Victor Chininin Buele

The President-elect has been saying that his grandmother would not tell him to keep the faith but to spread it. Now, I’m not advocating for spreading the President-elect’s faith, of course, but he managed to get inside of my thinking with that phrase.

We are multipliers. That’s our nature. The blessing at the creation, reported in Genesis, was to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. There is so much to do! There is work to be done excellently, classes to be taught, bread to be baked, women to be rescued, children to be raised, a nation to be saved. We cannot possibly do it all.

I have been homeless, from an ecclesiastical point of view, so to speak, for a bit. I’ve learned a lot.

Multiplication is unavoidable. The question is what are we multiplying?

We will multiply, but if what we are multiplying is the wrong kind of leaven, the whole thing will be bad. That is, it is not just about spreading the faith but about what kind of faith it is that we are spreading.

We become what we worship. I’ve been saying that phrase a lot as I’ve been preparing a class about worship that I’m teaching. Greg Beale came up with it, of course, to summarize the biblical teaching about idolatry. I didn’t make it up myself.

So, what have I learned? Churches become what is sown in them. If you sow self-preservation, they become ingrown monuments to self-preservation. If you sow sacrificial giving, you get to watch a couple depart the comfort of a rising career in Kansas City to go serve in the east where they will very likely face severe persecution for daring to bring the message of salvation in Jesus Christ.

We now know what it feels like to “date” the church as the now-not-a-Christian Josh Harris plastered in a little book once. We know what it is like to walk in and to have literally no one notice that you exist. We know what it is like to have severe reservations about something and not know how to get out. We know what it is like to raise concerns and have them shut down. We know what it is like to have your children ask you why they heard a gospel different than the one they themselves can read in their Bibles. We know what it is like to have children ask legitimate questions you have no good answer for whatsoever.

We now hope we can see the overlooked, not ignore the red flags, not fear the appearance of conflict, not confuse boldness with harshness, not confuse questions with an anti-church mentality, not disregard questions asked whether they seem thoughtful to us or not, not avoid the difficult conversations that sorrow and pain bring about.

We long to see Jesus Christ magnified in Kansas City, disciples growing and thriving, multiplying the good news of Jesus, not a message that kind of, sort of looks like him if you twist your head 63 degrees to the right, put on 3D glasses, squint real hard, and step up a ladder to see.

The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Christ has come. There’s work to do.

Like I heard many times coming out of that TV screen, “get busy living, or get busy dying.”

Víctor Chininin Buele

In case you are not familiar with my usual points: I do not support Vice President Biden. I will not call President Trump’s lack of observable fruit of repentance moral flaws. I do not believe it is morally neutral to think that secularism and scientism are not religions. And true freedom of religion and speech, not to say common sense, love, and compassion, are there to help us better our arguments and lives by being challenged where we need to be challenged and grow. That is, we can’t just call any and everyone the worst human being on earth for holding a divergent position than our own.

With that said, there is hardly anything to celebrate in America this weekend. The last four years brought plenty of devastation, and the next four years will also bring plenty of devastation.

This is a season of judgment, of living the results of what we have sown. We cannot possibly walk out of this one smelling like roses. We have been injecting young minds throughout the nation and the globe with the idea that there is no such thing as truth. Only to have this brilliant observation, the absolute truth that there is no absolute truth, proven to be worthless in front of our very eyes as we have seen lie after lie play out in our very own handheld screens. The President and the media, the not-the-mainstream-media media, the establishment and the opposition, the Republicans and the Democrats have asked us to not believe what we see, hear, and think. We have asked ourselves not to believe what we see, hear, and think. We have killed our consciences.

At the end of the story, we don’t like the challenge of truth because it exposes us. Every claim has an answer.

We are a highly pragmatic society. We prop up little gods because we want what we want, and they promise to give it to us faster, sooner, and better than the other god. Both parties have grossly overlooked obvious sin in the lives of the candidates. Both are liars. It is documented that Vice President Biden lied about his education. It is not fake videos. It actually happened, and he could not become president back then because of that. But today, it has been washed away and not by repentance. I need not waste my time writing about President Trump in this department as they are sites live right now showing statistics about this. And frustrated fact checkers showing their homework to the country, jumping up and down, trying it in bold, red letters, catchy videos without even beginning to make a dent. It just doesn’t register, like when the five year old boy tries desperately to show his mom that he can jump from the roof down to the bushes without breaking a bone. Watch me, mom! Watch, watch, watch! Or I may actually have to jump…

We hate direct questions because we can’t fudge with them. When we take down the lies we tell ourselves to justify the things that we do, we know we have been exposed, so we work feverishly to keep the covers on, no matter what the cost may be. We are expert lawyers at making poor excuses sound like sophisticated legal, scientific, and irrefutable arguments.

Murder becomes a euphemism. Immorality becomes flaw. Fornication and betrayal become an affair. Lawlessness becomes peaceful protesting. Lying becomes hyperbole. Abuse becomes tone. Prejudice becomes inclusiveness of all but that kind over there, those ones are evil. Sin becomes tolerance. Tolerance becomes permissiveness. Racism permeates our hearts.

We want the right to not be told we are wrong. We want the right to not hear the truth that we are sinners in desperate need of grace. We want the right to not have to amend our ways. We demand change in the streets, but we abhor it for our own hearts.

I had a physics teacher who used to say, “Cadets, you love to play and wallow in the mud of your youthful arrogance.” That’s us. Please, let us live in here. It’s nice. This is not mud, how dare you, bigot, to say this is mud? Go to the priest on the internet, perhaps wearing a white coat, who will show you the chemical composition of this material I’m wallowing in to be gold. Yes, the finest gold, the best gold, tremendous gold. Sad!

Reading Isaiah 1 this morning was difficult. I have absolute confidence in the absolute truth that God is in the business of redeeming a sinful but repentant people to Christlikeness. But to repent, we have to hear both the bad news and the good news. Yes, it is worse than you admit it is. You are worse than you want to show. But Jesus Christ came into the world for you, to live the perfect life you can never live, to make atonement for your sins, all of them, the vilest, the Trump-like ones even. Because you know when you look at yourself in the mirror, the orange color is there in your skin, too. What you hate in him, you desperately try to hide in you. And it is vile. That’s why the cross is so vile. It was an abomination. The Son of God became an abomination because we are a walking abominations, and for Him to be just, truly just, not Brett Kavanaugh kind of just or Sonia Sotomayor kind of just, He must also be the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. He died and rose again. Unbelievable as it sounds, test the evidence, run it through the principles of historiography. But ultimately, He must give eyes to see and ears to hear. There is hope, true hope, glorious hope, eternal hope of a better country, of a better patria. Turn. Now. Turn. You don’t have to believe the lies of the flesh, the world, and the devil. You can know truth, and you can have life and life abundantly that transcends the feeble circumstances that surround us.

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause. Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

Isaiah 1:16-18

Víctor Chininin Buele

Why waste our collective time, writing and reading, if I know already that you won’t change your mind? Precisely because of that. And that matters because language matters. And because the gospel message, through language, is the only thing that will regenerate your mind.

Iosif Brodsky knows a bit about language since he was strongly urged to emigrate from the Soviet Union basically for being a poet, a free thinker. He once said, “You think evil is going to come into your houses wearing big black boots. It doesn’t come like that. Look at the language. It begins in the language.”

There is something going on that has been bothering me during this entire election cycle. It’s been going on for years, though.

I keep reading things like these:

“Evangelicals in general who support Donald Trump recognize, that he has character flaws.”

“All of us are human, and none of us are without sin, Trump is human like the rest of us.”

“I will vote for the policies I believe most accurately represent God’s will for human flourishing. I will not make a big show of it or make apologies for my chosen candidate’s character flaws.”

I could quote many more, and you may have just made similar statements. Granting all the context and nuance that these and other statements may offer, they magically transform sin into flaw. A line of reasoning is advocated that (1) all human beings sin, (2) Trump is a human just like the rest of us, and (3) at that point the necessary conclusion that Trump sins is not quite articulated but left in the air, hanging, unresolved yet implied. Logic fills the void. So, the need for explaining it away is needed. The air is then filled with a much more respectable-sounding word: flawed. And that is something we can all relate to easily. So, next! I am flawed, you are flawed. “We are a happy family!/With a great big hug/And a kiss from me to you/Won’t you say [you’re flawed], too?” Enough, Barney!

The obvious yet unfortunately necessary disclaimer: This is not an anti President Trump only tirade or a pro Biden motivational speech. I can do the same exercise with Vice President Biden or with Victor Chininin Buele. My point here is to use the caricature in front of us to illustrate something critical. And Trump makes for such a poignant illustration. He is us on steroids, naked and shamelessly unashamed, out in the open, and twitted at crazy hours.

The point is that there is absolutely nothing false about the biblical truth that all human beings sin (Romans 1-3). If this were not true, there would be absolutely no need for the gospel, and with there would be no need for Jesus Christ. Simple fact. What this truth is not, when we rightly understand the gospel, is an excuse to sin flagrantly. And since my wife always prefers that I would stick to biblical terms and descriptions of sin, let me rephrase: This simple fact that we all sin and fall short of the glory of God is not an excuse to live unrepentantly in sin.

We don’t need a lot to illustrate the need for justification. First, we go and do something super dumb, like watch a bad movie, buy something stupid, say something embarrassing, you name it. We immediately rush to find a way to explain it to ourselves. (Actually, we say, it was a great movie, a smart investment preparing for the future, the needed word that needed to be said).

This is a deep part of our sinful, fallen nature. Once we have found a way to deceive ourselves that wrong is right, bad is good and even desirable, we become evangelists because we desperately need others to affirm what we’ve done, approve of us, and close the cycle. We start telling others how wonderful that terrible movie was. Because we can’t just own it. We start telling others to go buy the product because we can’t face it that we made a mistake. Because we do this for relatively simple stuff like hoarding toilet paper during a global pandemic, for example, we don’t pay much attention to this sequence of self-justification and self-deceit.

And that is where I want you to hear the language.

This is how we allow sin in our lives. We tell ourselves it cannot possibly be a big deal because both everyone else sins and others, like Trump, for example, sin way more than us, or their sin is worse than ours. This is how we self-justify our walk away from the pursuit of holiness. We’ve taken our eyes off of Jesus and His Word and have diverted it instead to excuse-making. And in that simple line of argument with ourselves, we’ve deemed our sin to not be a sin. And as it becomes systemic and permanent in our hearts and lives, well, we just associate our identity with it—we are flawed! The societal expectation to require others to love us just as we are (that is, without calling us to repentance and change) comes in, and there we are: self-justified in our self-described flaws but needing to run to any and every instrument of self-medication possible to quiet a guilty conscience. Because we know that when the night comes, and the land is dark, and the moon is the only light we see, that’s when we know we’ve sinned. We can’t hide anymore from God. And even if we over medicate and fall asleep deadening our conscience, sooner or later, we wake up.

And that is also how we allow wolves into our churches. We are pragmatic. We are sinners, and yet we want to see change. We want to see the gospel at work. We want results. We want to see lives changed. But we get mixed up. The world’s definition of success gets into us as we trade the concept of sin in our personal lives for the more palatable idea of flaws or mistakes. Then, this infiltrates the church. We are far more likely to overlook sin when things look just like we want them. Or even trending up to look just like we want them. Actually, the promise of something is far more entangling than getting the thing itself. Especially if we are constantly persuaded that the goal is just over here, almost within reach. We can see that promised land, y’all!

And wolves come in, walk on the red carpet we set to welcome them, eat our food, drink our beer, come into our homes, get to know us and our sins and our secrets. They set shop in our church, get paid by us, give us what we want to hear and see. We see their anger, sure, their wrath, their immorality, their covetousness, their lusts, their greed. We see what John Piper highlighted as the New Testament sins of “unrepentant sexual immorality (porneia), unrepentant boastfulness (alazoneia), unrepentant vulgarity (aischrologia), unrepentant factiousness (dichostasiai), and the like,” but we explain them away. We lie and say to ourselves and then to others when we become evangelists for our guy that we are all sinners just like Pastor Steve up there. He is so vulnerable and raw, honest and transparent! He struggles like I do! We are all flawed and say silly things from time to time… It’s just the tone. Our man, he gets results! That’s what we say.

Never underestimate the things you will say and do to justify your own sin. The Word is true—the wages of sin is death. Devastation follows sin.

So, let’s watch our language, shall we? If we don’t call out sin without euphemisms, we will never be able to repent of it. And without repentance, there is no regeneration. No regeneration means no renewal.

Is that what we want to leave behind? Lives consumed by selfishness? Churches consumed by wolves? A nation consumed by sin?

Victor Chininin Buele

I keep getting asked a flavor of this question–what am I supposed to do with all of these issues related to the election? Last week, I started some more general thoughts regarding an earlier question about a distortion of the two-kingdoms view of theology here: https://chininin.com/2020/09/19/our-place/. Essentially, what is our place as Christians in politics? God is sovereign, and we are responsible. We cannot force change. The gospel is not coercive. We vote, but we know that our vote cannot ultimately change the hearts of a nation. We advocate for more just laws, but we know that ultimately a nation will legalize what it worships. We need regeneration before any revolution.

What I want to do here is to take up an additional path of discussion about the enthusiastic support of a party platform this side of eternity. Especially the current platforms. To do that, I want to discuss incarnational politics. I cannot see how we can be enthusiastic about either one of the two platforms as Christians. We really are in a season where our status as sojourners and exiles is blatantly clear. If we are feeling too at home in a red hat or a blue shirt, something is out of balance. John Stott always taught me in his writings and public communications that the Christian was going to be too liberal for the conservatives and too conservative for the liberals. I do not see us acting as sojourners in such a situation in this election cycle.

We are political beings. We have convictions. We have very strong convictions. And we live in a pluralistic society where our neighbors have very different convictions than we do. Algorithms serve us and our neighbors with different views of the world and reality, different pages and experts. We live in a massive cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias sociological experiment.

The essence of incarnational politics is this–Christ came into the world to save sinners. I know of no worse sinner than I because I do know the darkness, depth, and stain of my own sin. I hear myself always, and I know what I do, don’t do, and do without all my heart. Christ became like I am in every way except one: sin. He went through the similar human experience of emotions, convictions, disappointments, insults, conflicts, temptations. The big difference and hope for me is that he did not sin. In the power of the Holy Spirit, I’m daily being transformed into someone who sins less and less and less as I’m transformed into the image of Christ, yet still sins. Christ came, he became like us but without the sin, and he did not set himself on a mission to impose beliefs on us, to use magical powers to force us to comply to his divine will. He brought what Craig Blomberg calls contagious holiness. He encountered sinners and loved them. He had compassion. And they were changed. Never to be the same again. There ought to be no one more welcoming than the Christian. Our message is the best news of happiness to the world. We don’t have a monopoly over it. It was freely given, and much is expected out of us in getting it out.

Do we do that in our politics? Do we actually love the other person? Do we know her? Do we know why she goes to a certain march? Do we know why he feels isolated and left behind by the world? Do we know why he falls for QAnon ideas? Do we know why she is passionate about the Second Amendment? Do we know whether she is tired of being thought of as somebody who is becoming a liberal?

Do we know the person? When we don’t, we are not showing love. We are caricaturizing. We don’t like caricatures of us. But we dish them out easily.

Take this matter of immigration, for example. I have major conflicts of conscience. I know that ALDI can sell me strawberries for 1.99 every once in a while because there are people who look like me who pick them up under almost-slavery conditions, exposed to chemicals I would not put anywhere near my children while they are compensated less than what I would dare to make at my job. We have policies that wink at those who cross the border as if saying, “If we catch you, we’ll put you through hell, but if we don’t, please clean our toilets, pick up our fruit, make our burgers.” We thus encourage parents to endanger their children to cross the desert and the river, and yet these parents are responsible for making these choices. Not every immigrant is fleeing dangerous conditions. Some just want, like I once did, to come and become rich. Our asylum laws are awful, and we put children in cages separated from their parents. Do the Democrats have an actual solution for this? They do not. Do the Republicans? Absolutely not. Why do people not realize that building the wall will eventually result in the rising cost of our cheap food? Why do people not realize that if we don’t do something about bringing people out of hiding they will only live in a cycle of poverty and darkness. Amnesty sends an awful message, but tons of families live under a lot of stress and fear. The church doesn’t ask them about certain sins–as if we were saying it’s OK to use a stolen SSN to get a job. We aren’t watching for the ultimate spiritual wellbeing of these souls, of these humans. Immigration is far more complicated than a bumper sticker. And it’s only getting worse.

Take abortion. It is the dismemberment of children. It is as simple as that, but it is also a lot more complicated than that. I cannot possibly persuade you that this is murder. But it is. Have you read Defenders of the Unborn? That is a really good work of history showing us how we got to the current polarization. What was life like before Roe v. Wade? Democrats cared about the rights of the baby and the mother! What!! Yet, we seem to agree about the inherent value of every human life lost to COVID-19. Every life outside of the womb seems to matter, well, except when you talk about wearing masks. I get so frustrated with arguments that America is a totalitarian state. Have you ever been in a coup d’état in Bangkok? That is a very different thing. Have you ever been in a lockdown in Latin America? I hate to say it, but you really don’t know what you are talking about. America has institutions that as crazy as they may seem today, bending to the will of a polarizing figure, are still constitutionally accountable and liable for watching over each other.

We could go on and on. We disagree on a lot. I get it. But do you know me? Do you know why? Do you care to know why?

We can’t build a future together if we demonize the other, if we turn everything into a test of left or right orthodoxy. We need to know that some of these issues need to go through some sort of triage. We don’t have enough time to sort through all the massive waste dump that social media and the mainstream media dump on our lap. I have to confess, I was happy to only think about Molina’s 2000th hit yesterday rather than to research about the forced sterilizations of women at the southern border.

But we cannot lose the prophetic edge to speak truth to power and to not give up in doing good. Have you read Amos lately? If the man behind the Resolute Desk calls himself a Christian to pander my vote, you better believe that I’m going to call him to account by the standards that he claims to confess. Where is the fruit? I’ve been looking and looking, and time and time again I fail to see the fruit of repentance. Does that mean that I must vote for the other guy or for him? Abortion matters a lot because it’s tied to the gods of this age and nation. There is a way in which the exaltation of abortion is tied to all kinds of fundamental aspects of American life. It matters greatly. Am I a “single issue” voter? No. Why? Because I’m tired of the Democratic party pandering to African Americans, Latino/as, the LGBTQ community. I’m tired of the Republican party pandering to “evangelical” Christians and gun rights advocates. Nothing changes. Welfare increases under both red and blue administrations. There is a really neat little book about that if you are curious. I am tired of a system that consistently produces more of the same. Why are we content voting for the “lesser” of two evils? That means we know and acknowledge that both are terrible choices.

I am more than a caricature. I care about life inside the womb and outside of it. I want people to have the best opportunities to hear the gospel and live the best life possible in this earth. I want to see people live life in freedom and with true joy. I can’t achieve that only with politics, but I can’t see that by ignoring politics or by demonizing the other side or by ignoring the other side.

We all want to change the world, don’t we? We know that living incarnationally is critical. Because we can be fully known and yet loved. I can love you even as I try to show you why x or y subject can lead down a path that will not benefit either one of us. In the process, I will learn what drives you, and we will be better for it. Yes, there are horrendous ideas out there. But will we ever see them if we create for ourselves echo chambers designed to only echo the things we want to hear. Take one another seriously. And please, this is not a post where I throw out the Bible, its inerrancy, efficacy, authority, and sufficiency. I am not on the road to Liberaland. I am a son of God. Trying to do his will, trying to live with an honorable conduct in this strange age where I live.

Let’s talk, OK? Jesus did. He wept.

Victor Chininin Buele

What is our place as Christians in this world? The Bible gives us what seems to be at times contradicting instructions, and it is easy to see that many have given up on Scripture because of what they perceive as contradictions. We are told that the kingdom of God is here (Matthew 3:2, 4:17, 10:7; Mark 1:15; Luke 17:21), and we are clearly also told, “Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.’” (John 18:36 ESV). We, Christians, live in a paradox. We are to think in paradoxes. Our minds will always be stretched through paradox. Not contradiction but paradox. So, what is our place here?

We are citizens of an earthly nation and citizens of heaven (Phil 3:20). We have responsibilities in both realms. We are to be the best citizens here and serve as leaven in this realm for the kingdom of heaven. Peter in his first letter, chapter 2, addresses the Christians as those who were not a people but now are a people, those who are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.” And the purpose of all of that is “that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (9). We’ve been reconciled to God and made part of His kingdom (now and in its future consummation) in order to be an evangelistic light. We’ve been saved to proclaim. After taking Hosea’s “not a people” theme and turning it into “now you are God’s people,” Peter urges the sojourners and exiles (how he refers to the Christians) to “abstain from the passions of the flesh” and “keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak of you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.”

The Christian is then called to “be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution.” Verses 13 and 14 issue a heavy command to these resident aliens in Asia Minor. They are to “be subject (submit yourselves, NASB) for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme (a king, NASB), or to governors as sent by him (2:13-14 ESV).” The task is great: obedience and submission are required of the believer to every human institution. It doesn’t narrow it down just to the king/emperor, and it doesn’t narrow it down to governors. The reason for the submission is not shown to be the worthiness or the righteousness of the human institution. The sojourners and exiles are not asked to be subject to every human institution because of the institution’s own righteousness or goodness. It also does not say to be subject to every human institution because of self-interest, i.e., what the exile can receive from submission to the human institution. Instead, Peter centers the rationale for the submission on the Lord alone. These believers are asked to submit to the human institutions for the Lord’s sake.

Defining what Peter means by every human institution is marked by the context. Peter uses the word κτίσει, creation/creature. Peter refers to human creatures, that the submission is to be to “every human creature,” literally speaking. The context that follows this helps clarify this command. Peter highlights the emperor/king, governors, servant/master relationships, wives/husbands, Shepherd/undershepherds/flock of God. Then, Peter is not telling any of us to submit blindly to any and every institution created by men, especially not on the basis of worthiness or goodness or self-interest. He is also not telling us to submit to every person. He is also not making a case for slavery, for blind following, for subservience. He is making a call to honor the Lord in all relationships and spheres of our lives. The exiles will glorify God by deriving every aspect of their relationships from God, for the Lord’s sake.

With this said, there are three things to evaluate: the nature of the Christian’s involvement, the limits of the Christian’s involvement, and the nature of change.

Some commentaries indicate that it is possible that the sojourners in 1 Peter were originally all living in Rome but were deported and spread throughout Asia Minor after their conversion. If that is the case, the call to submit to such a government is even more difficult. The command to display an honorable conduct towards evangelism is one issued to those under an authority that would be, to say the least, very difficult to submit to. So, we engage trying to be the best citizens that we can, letting the fruit of our regeneration and conversion spread through our actions and involvement throughout the society. A little leaven can do much for the whole nation. The gospel is leaven. If we hide and don’t engage, then we surrender critical ground. The gospel is not imposition, though, so we cannot force our beliefs on anyone. We are not to be cultural warriors in the caricaturesque sense of the word. We are to keep our conduct honorable. We live for Christ here, all our life. We live in a glass case. Everyone is watching us and measuring our witness with our actions or lack of action. There should be no one more committed to the pursuit of justice, beauty, truth, and order than the Christian citizen of a nation.

But there are limits to our engagement. Ultimately we will not be able to decisively persuade a godless culture without regeneration. There can be no revolution without reformation. We cannot persuade a single person about Jesus Christ being the Son of God who came into the world to live a perfect life and die a brutal death in our place for all our sins before rising up again and ascending to the throne of the Father where he intercedes for us even now as he makes all things new. We just can’t. We need the power of the Holy Spirit to illuminate the heart, mind, soul, to give eyes, ears, and soft hearts to take in the message we proclaim. Because of that, we can’t persuade somebody to display the fruit of repentance, the fruit of the Spirit from mere human persuasion. We can’t ultimately persuade anyone that abortion is murder and ought to be obliterated from our land. We can’t ultimately persuade anyone about a host of moral issues that are the outworking of the gospel. People need eyes to see given from God and they need our witness so that they can respond to God’s call.

And that is also the final point, the nature of change is that we cannot force change. We fully depend on God for that, but we must obey God also. He is sovereign, and we are responsible. We vote, but we know that our vote cannot change the hearts of a nation. We advocate for more just laws, but we know that ultimately a nation will legalize what it worships. We seek to root out corruption in worldly systems, but we know that when true repentance comes, the change will be mind blowing and a testimony to the power of God. We run for office, if it’s our call, remembering that men like Wilberforce fought to bring about impossible change. He was accused of preaching the gospel to the “savages” while he was trying to root out the slave trade from England.

The former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Abraham Kuyper, notably said that there is not one square inch over the whole realm of this world over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry out, “Mine!”

The Kingdom is at hand, in our midst, but also not of this world. So, we live in this tension. We are sojourners and aliens. We are citizens. We don’t truly have a home in this world, but, as my friend Mike Bull says, “We must not be so heavenly-minded that we retreat from
the world nor so earthly-minded that we are disqualified from God’s blessing”

Victor Chininin Buele

When I worked in DC, we were at the tipping point of implementing our fears in that post-9/11 world into law and practice. Riding the Metro to work, I’d always hear our WMATA recording ask us, “if you see something, say something.” If we were to see a suspicious object or a situation or a person, we were not to doubt but report it. Fresh images were in our minds of the colossal Twin Towers coming down and people dying. We were determined to never let it happen again. Or at least, we were deadly afraid of it happening again.

Terrorism seeks the disruption of “normal” life. You just don’t expect the nice, kind doctor in the lab coat to blow up the hospital, or the sweet pregnant lady that was sitting next to you at the school function to set the school on fire. Terrorism is successful when it leads to ever-present doubt and suspicion. That’s how terror wins.

Yet, this hyper-alertness is very important because it helps with survival. Or so we think. If we doubt everything, then we will be able to report that which is strange and obliterate terror. Right? Wrong! We just can’t.

We wear ourselves out. We can not possibly be on alert always, ever, all the time. We can’t be evaluating every situation and every person. We are finite. We get tired, and we get complacent. Or we become the boy who cried wolf, or even worse, we are told we are the boy even though what we are seeing is real.

So, two simple takeaways today: 1) We can’t stand at the watchtower alone. We need others to watch with us. We need others to listen and challenge whatever needs to be challenged. We need others to act. 2) We have a messed up view of causality. Psychologists use the acronym DARVO: denial, attack, reversal of victim-offender. When we are confronted with our sin and feel threatened, the first response is to deny the sin ever happened. Once the truth is made clear (from our very own mouth and actions, mind you), we attack. It’s full survival mode at that point; it was the other person’s fault. And when it becomes clear that the actions or the abuse were clearly that sinner’s fault and responsibility, the next act is to flip the script: I am the victim of that horrible, horrible victim. Don’t you see it?, we will be asked, she is a sinner! And let’s face it, it is a lot easier for us to start chanting, SINNER, SINNER, SINNER! than it is to actually sort out the whole picture in the light of who Christ is and what He called us to be: Christlike.

One of our most fundamental, cultural heresies in America is that people are good, inherently good.

And when we believe in such a heresy, one of the most fundamental follow-up heresies is this: Grace becomes putting everything in its best possible light. Sin becomes putting everything in its worst possible light. Grace becomes about perception, which it most definitely is not.

Naming the sin, killing the sin, repenting of the sin, and redemption from sin all become impossibilities at that point. Let us not be surprised that cancel culture can creep in like this. For grace to have its full strength effect in our dead bodies and revive them, we have to recognize just that: that apart from Christ we are dead. Our sin is death. It produces death. We need to recognize, name, and repent of the totality and the depth of our sins.

It will most definitely not have a pretty ring to it, and it will cost us dearly. There just is no possible way to sugarcoat sin and live. Brazilian pastor Hernandez Dias Lopes says that the lie has short legs. I found that very insightful and just awkward enough when translated to English to stick in my mind. As a lifelong owner of short legs, I know this: it takes me many, many more steps for me to keep with someone with longer legs. It requires more effort, and I look ridiculous while doing it.

Do not waste your life trying to catch up, always, ever, all the time. Go ahead and picture it, me making four steps for every one step from a tall person. Laugh at it. Then, come back, surrender the lie. Live in the light. Name your sin. Repent of it. Be redeemed by the Redeemer.

When is the last time you were able to name your sin without sugarcoating it?

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,

Ephesians 1:7