride Parade. Let’s unpack this.
In the history of the United States, minority groups, African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latin Americans (in other words anyone who does not look and act well enough to pass as white,) homosexuals and other queer folk, Jews (although it’s a common trope among white supremacist folk that Jews run the world,) Muslims, etc., and women have been pushed to the margins of ‘acceptable’ society. Our Constitution specifically empowered white men as central to the power structure; that same Constitution had to be later amended to allow non-white people and women various rights as citizens. Despite Constitutional amendments, we enacted Jim Crow laws, employed rhetoric concerning the proper order of things, and institutionalized a church supported system of white terrorism and predatory patriarchy to keep ‘the others’ in their place. Our history of systemic and institutional violence against marginalized groups is well established despite all the bullshit generated on the right to obscure and deny that fact. Historically marginalized (putting it nicely since the history includes truly horrifying terrorism perpetrated against them by the dominant group) people speaking of ‘Black Power’ and ‘Gay Pride,’ for example is not therefore the same as the white supremacist nonsense of ‘Jesus, God, and Country’ since the ‘power’ these marginalized people want lies in equal rights and recognition. They, for the most part (like the Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam for a possible example,) are not making the argument that they are inherently superior beings and hence ought to be in charge to make everyone shut up and obey them. The question and evaluation involve power—all this flak is over power. Period. Marginalized groups want to be recognized as equal human beings to live their lives as they see fit. If they aren’t making you do what they’re doing, or to believe what they’re believing, why is it your business to tell them how to live?
Attending a ‘Pride Parade’ for example may not necessarily be supporting the idea that everyone ought to be LGBTQ+. One may simply support the idea of the separation of church and state and openly say so by attending an event the Christian Nationalists say should be forbidden because of their religious belief. If, in some crazy reality, the LGBTQ community was politically dominant and claimed the divine right, by the authority of its LGBTQ God, that ‘straight’ people be silenced by law, have their private ‘activities’ outlawed, and to look the other way concerning violence committed against them, do you not think there would not be a bunch of caterwauling on your side about freedom, human rights, and what not? Damn right you would be. Freedom as the Christian Nationalist understands it involves maintaining the illusion that they are the superior beings who are divinely anointed to be in charge; all the ‘others’ are less than human. You and your politicians don’t even bother to hide your ‘subhuman’ language.
Exchanging truth for a lie, the Christian Right has drafted and promoted an extensive mythology about the United States being a Christian nation. A good part of the list of sins listed in Romans 1 revolves around idolatry, which involves, among many things, the deliberate attempt to invite a spirit to embody a thing in order to enjoy its blessings in exchange for something the spirit would want. (A flag could serve as a symbol easily enough to convey the required offering of loyalty—which is why I refuse to honor the flag.) American evangelicals have, in a shocking display of evil, covetousness, and malice against those not viewed as ‘true’ Americans who might cost them something, have become the applauders of malicious deceit as they’ve surrendered their minds to the untruthful, toxic, hateful, haughty, boastful, emotionally charged, play acting just pulling false inflammatory stuff out of their ass to stir you up, proposing idiotic solutions to show you that there would be hope if it wasn’t for the damn liberals, FoxNews, so they may be willfully dull their brains to be fooled into believing an insolent, faithless, sociopathic liar and inventor of evil is the ‘chosen one,’ the instrument to wield State power, so they, the faithful ones of God, the commanders of the instrument, can righteously carry out the heartless and ruthless plan to rule over those who are not the chosen ones of God. Who you are shows clearly in all the cover-ups of evil. The church is diseased.
Our refusal to distance ourselves from our acceptance of a culture based on lies, our acceptance of and calls to (white) violence, the evils of the patriarchy, our worship of our pastors (and our ‘Christian’ politicians,) not only forgiving them but applauding them even when they lie in their confessions, is the witness to the world you call evil. You consider yourselves ‘better’ than others to rule over them. Is this what Jesus called us to do?
A dispute also arose among them, as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves.” Luke 22: 25-27
Do we suppose this command to mean it only applies to how we treat each other? Given our history of bloodshed not only against pagans but against those among us who’ve twisted the faith to the extent of deserving torture and death, I would say we have persistently nasty habit of not being able to agree upon who ‘each other’ is, who is acceptable and who is not, and worthy of consideration as full human beings made in the image of God. The rhetoric of the ‘better us’ in the sermon certainly does not challenge the teachings of White Christian Nationalists. The AFPAC was such a meeting to affirm the superiority of some people to rule over the ‘others.’ Our sins of pride are justified because our cause is just. You justify each other. You συνευδοκονσιν each other. To the pharisees Jesus said,
“You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.” Luke 16: 15.
Jesus hung out with everyone—sinners, tax-collectors, and pharisees. However, I don’t recall any calls from Him to use political power to spread His gospel. I do not see anything in the gospel accounts concerning Jesus’ character to suggest He would have attended, in a manner to show public support (which is what Greene and Gosar were doing,) a political event whose purpose was to uphold the idea that Jews were loved by God more than anyone else, forwarding the idea that Jews should therefore be ruling everyone else. It would certainly be in character for Jesus to meet these people behind the scenes to offer them a way out of that hateful racist nonsense. But no public display of support for racism.
But here we are, not seriously bothered by the lies and bloodshed, the false equivocations, the lack of care and mercy, the double-standards. We (mostly) are not wound up by our leaders cavorting with open racists, using language and reasoning identical to that of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920’s—it doesn’t bother us much at all. Even a bloodbath of little children is obscured within the politics driven by white men frightened by those who are continually heartbroken by the slaughter.
Are the righteous heartbroken by the slaughter? No, we are more concerned about our rights and an imagined cabal of Hollywood liberal, child-raping vampires (ignoring what is obvious in the SBC,) who are hell bent to destroy America. We openly promote the ‘Great Replacement Theory’ without shame. The people of color are being imported to take over so white people better unite lest they be wiped out. Tucker Carlson is more refined in how he has pushed the idea than the in words expressed by the Buffalo mass murderer. Fear sells. The shameless actors at Fox & Company know how to sell—right wing media pastors the flock. In the end, our affluence has led into yet another great circling of the wagons. The savages are attacking and we the righteous must defend what is rightfully ours.
This swings us back to concept of focusing on solving problems, instead of pursuing God, as being evil. History, statistics and science tell a far better story about what threatens us. But we are distracted by a concept of God-inspired ‘self-improvement’ program carried out and enforced by and through the expectations of our group identity. We have become so morally confused and misled about identifying right from wrong, that even, saying it again, when one of our leaders lies in their confession from the pulpit, we give them standing ovations. (Please read this link for the clueless depravity of this response; it is very telling and illustrative concerning who we’ve become.) There is little heartbreak, restitution, or restoration for the victims. Our endless worry of appearances over people to not sully our world outreach ensures that our cannibalism will not end. I’ve been following the Southern Baptist Convention cover-ups for years. Even when it finally goes to national news, the right-wingers refuse to cover it—just whispers here and there I suppose. Image is everything. Just have ‘faith’ and pray that God will bring about a better you. As for me, my heart is breaking daily.
It does not seem impossible to me to suppose that pursuing God can be concretely done by working to solve human problems. Bloggers and podcasters are trying to offer help in understanding and dealing with religious trauma. I’m learning, listening, and struggling through it, doing my therapy processing on this blog. Our church’s response is to play pretend that little if nothing is seriously wrong with the faithful leaving it open to suppose the separation of millions from the church is due to the sin of those who separate; sermons on Genesis chapters 3 & 4 reinforce this point. My home church, with its asshat interim pastor, did one just the other week (I know, repeating myself.) I would like to think he is just too stupid to realize what he is doing, but my head tells me otherwise. Tim is all in for nationalism. And so, I must save myself and try to help anyone who will allow me to help, to get out, go through the grieving process, and try to find a way to still hold on to Jesus. I am deeply wounded but I know what I must do.
It is wrong, and idiotic, to not only separate pursuing God and solving human problems from each other, but to put it into people’s heads that objectively, scientifically working to solve problems is immoral. This includes working on our own problems. Perhaps if my head were still dulled to suppose that the key to overall health involves my perceived connection with God, perhaps I could learn how to disconnect from the evil I see all around me to just focus or me and my (perceived) relationship with God. For all the trouble I have with doctrine of inerrancy, I fail to how this is biblical since I think of one story, after another story, after another horrifying story, of God’s faithful enduring great suffering and the perception of abandonment. What I suffer from is a moral awakening; and my repentance is costing me. Time to move on from my past sins to work the problem. The ‘better me’ does not exist.; there is only the me now. It is enough.
Peace be with you all.
