So much noise.
So many voices.
All the time.
Even when you try to listen to good, constructive ones, the sound in your head can be overwhelming, paralyzing.

I just want to remind you today to listen to the still, small one.

Remember who you are...beloved daughter, beloved son. Remember who you are, & who you have always been.

Remember who that voice says that you are.

Remember the love that you came from, & back to which you yet must go.

Your history matters, but you are not the sum of your history.

So remember the future, too.

Tied up speaking all weekend, & late to the game catching up on all the John MacArthur hot takes. Historically, I’ve not engaged him for the precise same reason I do not debate flat earthers: even responding to his words feels potentially dignifying to work deserving of none. That said, I am who I am today b/c powerful Pentecostal women preachers shaped my life early, starting w/Sister Margaret Gaines. I’m filled with ache missing her voice right now. So I’ll be your huckleberry on this one—b/c this is one of the few things I’ll have a bar fight over.

A short thread on the phenomenon of leaders losing "faith:"
Even for people who feel like they find liberation on the other side, the process of losing faith is profoundly scary & alienating. I can't imagine speaking of anyone going through a faith shift without tenderness. My take on the "hot takes" after a few high profile examples of said shifts--is that it proves Paul's maxim, "you have not many fathers." Hearing such stories without empathy is beyond me. Like @Franklin_Graham on w/Todd Starnes--man, imagine if he was the father of the prodigal?

Thread:

There is so much horror in the world, many terrors for people to fear. Yet so many people live every moment of their lives with a sincere conviction that God is the greatest terrorist of them all. It relativizes every other fear—because whatever horrors may come, none are so fearsome as the monster who lies in wait on the other side of the veil. ⁣

The storm inside the last 24 hours has been raging too much to think straight, much less find words. I'm grateful for those that can--I don't claim to feel more deeply than anyone else. Just an acknowledgment of my limitations: I haven't felt coherent, much less constructive. Disclaimer: I have strong feelings about guns in America. In my bumbling way, I'm attempting to follow the Christ who once & for all told Peter "put away your sword." The contrast between the way of the sword/the way of the gun is stark, & you cannot serve two masters.

Intuitively, people who have had any kind of real experience with God often have a deep inner knowing (or at least deep suspicion) that God may turn out to be more beautiful than they thought. But they don’t have a head construct for what the heart knows. When your life is finally blown open to see the trajectory of grace in all things, it can come as a happy surprise! Except of course—when it doesn’t.⁣⁣
⁣⁣
Jonah saw the whole thing coming off the rails, long before Jesus of Nazareth got here.

The gospel of grace is shocking, scandalous, & offensive when rightly understood. Nothing drives me more bananas than when people try to water down the scandal w/moralism—or my MOST hated move—create some binary w/grace & something else, as if grace is just one end of a seesaw. The most “Biblical” sounding way people do it is to use John 1.14, which describes Jesus as “full of grace and truth.” This is taken to mean “well you need grace on one hand BUT you need to BALANCE it with truth”—which doesn’t get the construction right at all.

Today is a day set aside for pledging allegiance, honoring sacrifice, remembering we are part of a larger communal story that gives our individual stories meaning.⁣ I’m happy to participate. ⁣

Today I once again pledge my allegiance to the haunted, disfigured man on the tree. Today I remember the sacrifice to end all sacrifice, the one who took all the horrors of war into himself—the one who walked the Trail of Tears, bearing the horror of Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Vietnam in his own body like a cosmic rag doll.

I worked it out so last minute to come in for #MoralWitnessWednesday. Without trying to be spooky, I knew Spirit was tugging me somehow. The way these things always work, you go because you feel like it’s the right thing to do—then realize you came because your soul was thirsty. I’m aware I’ve been ranting & raving less than I was. That’s not letting off the accelerator. That’s moving for the 5th time in 5 years, trying to get settled in a new city, & trying to get a brand new community off the ground in OKC. It’s been all-consuming. But, still...

For early Christians, the cross was the ultimate symbol of trauma—not only because it was the instrument of the state used to torture & kill Jesus, but because it was an instrument still being used to torture and kill them... (painting by Janet McKenzie @ArtistKingdom) What could be more traumatic, more shameful, in our vernacular—“more triggering,” than the image of the cross? And yet the power of the cross from the very beginning of the Christian story is this:

I’m not telling you to be passive in the face of injustice, but I will tell you not to waste all the fire in you consumed in judgment of “them.” God does judge. Where there is not life, beauty & mercy, Spirit moves on...& has moved on. What could be a fate worse than that? In their accusation, they accuse & imprison themselves. In their condemnation, they condemn themselves. The world gets smaller & smaller, until they live in a reality without children, laughter, surprise...grace. Do you think they are to be envied?

Since this time last year, we've fallen off of some wagons, jumped on to some others. You got a raise or lost the money. You got drunk or sober, married or divorced. People were born, people died. Nothing could stop the rising. Your accomplishments didn’t speed him up, your failure didn’t slow him down. Love got up, in his own sweet time. Death was conquered. Maybe you don’t believe it. So? What you BELIEVE won’t make it more or less true. Resurrection is God's responsibility.

On Palm Sunday:

The King comes riding into Jerusalem on the back of a borrowed donkey. The man rides like an apology, a slapstick parody of power, a send-up of pomp & circumstance. The man rides under the weight of all our collective loneliness, as well as his own... With no stallion, no army, & no pretension, Love himself rides solo in the parade of powerlessness. Royalty, at last, has no entourage. With apologies to Dante, this is the original divine comedy, a moment more Mel Brooks than Michelangelo. Yet the man of sorrows is not a shtick.

Thread: I am carrying this shooting in New Zealand like a stone. Particular names, faces, & stories I’ve read, haunt me. But there is the larger brooding thing it signifies I feel in my belly—that this is a hateful time, where most days it feels like fear triumphs over love. Personally, this coincides with me about to pioneer a new community again. It’s very different than when I did it before. The first time, I just knew I was ready to change the world! This time, I have no idea if the world can be changed. How would I know?

Sigh. I have not felt the need to weigh in on the recent round of abortion debate, b/c I feel like the last thing the world needs is another white guy pontificating about abortion. But apparently anything I say about ANYTHING now will be met with "but whatabout" abortion? So, I am sketching out my current thoughts about it for those critics. (Feel free to mute if you need to) I am not issuing edicts. I consider myself pro-life, insofar as my own theological convictions. I do not believe the only way to be pro-life is to criminalize abortion.

I can't get over my seasickness over the racist, homophobic attack of @JussieSmollett. Hate crimes like this are not anecdotal or episodic. How can it still even be in question whether or not reckless rhetoric empowers extremists/extreme action? #JusticeForJussie #MAGA I will contend again: #MAGA is not just a political ideology, but a theology that makes explicit theological claims that must be evaluated theologically. And anybody who studies theology knows this: LANGUAGE MATTERS. Words matter.

Here is a non-hot take: you don't need the narrative of what happened between the Covington students and Nathan Phillips to fall any particular way to discern the larger truth about race in America. Short clips. Long clips. Do we still need a particular Perry Mason moment? If you want to have a conversation about nuance, context, & long-form critical thinking...please! Apply that principle to this claim: we have a justice system so bent against black & brown bodies as to be a literal continuation of a slave economy. Is the jury still out on this?

Have you ever been broke; have you ever been broken? Have you ever lost the plot, & your own true name? Have you ever felt jagged contempt for everything in the mirror? Have you ever hated yourself, & the world? I have, more than once. I’ve been to the bottom of the well, to places too low for even demons to walk. Let me tell you what I found there: Fearlessness. I found the things inside that do not break, when every bone of your body is broken. I went deep enough into the cold, to find the undying flame.

I read the @TGC hit piece on progressive Christianity & atheism on a plane yesterday, & I have absolutely no desire to dunk on it. Where is the fun in taking down an intellectually dishonest grade school book report (w/requisite out of context, cut & paste block quotes)? While it is irksome to spend any effort refuting such brazenly lazy work, I nonetheless would like to offer a counter witness as a Pentecostal who is more in love with Jesus than ever before—in a season in which I see so many people around me coming to faith, not losing it.

#unpopularopinion: It may be possible to at least try to stay tender in a violent age, imperfectly pursue the fruit of the Spirit, & disagree with elders in the faith without impugning their motives? Maybe it’s possible to generally to be over fundamentalism, but not over Jesus? If you leave one kind of fundamentalism for another, merely trade up sanctimony for snark, don’t be surprised if you get devoured again. Ideological purists unite in their love for eating their young. For Christ’s literal sake, get around people who will tend softly to your soul.

Mythologies of false gods have done less damage in the world than the mythology that people who know of the true God are somehow separated from Him based on their behavior. Sin won't keep God away from you, but shame will keep you trying to hide from God. The cross was not a legal loophole God the Father needed, like some accountant, to get your "sin problem" off the books. The cross was God's way of dealing with your shame problem, so nothing would hold you back from Him. There was NEVER anything holding Him back from you.