Sincere, if a little dramatic.

For a full decade, the year 2010 has stood out as The Worst Ever, but 2020 has topped that. And then some. Besides all the national and international crap going on, there's plenty of personal grief and struggle-- ghosted friendships, broken relationships, illness, financial struggles, strife, and loss. But the most critical and devastating loss of all has been watching the widening crack in the foundations of an institution that I have loved: the American Evangelical Church.

I've watched, heartbroken, in disbelief, as men and women that I would have considered brothers and sisters have sold their souls for political power under the guise of "protecting the unborn" and "maintaining the rule of law" and "defending the traditional family". Y'all, you begged God for a King and you got a King Saul. You forgot that the way of the Gospel is the low way, the way of humility, weakness, and sacrifice. You wanted a shortcut to Salvation and an easy way to establish the Kingdom of God, but you forgot that only God himself can change minds and soften hearts and you can't vote in a strong man to establish a judicial version of the Kingdom. Y'all, if you want to grab the jawbone of an ox and start slaying Philistines, you better read the whole story and make sure that Samson is really who you want leading that fight. Remember, Samson was a symbol of the depths of Isreal's fallen state. That story isn't telling us to go out and find us a Samson. And you better make damn sure that you're getting Samson and not just a Philistine king who wants a patsy to take care of his political rivals for him.

'Cause, y'all? With love... you've become a patsy. Maybe it started out right. I'm willing to concede that at some point your hearts were in the right place, your intentions were good, but dear God in heaven, look where we've come! Y'all got drunk with power and then you ran amuck and now you're just the shills of a unscrupulous huckster who knows all the right words, sweet nothings, to whisper in your ears to bring you running to his side: "Protect the unborn" he says, and you close your eyes to the weeping children severed from their families. "Defend the rule of law" he says, and you turn your backs to the abuse of your disenfranchised  brothers. Like a gas-lit abused spouse, you're heatbreakingly easy to trigger and control, tagging along, docile, behind the very power that is wreaking your undoing.

Y'all, read the history of the church; every damn time we try to do it our way, every time we try to use political power, force, and militancy to "do God's work" it goes terribly, terribly badly. From the Crusades to the Spanish Inquisition to Colonial-Missionary-ism (or whatever you want to call that)-- whenever the Church has sought to spread the Gospel without humility, sacrifice, suffering, and personal loss, we have failed; utterly and miserably. Christians with political power are a terrifyingly dangerous thing for God's creation. 

And this is why I have to write this... History tells us that God won't stand for it. There's a day of reckoning coming. Y'all, humble Jesus is still in the business of turning over the tables of the rich who take up the space in His temple meant for the foreigners and the social outcasts. He's still in the business of whipping out the greedy men taking advantage of the poor, the widow, and the orphan. At some point, y'all started assuming that the point of that story was that it's ok to pick up a whip now and then, but I tell you what, I'm pretty sure it was way more about warning US not to pollute the House of the Lord. We've got the story backwards in our heads and hearts. At this point, we're the Pharisees. We're the backsliding Isrealites. We're the Phillistines. We're Babylon.

So this is me, shaking the dust of Babylon, the American Church, off my feet. "Come out of her, my People" (Revelation 18:4, Jeremiah 51:6, 45), -- I'm hearing that in my soul. I love the church and I love her people, but for now, I'm going to stand over here, out of the line of fire.