You might have noticed that I have been quiet for several months, and that was not entirely intentional. I’ve had a heavy workload with seminary and freelance assignments and just couldn’t locate time to write outside of that. (Those first few weeks of Hebrew—whew.) I also felt a need to step back and regroup.
Watching The New York Times’ outstanding documentary on the Kyle Rittenhouse killings in Kenosha, Wisconsin, reminded me of something the Lord showed me in a dream exactly one week after the Capitol Riot. The gist of it was this: The terrorists are in the house. I believe this means the House of God.
I saw young men gathering explosives and electronic equipment at night to prepare for what seemed to be a sophisticated attack. But they were just across a threshold in the same house I was in. It so happened that they were young white men. As soon as the young men stepped away, I began throwing away the electronic equipment I could lift, then I ran to tell my family members.
My family members, however, were immersed in the dark whirl of fears and suspicions that characterizes right-wing media. The Lord showed me one disturbing image that likened this to a pornography addiction. Needless to say, my family was distracted. I tried to warn them.
Switching back to real life: I have read the reports of folks acquiring firearms and ammunition at an unprecedented rate. I occasionally intersect with right-wing media, and what I hear disturbs me greatly: reviling of the poor (disguised as criticism of pandemic relief). Thinly veiled racist attacks. An utter lack of concern for the “strangers” in our midst, embodied in the Haitian and Central American asylum seekers who converged at our border.
I am still amazed at the insanity of open-carry laws, especially after watching the Times video. I’m not opposed to the 2nd Amendment and was actually a pretty good shot in my day, but as a longtime journalist, I see all of the elements of a conflagration building in this country.
And the potential terrorists are right alongside us in the House of God. Singing those same songs. Listening to the same messages. Partaking of the Lord’s Supper.
How could this be?
It really isn’t such a shocking juxtaposition. These are the same churches where preachers and speakers dragged their political loyalties into the sacred space, mixing holy and common. If you mix holy and common long enough, you lose your ability to discern the difference.
These are also the places where people of color, Millennials, and Gen Zers were thrown under the bus as too many of our seasoned Christian leaders did a reckless last dance around their political idol, in this case, the most divisive president of our lifetime.
When you allow this level of spiritual compromise in your life, and when you lose your ability to distinguish between sacred and profane—or simply lack the conviction to address the extremists plainly—you will fail to detect that your words and deeds have borne the unintended consequence of offering comfort to the potential terrorists in our midst.
I have often heard that God “reveals to redeem.” If He speaks to us in a prophetic dream that shows troubling future events, we don’t do a Jonah and sit back to wait for the fire to fall and burn to a crisp everyone who doesn’t agree with us. We pray, first of all, for God’s mercy on all involved.
Then we obey. In my case, the Lord told me that I wasn’t to stop writing until I had spoken all of the words God has given me. That is a response that is specific to me. But all of us share a continuing debt, according to the Apostle Paul, and that is to love one another.
I don’t think that love looks like carrying an assault weapon in the street, or becoming a reviler of the poor through agreement with right-wing media, or shoving your political loyalties in the faces of Christians of color just because you can, or stocking your bunker with ammo and dried beans to sustain you and yours while the world burns.
Let’s live up to who we really are, as Paul exhorted the Philippians, and put out these flames of hatred and violence with the self-sacrificing love of Jesus Christ.
