little children, guard yourselves from idols

Before I begin, I will say first: I am writing this to me. I hope it encourages or rebukes you, too, if that’s what you need, but I’m writing it first to me.

Over the last few months, what little I have written has been my effort to process the enormous and sometimes all-consuming topic of the pandemic, and what it means to live at this moment in history as a follower of Christ. I’m hardly the only one. There are probably millions of memes and Twitter hot takes and longform articles on the Internet right now devoted to the same topic, and they all say something different.

Some say taking a mandated vaccine is akin to receiving the Mark of the Beast. Some say wearing a mask is the only way to love your neighbor. Some say we are shortsightedly throwing away the religious freedoms that the first colonists of this continent endured immense tribulation to establish for us.

In other words, there is no consensus. There is no unity. The voices of the Church are just as divided as the voices of government. Those of us who are trying to hear them all out are being pulled in a dozen different directions, and it’s no wonder that so many of us have given up on discourse, picked a thought bubble to occupy, and stayed there.

But as delightful as that sounds to me, I have too many questions, and they won’t let me rest.

I don’t think the vaccine is the Mark of the Beast, but the intense peer pressure, financial pressure, and governmental pressure currently being exerted on the unvaccinated has shown me how simple it would be to implement the Mark of the Best one day, and how difficult it would be to resist. When we choose whether or not to get the Covid-19 vaccine, most of us are not choosing between allegiance to God and allegiance to this world; however, the question is still worth pondering: What does it look like to live in absolute allegiance to the authority of the True King at this time? What does it mean for me and my house to serve the Lord?

Does it mean I wear a mask everywhere I go? Some would say yes—that the most loving thing I can do for those around me is to protect them from my breath, although the effectiveness of most masks is scientifically dubious. It’s true that I don’t know what kind of vulnerabilities others may have to the virus, or how they’d be affected if they caught it. I have no desire to be unknowingly responsible for someone else’s illness, let alone their hospitalization or death, however unlikely. But is it true that the primary way to love my neighbor is to protect their health? Sometimes we seem to think that Jesus Himself would go to any lengths necessary to protect the health and safety of others, but if that were the case, how could He ever have asked anyone to follow Him? To follow Christ was, for every single one of the apostles and many of their converts in some way, to follow Him through suffering, ostracism, and death.

It would be silly to equate not wearing a mask with calling others into Christ, of course. But I do think we need to examine ourselves for an ungodly aversion to pain, including the pain of others, if we want to be truly Christlike. When Paul set out to evangelize the known world, he could not afford to fear the fact that he was inviting people into persecution—the eternal state of their souls had to be more important than the temporal safety of their bodies. Christianity has never been a path to safety and comfort, as our brothers and sisters in so many other countries know too well.

At the same time, only from our couches of prosperity does being required to wear a mask in public places feel like persecution! What will our response be when real persecution arises? What should it be? It’s certainly not wrong to try to protect and preserve the freedoms that we enjoy; these freedoms in turn protect current and future generations of all faiths from oppression, and create a haven in the world for those who wish to practice their faith without repercussions. At the same time, we can completely neglect the real mission of Christ on earth while we are busy championing the mission of freedom. They do not always serve the same ends.

I’m asking these questions because I see too few questions being asked. I see many, many Christians unquestioningly toeing the party line on either the left or the right, failing to test the narrative they’re being fed against scientific facts and Scriptural truth. For some of them, mask-wearing and vaccine-touting have become like pagan rituals—things we do to cover our bases “just in case,” to look like we are doing our part to control the uncontrollable even when our actions don’t make sense, all to appease the unseen Covid-19 virus in hopes that it will pass over our house. For others, rebelling against the regulations has become its own kind of religion, whose sacred text is merely “whatever is opposite of what the government commands.” Both of these belief systems are anti-Christ.

What if we could all stop weaponizing Christianity against those who disagree with us, and instead choose fearless love that welcomes others into our hearts and homes, whether we feel “safe” or not?

What if we could all stop using Jesus to justify our misplaced need for control, and instead choose to walk with Him—even when His path winds through the Valley of the Shadow, whatever that may look like?

I don’t advocate for prideful science-ignoring recklessness that disregards the opportunities we have to protect ourselves and others, nor for history-ignoring idealism that disregards the importance of protecting our liberties. But I am pleading with the Church to lay down her idols, whether they take the form of a political party, individual rights, personal safety, fear of loss, or anything else.

We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.

Little children, guard yourselves from idols.

1 John 5:19-21

what would Jesus do?

Do you remember a time before we all had a computer in our pockets?

I deactivated my Facebook profile last week, after using the platform to share photos, memories, and blog posts for almost ten years. The decision was both sudden and a long time coming: all at once, I reached my capacity to tolerate being told from every angle except that of a truly Bible-believing Christian how to be a good follower of Christ (isn’t it crazy how unbelievers always seem to know what Jesus would do best?), and I had been examining for weeks before that point the uncomfortably huge role I was allowing this false social life to play in my actual, real-life existence.

So far, yes, I’ve missed it at times. I wanted to post something in my local Buy Nothing group so I could pass it on to someone else without making the trip to Goodwill, and I couldn’t. I wanted to ask my September 2020 pregnancy due date group how they’re going to handle breastfeeding once their babies turn a year old in just a few weeks, and I couldn’t. I wanted to share with my friends and followers that I’m creating a new resource page and email list for next year’s Bible180 Challenge, and I couldn’t.

But I didn’t quite expect to miss feeling like, I don’t know, a real person. I didn’t expect that without Facebook, I would almost feel like I don’t exist. If I’m not getting notifications, am I even here? If my thoughts aren’t out there in the internet void picking up likes and comments, are they even real?

It speaks to how unbelievably different the world has become in the last couple of decades.

I do remember a time when I didn’t have a computer in my pocket—I even remember a time (very, very dimly) when I didn’t have a computer in my house. I remember the 16+ glorious years before I had a flip phone, before so much of my communication was reduced down to a couple of poorly-punctuated clauses on a pixelated screen, before my relationships were chiefly virtual, before my friends became a tally in an online book of faces.

I remember enthusiastic conversations about horses with other kids at church. I remember potlucks, writing long letters to penpals, and weekend slumber parties. I remember begging my mom and dad to let my cousin stay overnight, and when spending four days showing lambs at the fair was the highlight of my year. There was the column on birdwatching I started in the local newspaper when I was thirteen, 4-H meetings at the primary school where I first dipped my toe into public speaking, and J-Walkers outreach events organized by a fellow Goldendale teenager. I was in plays and musicals at church and in school, I carpooled with drama club friends down to the river in the summer, and even when we didn’t see eye to eye on much of anything political or social or religious, I don’t remember being mad about it.

There was certainly a smallness to my life experience at that time which played into the apparent simplicity and bliss, and some would call that a bad thing, but I’m not so sure it is. Scientific studies have been done to estimate that humans can only maintain a limited number of quality relationships, and far fewer truly intimate ones. It begs the question: were we ever designed or intended to care about as many issues as our pocket computers throw at us every day? To read as many headlines? To know the details about as many international crises? To respond to as many notifications? To have as many “friends”?

I don’t think so.

The keyboard warriors who think they know exactly what Jesus would do in our every social crisis often forget (or maybe don’t know) that Jesus had boundaries. He did not heal every illness or stop every calamity in the world while He was on earth—not even just in His hometown. People still got sick, suffered, died. He wasn’t best friends with every single person He met; He chose twelve, and even of those, He was closest to three. He didn’t hold back the reaches of Roman tyranny, nor did He purge the religious elite of their corruption, even though He could have done both.

Instead, He strictly obeyed and glorified the Father, and was Himself glorified in due time.

Would Jesus wear a mask or overthrow the government or vote for Joe Biden or condemn Black Lives Matter or stay in Afghanistan or ban Donald Trump from Twitter? I don’t know, and I think it’s the wrong question to ask. If we think Jesus took on humanity chiefly to model human perfection for us, we’ve missed the point: Perfection is out of our reach, but God isn’t, because He reached out to us even in our fallenness. He chose to come and dwell among us because it was the only way we’d ever be able to dwell with Him in His kingdom. God sent His Son to earth to be crowned the King over all Creation—His crown a wreath of thorns, His throne a crossbeam on a tree—and to thereby permanently defeat Creation’s enemies, sin and death.

Thankfully, Jesus stayed laser-focused on that mission, even when He was being pulled in a thousand different directions by the crowds. Did He also love people? Yes, always. Did He feed them, care for them, heal their sick and raise their dead? Yes, sometimes. But He didn’t get sidetracked from the eternal goal by the momentary need, nor did He let the court of public opinion sway His course. By the time His ministry was complete and He hung poised to drink the cup of wrath God had poured for Him, no one understood what He was doing except the Triune God.

So it’s rather brazen to think that we know what He would do if He were living on earth in this moment in history, especially considering that His purpose and mission in the world were utterly unique. Yes, we are all called to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” and “love your neighbor as yourself,” but we are not called to save the world, which is the burden that our frantic headline-screaming, notification-pinging pocket computers would love to make us carry.

My hope is that by letting go of Facebook, I’ll eventually notice that some of the weight has been lifted, and that I actually feel more like a real person again, even if that means feeling finite.

as for me and my house

It’s finally quiet. Clara has been crying for the last hour (and I don’t mean cute whimpering like other babies do—from birth Clara’s only two tones of voice have consisted of “happy as a clam” and “bloody murder mad”)—a mix of pent-up separation anxiety and the exhaustion of learning to say new words and just being alive. She was an absolute delight all day long, smiling and laughing and practicing “Mama” and even venturing into different rooms of the house without me. I guess at bedtime it all caught up to her.

I can relate.

It’s been a beautiful summer so far. I love watching Clara’s fascination with the smallest of things. She loves floating on the lake and visiting Grama and Papa and Auntie Amy and having playdates with Auntie Hannah and barbecues with her little cousins. We go yardsaling on the weekends and spend Saturday evenings with some friends from church, talking about things that matter. It’s so lovely and there’s so much joy.

But somehow it always catches up to me—the sense of dread and not-good-enough, the little nagging negativities of scrolling through social media and reading the news that pile up and up and up, until I hate everything and everyone and myself most of all. It makes me feel lost, far from God somehow, wondering with Ecclesiastical doom what the point of anything is. Church is complicated, politics are confusing, culture is a disaster, and I just want to be a recluse for the rest of my life so I can ignore it all.

Unfortunately for me and my selfish nature, that’s not very Christlike.

But what is Christlike? This question has kept me up at night—knowing that there are believers who consider it most Christlike to live in holy seclusion from the world in the name of testimony; there are believers who consider it most Christlike to be as much like the world as possible in the name of outreach; there are believers who consider it most Christlike to vote red; there are believers who consider it most Christlike to vote blue; and any number of other extremes, plus whatever lies in between.

There is one thing that has been a helpful north star for me in the last few months as I navigate this madness: the reality of the Kingdom.

I first wrote about the Kingdom of Heaven and its gospel months ago now, and I had no idea at the time what a common thread that concept would become in my walk with God. Everything points me back to it. Jesus began His ministry saying “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near”—because He was near, and He is king, crowned by a wreath of thorns on the cross, and resurrected from the dead because nothing in that Kingdom obeys carnal laws. And if Jesus is King, then what He doesn’t need is me to find the solution to the world’s conflicts or to defend Him on social media or to grace Him with my extraordinary talents. He just asks for my allegiance.

al·le·giance /əˈlējəns/ (noun)

loyalty or commitment of a subordinate to a superior or of an individual to a group or cause.

Loyalty and commitment to my Superior and His cause.

It’s the cause that asks me to love my neighbor as I would show love to myself. To not only forgive, but love and pray for the people who are against me—even the people who hate me. To do for others as I would want them to do for me.

Jesus is the King of an upside-down Kingdom, where it’s the poor and the persecuted and the meek and the mourning who are most blessed, and it’s the rich and the revered and the proud who are most to be pitied. Allegiance to this Kingdom takes unlearning of natural, carnal instincts and adopting of a new way to see, hear, think, be.

Why do we despair when politics and culture celebrate the carnal instead of the Kingdom? Of course they do! It is our job, not theirs, to live as citizens of the Kingdom—until they are ready to join us and declare allegiance to the one true King. Ignoring it all isn’t the answer, but neither is despairing over it. We are “longing for a better country—a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16 NIV) and we must “live as citizens of heaven, conducting yourselves in a manner worthy of the Good News about Christ” (Philippians 1:27 NLT).

This is not an easy task. Many will certainly fall away under the pressure of the world and its temptations—many will cast aside their allegiance to the Kingdom of Heaven in favor of allegiance to the rulers of the world. But what a gracious God we serve, who doesn’t write off anyone, but desires all to return to trust in Him (Ezekiel 18:23), and gives each and every one of us an open invitation to make that choice!

Now, therefore, fear the LORD and serve Him in sincerity and truth; cast aside the gods your fathers served beyond the Euphrates and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. But if it is unpleasing in your sight to serve the LORD, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD!

Joshua 24:14-15