What is truth?

Is it real, or merely a social construct of the human mind? Do we live in a world of many more than fifty shades of grey, or is there such a thing as absolute, concrete truth, impervious to relativity? And, if such truth does in fact exist, where should we look for it? How should we even know when we’ve found it?

Do you know the truth? Do I?

It turns out that Pontius Pilate’s fateful question still echoes through the ages. Here we are, two thousand years later, still depleting our days desperately trying to answer it. Many of us, those with any semblance of religious, political, or scientific beliefs, think we have much, if not all, of the truth. Others, conversely, argue that either truth doesn’t exist, or that none will ever ascertain it, and thus the pursuit of truth is but chasing after the wind. Ironically, those who say there is no absolute truth make this statement as if it itself is absolute truth, thereby refuting their claim.

Furthermore, in today’s sociopolitical climate, truth seems to have been rendered irrelevant at best, and mutable at worst. With warring political factions each proclaiming that their truth is true, and with misinformation, alternative facts, and fake news filling much of truth’s original bandwidth, truth seems to have been relegated to the antique bin. If you can simply create your own truth, one that conveniently agrees with your points of view, why search for a truth that might prove more disruptive to your worldview?

Ask any artist, and they’ll tell you that black and white paint, when mixed together, make grey. It would be easy to concede that truth works in much the same way.

Growing up, my sister Rahel and I had a slippery relationship with the truth. To this day, we still recall certain stories and their details differently, but we do agree upon this: We each lied to get the other in trouble. Not one or two times. A lot.

One instance that stands out in my mind began in the midst of a friendly one-on-one basketball game in front of our family’s garage. I had the ball. I went up for a layup. She made contact with my arm. I solemnly swear on that basketball. I know my truth. So, of course, I called a foul, certain that my call was the correct one.

It turned out that my sister’s truth was different than mine. “All ball,” she said. “Impossible,” I retorted, pointing to the still-invisible welt that was sure to develop on my forearm as a result of her devastating blow.

Our argument over the truth escalated from there. Rahel, two and a half years older and still bigger and stronger than me at the time (truthfully, she’s still stronger), finally exclaimed, “You want a foul? I’ll show you a foul,” as she used her formidable size advantage to tackle me and grind my face into the concrete.

Her truth beat my truth. Until, that is, we went inside to face a higher truth: the judgment and wrath of our parents. Though we were both in the wrong, and though we had both distorted the truth to gain an advantage, mine was the bloody face. Thus, in the end, my truth was victorious, and Rahel was sent to her room.

Though I knew it not at the time, this was not the first war started over a disagreement about the truth. Sadly, this story has repeated itself throughout human history in much larger, much more deleterious ways.

Our truth is more truthy than your truth. The very existence of your truth threatens our truth. Therefore, we will fight you until there is only one truth left. May the best truth win.

Conceit begets conceit. Hate begets hate. Violence begets violence. War after war, atrocity after atrocity, and genocide after genocide, and still, we are no closer to deciding who has the ultimate truth. Muslim versus Jew. Catholic versus Protestant. Christians crusading across Muslim and American lands. The Inquisition. ISIS. Buddhists of the 969 Movement. Even secular, godless society has gotten in on the fight, as Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, and others have killed tens of millions in the name of Communism, of race, of political ideology.

Could it be that we have made truth in our image? That the second we think we know the truth is the second we stop looking for it, and instead start fighting for it?

Perhaps truth is not a stale collection of rules and precepts to be disagreed upon. Perhaps it’s not a precious group of doctrines worth starting countless wars over. Truth, I believe, is a person, a person who is also God. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” he said. He meant it.

“What is truth?” Pilate asked. Little did he know that the Answer to his question was standing before him, bloodied and beaten.

I would posit that the endless quest for truth throughout the ages, from Plato to Socrates to Descartes to Nietzsche to you and me, has been, at its core, whether consciously or subconsciously, the search for the Truth himself.

Author and pastor Shawn Brace, a longtime friend, put it this way on Twitter: “My safety does not come from having a perfect knowledge of the truth. My safety comes from knowing Him who is the Truth.”

When we know the Truth, the Truth will set us free. Free to grow. Free to learn. Free to be wrong.

When we know the Truth, we are free to love those we disagree with, not shun them. When we know the Truth, we live lives of compassion and purpose the way he did, not existences hell-bent on preserving a doctrine or belief from contamination.

When we know the Truth, we know that we are forgiven when we inevitably fail. Accepted exactly as we are. Loved more than we could ever comprehend.

When we know the Truth, we live lives of joyous expectation, barely able to contain our excitement at what God will do in and through us next. When we know the Truth, we finally begin to understand that God’s love for us is in no way contingent upon right living, right doctrine, and right theology, as much as he wants all of these things for us.

We give up our need to be right and embrace our need to be loved.

I believe that the single biggest cause of unbelief in the world today is that we the church strive so hard to know, share, and enforce what we believe to be the truth without ourselves knowing the Truth.

You see, Jesus cuts through our clamorous craving to be correct, through our insatiable thirst to complicate the simple truth of the Gospel. Love God, love people, he succinctly states in Matthew 22. “These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.”

Yes, there is a place for theological discussion, for hermeneutics, for exegesis. The Spirit of Truth indeed longs to guide us into all truth. Wouldn’t you want to know as much as you can about this God who offers us a love so recklessly lavish? But, if these important truth-seeking exercises don’t point us to love the least of these, the most different of these, the most heretical of these, then we can count them all as rubbish. “If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day… but I don’t love, I’m nothing,” Paul declares.

I would venture an educated guess that not once in the history of the church has a well-meaning believer convinced another of any doctrine or precept, large or small, through coercion, anger, ostracism, hatred, or aggression. There is one, and only one, means by which hearts and minds are changed. That means is love. We can still speak the truth, yes; but that truth must be spoken in love, the way the Truth himself spoke to prostitutes, lepers, tax collectors, Pharisees, and Gentiles alike. The way the Truth speaks to broken people like you and me.

When he speaks, The Truth calls us to know him, not to understand everything. To fall in love with him, not to ostracize those who don’t. To grow in relationship with him, not to simply increase in knowledge.

The Truth stands in front of us, on trial. Will we, like Pilate, wash our hands and turn away? Or will we humbly lay down our pontificating pride and recognize that he is the Answer to every question, every doubt, every need?

Do you know the Truth? Do I?

Because when we know the Truth, the Truth will set us free.


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This article was originally published in Spectrum Magazine.

Chirp, chirp. Chirp, chirp.

I rubbed my eyes and squinted at the floor. Was a piece of bark squeaking in my general direction? Or was my imagination getting the best of me again?

Mentally, I ran through a list of probable causes. I had just arrived at my condo in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. My two-leg flight had only lasted seven hours, so I wasn’t overly jet lagged. I’d slept well the night before, so it couldn’t be a lack of sleep. I don’t touch psychedelic drugs, so my eyes and ears were not deceiving me. Thus, there had to be another explanation for the detritus on my floor that was attempting to communicate with me.
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Granted, my condo is prone to flooding. My back patio sits just a couple inches lower than the floor inside the condo, and lies underneath some palm trees. When fronds block the patio drain, and I’m not there to sweep them away, the patio fills up with rainwater, which eventually seeps underneath my back door and inundates my house.

Upon arrival, I opened my front door and was once again greeted by signs of a recent flood. So, I began to clean, which is exactly what I love doing after a day of travel. While sweeping the living room floor, I kept hearing chirping from the corner. Finally, I spotted the piece of bark that was causing such a ruckus. As my broom approached it, it squeaked and hopped away.

That piece of debris was, in fact, the tiniest frog I had ever seen. No bigger than a large fly, she could still hop over a foot in the air. Her adorable, tiny feet and her big, inquisitive, fearful black eyes left me no choice but to immediately fall in love with this diminutive creature. I named her Rosie the Ribbeter.

Rosie hopped toward my bathroom and took refuge in the bottom of my wooden bathroom door, which had been damaged by water from the most recent flood and had separated at the bottom, creating what turned out to be a desirable habitation for such a Lilliputian amphibian.

Time passed, and I settled in. I didn’t see Rosie for a couple days, and hoped that she had found her way back out to freedom via the tiny crack under my front door. One night, around four in the morning, I groggily stumbled from my bed to the bathroom. I opened the door and turned on the light. Immediately, I heard the loudest shrieking, far more piercing than the chirping from a couple days before, and saw a tiny creature jumping around. It was Rosie. She had apparently applied for permanent residency in the bottom of my door. Based on her screeches, I surmised that I had injured her in moving the door. She quickly hopped back to cover. I stopped moving the bathroom door.

From that point on, I knew I had to rescue her. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how.

​I started leaving little puddles of water on the floor, in hopes that she could stay alive long enough to find her way to daylight. Several times a day, she would venture out of her door-fort, and I’d spot her, either in the shower or behind the toilet. Whenever I got as close as two or three feet, she would quickly hop out of my reach. Rosie was no slouch. If she ever got the chance to enter the Amphibian Olympics, I have no doubt that she would hop away with several gold medals, or gilded beetles, or whatever it is that they give out for trophies at such events.

All along, I of course knew that I was trying to help her. Regrettably, I don’t speak Frog, and I had a hard time communicating my intentions. She undoubtedly saw me as a giant and a threat. Whenever I tried to guide her toward the living room, and ultimately toward the freedom beyond the front door, she would retreat to safety.

After a week of this, I knew time was running out for Rosie. She needed food, and needed it fast. I wasn’t about to introduce live insects into my home, and obviously, Rosie couldn’t live in my condo forever; after I left, she would surely starve or die of thirst.

If only there was a way for me to show Rosie that I was trying to save her, not harm her. If only I could speak Frog.

I covered the bathroom floor with a bunch of Mason jars, lying on their sides, full of leaves, sticks, and grass. I put a little water in each, hoping to mimic her natural habitat enough that she might hop into one, and I might be able to take her to safety.

On the daily, I grew more and more attached to this tiny frog. It goes without saying that this year has been one of hurt and suffering for so many, and all of my hopes of any good remaining in this broken world were pinned on somehow helping this poor, innocent frog make it to safety.

One day, ten days into Rosie’s stay, she disappeared. I didn’t see her for almost 48 hours. I prayed that she had escaped, but feared the worst. I didn’t want to move the bathroom door for fear of injuring her, or worse yet, discovering that she was no longer alive.

At 2 AM on a stormy night, my heart melted as I walked into the bathroom and saw Rosie sitting in the middle of the rug. When she spotted me, she hopped directly to the rim of one of the Mason jars. As I approached, the unthinkable happened. She hopped in! Quickly, I covered the jar with a lid.

Rosie, to her credit, didn’t freak out. It was almost as if she knew that she was safe and was on her way to a better place, where she could live out her days happily gorging on all the insects her little heart desired.

I opened my front door. Those subtropical summer rains beat down in the darkness outside as I walked a mile and a half down empty streets to a place where Google Maps told me I would find a small river named Río Pitillal. Throughout the journey, when we passed under the light of a streetlight, Rosie looked up at me from the jar with those big, black, trusting eyes. Dogs barked. Birds chirped. Rosie, unfazed, kept returning my gaze.

Finally, we arrived. I found a marshy area near the bank of the river. I set the Mason jar down, expecting Rosie to immediately hop out. There were bugs to eat and puddles to splash in, after all.

Instead, she stayed where she was, looking up at me with those unforgettable eyes. So, though not a fan of littering, I left the jar in a tuft of grass near a large puddle. Perhaps Rosie, after enjoying a long, exciting day of feasting on insects, could retreat to the safety of the jar that had been her home for the last mile and a half. Tears welled up, and I started to cry as I bid her farewell.

As I walked back to my condo, soaking wet, I thought about all that Rosie had taught me. I thought about the fact that sometimes stories still do have happy endings. I felt a sense of self-accomplishment for having saved a tiny, helpless creature that surely would have died without me, and wondered if this was how God must feel toward us.

Then, like a thunderbolt in the night, it hit me. Everything I thought I knew about God and the magnitude of his sacrifice was wrong.

Yes, I had gone out of my way to save a frog, and had patted myself on the back for it. Ultimately, though, it had cost me nothing but a little time and a Mason jar.

God, though, didn’t just put out a tiny terrarium for us. He didn’t just try to guide us to the front door as best he could. He didn’t just take a few hours out of his night to walk through the rain to save us, and then say, “It is finished.”

Instead, the King became a tiny frog. Helpless. Powerless. Fragile. Alone.

God gave up everything that divinity entails, because he knew that the only way to save a frog was to become one.

He became like us, so that we could be like him. He lived among us. Taught us. Healed us. Forgave us. He learned to speak Frog.

Not only that, but the story didn’t end as well for Jesus as it did for Rosie. God couldn’t just wave a wand and magically make our sins, our flaws, and the depravity of our hearts disappear. For the wages of sin is death, and the King knew that for justice to be upheld, he must take upon himself the punishment that we deserved. Just as the prophets foretold, though God became a frog, the frogs knew him not. We misunderstood his intentions, much like Rosie misunderstood mine. He was rejected, abandoned, and murdered by the ones he came to save.

Little did we self-important, sanctimonious frogs know that he was the Son of God, the one that even death could not constrain.

This is the Incarnation. A cold night in Bethlehem. A barn. A trough. Some farm animals. The King of everything became a tiny frog so that one day soon, we frogs can spend an eternity with Him on the banks of a river of life that never runs dry, an eternity where we can know as we are known.

So, my fellow frogs, let us hop with hope. Hope for the day when wrongs are made right, when broken hearts are healed, when death and pain are swallowed up in life forever.

And, the next time I’m in Puerto Vallarta, I might just mosey on back to Río Pitillal, look for a Mason jar and a pair of big black eyes, and say hello to an old friend who has taught me so much about what being a frog is all about.

This piece was originally published by Spectrum Magazine (www.spectrummagazine.org).

Dear Christians,

My name is Jon, and I’m a fellow Christian. These modest words that follow are, collectively, an open letter to those who believe in Jesus, who call themselves Christians. I am writing this letter as a Christian who has made, and continues to make, a lot of mistakes. I have hurt both God and my fellow humans. I don’t write this letter from a position of superiority, but rather from a humble place of knowing firsthand my need for grace.

We Christians share a common creed. Preeminently, we believe in Jesus, God become man, who left everything to enter our broken planet as a helpless baby. Why? So that he could show us, firsthand, what the love and grace of God is all about. Everything he did, he did in grace, with grace, because of grace. He healed the sick. Welcomed the outcasts. Touched lepers. Hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors. Not only that, but on account of his grace, he was beaten and crucified, taking the punishment our sinful selves deserved and trading it for the substitutionary atonement of a Savior, for eternal life in him.

Jesus was, and is, the incarnation of grace. John 1:17 puts it this way: “For the law came through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

Just as Jesus lived and died with grace, we are called to live and love with the same grace we have been given. That love extends to everyone, not just to those who believe the same as us, look the same as us, vote the same way as us. 1 John 4:20 offers these words of warning: “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

How is it, then, that so much of what Christians in the United States stand for today is so devoid of grace? Lacking in love?

If grace is to be our anthem and everything we live for as Christians, where is it?

Where is the grace when Mexicans and other immigrants are called murderers and rapists by our President? When they are separated from their families and kept in brutally inhumane conditions, all because they want to move to a different country? When they are the target of racial epithets and told to “speak English” even though the United States doesn’t have an official language? Aren’t we all but immigrants? As Jeremiah 22:3 says, “Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner.” Not only that, but Jesus paints Samaritans, foreigners whom Jews looked down upon, to be heroes in one of his most famous parables. Remember the Good Samaritan? Yeah, that parable.

Where is the grace when some Christians are adamant that children deserve the right to be born, yet don’t care about what happens to those children afterward? Where is the grace in defunding their education, in sending them to war, in not wanting to make sure they’re healthy and fed via affordable healthcare and social safety nets? Pro-life should refer to the duration of someone’s life, not just when they’re in utero. Often, all it takes for someone to cease their pro-life stance is for you to reach for their pocketbook. Furthermore, abortion rates actually decreased under Obama, because (surprise, surprise) access to affordable contraception goes a long way towards avoiding unwanted pregnancies. 

Where is the grace when some Christians find a way to weasel out of supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, pointing to flaws in leadership or some other unjustified excuse, and by the same token are able to explain away the President’s many flaws or support him in spite of them? Shouldn’t every Christian who has actually read and taken to heart the words of Jesus be marching hand in hand with every Black person in this country? BLM doesn’t mean that your white life doesn’t matter. Human rights are not pie. Just because someone else gains some doesn’t mean you lose yours. Furthermore, where is the grace when Trump supports discriminatory housing practices? Won’t denounce blatant racism and police brutality, even on a stage so grand as during a presidential debate?

Where is the grace when Christians support any sort of white supremacy movement? Any sort of white nationalism? Can you imagine the Jesus who knelt to wash his disciples’ feet, and who, by the way, certainly wasn’t white, being at the head of a group of Proud Boys, semiautomatic weapon in hand? “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” Paul says in Galatians 3:28.

Where is the grace in refusing to wear a mask to help slow the spread of COVID? Instead of doing this one simple, gracious act to help protect others, some Christians make up excuses and wild conspiracy theories about governmental control. Didn’t Jesus do anything he could to help and serve others? You complain about wearing a mask, while he wore a crown of thorns. Worse yet, where is the grace, the compassion, the concern in a President who consistently downplayed the threat of COVID even though he knew the dangers? Who refused to wear masks and mocked those who did? Who didn’t listen to experts and instead initiated a halfhearted, haphazard response to the most lethal global pandemic in a century, a response which cost over 200,000 American lives? Who, when he contracted COVID himself, knowingly followed through with an engagement that evening without masking up, infecting many others in the process, and couldn’t even pay lip service to the plight of those who have contracted the coronavirus and don’t have access to the world’s best health care?

Where is the grace in a system of government that consistently gives huge tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the lower and middle classes? A government that can’t provide necessities like healthcare and education to its lower-income citizens, the ones who need it the most? When Jesus fed the 5,000, he didn’t hang on to his loaves and fishes and launch into a diatribe about how hard he had worked for them, and how those in attendance should go get their own. Instead, he freely gave. And, it turns out, there was an abundance, enough left for everyone and then some. No, I am not condoning taking advantage of the system, and I understand that the money must come from somewhere. But, interestingly, Jesus was also a proponent of paying taxes (“Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” he said). You may call it socialism. Jesus called it grace.

Where is the grace in a staged photo-op with a Bible at a church near the White House which required tear gassing innocent, peaceful citizens? This is exactly the kind of sham religion that Jesus reserved his harshest criticisms for, such as in Matthew 23. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness…Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

Where is the grace in a President who pledges to enact a tax cut that will defund Social Security, striking a huge blow to the well-being of retirees, people with disabilities, and widows and widowers? Where is the grace in Christians supporting this? “Religion,” James 1:27 says, “that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” Isaiah 1:17 says it even more succinctly: “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”

Where is the grace in a President who lashes out in egregiously ugly ways at anyone and everyone who either disagrees with him in the slightest, or who has wronged him in any real or perceived way? He has obviously never read the following words of Peter: “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing.” (1 Peter 3:9). Jesus told us to turn the other cheek, but Trump can’t even turn the other tweet. Where is the grace in Christians who implicitly condone this petulant bully’s behavior, turning a deaf ear to his words and somehow thinking that he cares at all about what Jesus has to say, after admitting he has never asked for forgiveness in his life (one of the only prerequisites for salvation, I might add).

Where is the grace in a President who is so enamored with being the richest and the best that he tells more lies than any other president in history (according to the unbiased, nonpartisan reports of Politifact) to ensure that he is portrayed in nothing but a flattering light? He must have missed those verses about the meek inheriting the Earth, or about the first being last and the last being first. He also never read Proverbs 21:6: “The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a fleeting vapor and a snare of death.” Where is the grace in his faithful followers, who blindly believe what the President says rather than trusting experts, science, or facts? “Fake news” is undoubtedly the most genius catchphrase that Trump has ever employed; with it, he and his followers can conveniently dismiss any proven fact that challenges their worldview as part of a vast conspiracy of the left-wing media.

Where is the grace for our planet? Our future? Our kids and their kids? If this Earth is a gift from God, created by his hand, wouldn’t we want to take care of it? To take every opportunity to support green energy? Renewable resources? Recycling? To treat animals kindly? Instead, we have a President who, in 2009, in the New York Times, supported legislation combating climate change, saying that “if we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.” Then, when it became politically necessary in order to court Republican voters, he flipped the script. He called climate change “an expensive hoax,” gutted the EPA and put coal lobbyists in charge of it, pulled us out of the Paris Agreement, dismantled the Clean Power Plan, rolled back rules limiting methane pollution, and loosened emissions standards for cars and trucks. We only have one planet. One future. Yet, the callous disregard for the environment by our President, and many who support him, in the name of economic strength shows a complete lack of grace for our world and for those who will inhabit it just 20, 30, 50 years from now. What happens to those fossil fuel industry jobs when fossil fuels run out? When the Earth is rendered completely uninhabitable? Furthermore, Trump’s policies have cost the renewable energy sector over 622,000 jobs since he took office. How’s that for building a robust job market?

What happened to love? Love for everyone in this human race, whether gay or straight, Black or white, rich or poor, male or female or any other identification? If you have everything except for love, you still have nothing, according to 1 Corinthians 13.

You can’t love God and hate Muslims. You can’t love God and turn a blind eye to systemic racism. You can’t love God and discriminate against LGBTQ people. You can’t love God and abuse women.

Wake up, Christians. If there is no grace in what you believe and practice, then you are not of God.

I don’t actually expect my writing to change anyone’s mind. Republicans have been branding themselves as “God’s party” for years, even though the notion that God can be reduced to either political party is asinine. Both parties, and their respective politicians, are far from perfect; however, the Democratic Party consistently bases its platforms on inclusion and on taking care of everyone, not just the rich, the white, the male. Which, as it turns out, is exactly the kind of social agenda Jesus espoused. Still, I am not writing this letter in order to get you to swap your partisan affiliation. I am writing it because it breaks my heart to see so many of my friends turn against the God of grace and love that the Bible portrays because they see such a different God embodied in the lives of those who claim to follow him.

Do you get it, Christians? Your graceless words and actions are the biggest cause of unbelief in this broken world. You may think you’re standing up for what is good and right, but in reality, you’re locking the doors to heaven and throwing away the key.

Yes, God cares about what we do. But our actions, our sins, our shortcomings, and our transformation are all between us and Christ. “We can’t legislate man to perfection again,” sings Thrice. The way to lead others to Jesus is never judgment and hate. Rather, it’s always grace and love.

Right before God, through Isaiah in Chapter 1, told Israel to learn to do good, seek justice, and correct oppression, he went off on them for the religious show they put on. For their outward display of piety. For their hypocrisy. The one thing God hates more than evil is evil dressed up as good.

The only antidote to evil is grace. Amazing, surprising, unexpected, undeserved, reckless grace.

Let me be clear: if we don’t live in grace, we don’t live in Christ.

“You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace,” says Paul in Galatians 5:4.

God is love. Love is not just another one of his many attributes; it fundamentally comprises who he is. His love for us is so strong, so pure, so great, that he would rather give up his life than give up his love.

There’s more. He doesn’t just love us, but he calls us to love in the same way as he did. “Just as I have loved you, so you are to love one another,” he says in John 13:34. He doesn’t give us the option to pick and choose who we love. Who we show grace to. Who we accept, welcome, embrace.

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love,” 1 John 4:8 succinctly states.

If you do not love, you do not know God. Mic drop.

These are not my words. They are God’s.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to live in a world where people would know we are Christians by our love, rather than by our judgmental attitudes, hatred towards those not like us, and utter hypocrisy? Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)” He meant it. This is exactly what he desires.

Love is not a noun. It is a verb. God did not simply sit on his throne and wax eloquent about how much he loves us. Not even close. He counted everything as loss, including his own life, to put his love into action. He calls us to do the same. If we say we love everyone, yet live, act, or vote in a way that doesn’t match our words, we don’t love. Period. “Let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth,” 1 John 3:18 affirms.

So, Christians, I invite you to take a long, hard look at what you believe. Ask yourself: where is the grace? I mean it when I say that I will continue to do the same. Is grace the driving force behind our attitudes, our actions, our beliefs, our attributes? If not, let us ask God for grace. He will give it freely. His grace is enough. For you. For me. For a broken world desperately in need of the love of the Father and the love of fellow humans.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound 
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found 
Was blind, but now I see

These are crazy times.

With COVID-19 growing from a local outbreak to a regional epidemic to a global pandemic in a matter of a couple of months, our lives as we know them have been turned upside down.

During the last few weeks, many procedures have been implemented worldwide that some of us may never have thought we would have to adopt within our lifetimes.

Healthy? Practice physical distancing. Shelter at home. Avoid close human contact.

Ill? Self-quarantine before a governmental body does it for you.

These disruptive measures, though crucial to stem the spread of an uncommonly contagious virus, seem foreign to most of us. In times like these, our natural response is to cling to the ones we love; now, in a physical sense at least, we are being asked to do the opposite. Put distance between ourselves and the people we care about? Isolate? Avoid physical contact? These regulations, though important, strip away much of what makes us communal beings. They feel cold. Lonely. Unfamiliar. Empty. Novel.

Truth be told, though, this isolation is nothing new. Whether we are aware of it or not, we have been quarantining our entire lives.

We consistently shelter ourselves from those who are different. Those we disagree with. Those who take too much of our energy, our money, our time. Those we see as less worthy, less holy, less like us. Now, Facebook algorithms even take care of distancing for us, ensuring that we mainly encounter views and opinions that most closely resemble ours.
Consciously and unconsciously, we associate with those we see eye to eye with. Religiously. Politically. We even tend to surround ourselves with those who share our affinity for a particular sports team. It turns out that Yankees and Red Sox fans don’t hang out together too often.

So often, too, we the church, though in principle believing we are called to love and love unconditionally, seek to quarantine ourselves from the world, from anyone unrighteous, from anyone whose sinful habits and words might infect us.

We quarantine because it keeps us safe. Keeps our tidy little belief systems intact and unchallenged. Keeps us unblemished, untried, untempted.

Yet, this self-preserving, self-isolating approach could be the Enemy’s biggest temptation of all.

We serve a God who did, and does, the complete opposite. A God who created this world knowing full well the decisions we would make, the sickness of sin we would choose to become infected with. A God who did not self-isolate away from our planet, or tuck this fallen world away in an out-of-reach corner of the universe, but rather a God who entered the danger zone, born a helpless human who would grow up to become our disease.

This God, this Jesus, regularly did the unthinkable. He touched lepers while they were still unclean. Let a prostitute wash and wipe his feet with her hair. Hung out with tax collectors, drunkards, and sinners. Sinners much like you and me.

Though Jesus was a spotless lamb, he became a serpent lifted high (John 3:14). Though he knew no sin, he became sin for us. He drank our cup, taking upon himself the very thing he could not look upon, be around, be a part of. Instead of reaching for his mask and hand sanitizer to safely avoid our disease, he became it, so that he could cure it forever. The cure he offers is the only cure we will ever need, and our disease doesn’t stand a chance against it. John 1:5 puts it this way: "The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn’t put it out."

The God who knows no quarantine does the same thing in our messy lives today that he did on a cross long ago: he draws close to us, as contaminated as we are. He doesn’t ask that we get tested for our sickness; the Great Physician knows our condition better than we know it ourselves. He doesn’t wait for us to cure ourselves, to rid our souls of every symptom of sin, but jumps right into the heart of our circumstances, our crimes, our calamities. He doesn’t demand that we isolate from him, but calls us to him, sick and sinful as we are. His hands-on approach is exactly what our lonely, locked-up hearts have been waiting for.

Jesus knows no illness he can’t cure. No heart he can’t heal. Nothing broken he can’t restore. He doesn’t merely offer hypothetical hope of a vaccine yet to be developed; rather, he is the cure. No amount of self-medication, of self-help, or of self-doctoring could ever offer the total heart transformation that Jesus does. He doesn’t just want to eradicate our disease, but wants to bring us back to health. Back to life. As his light casts out our darkness, as his wholeness pushes out our brokenness, we become like him. Pure. Healthy. Whole.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18: "Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him."

We are sick. We are going to die. The only cure is a cruel cross, and a Savior who did not, does not, will not, spare anything to bring us from death to life.

He will never quarantine us. He will never isolate himself. He will never hold our sickness against us, for our Judge and our Savior are one.

In these times of uncertainty, of physical distancing, and of isolation, God defies any separation our guilt or shame could ever try to put on him. He has broken down every wall between himself and us. He refuses to give us, his prodigal sons and daughters, six feet of separation or an elbow bump, but instead runs down the road to greet us with arms wide open, welcoming us home.

As long as this earthly pandemic continues to escalate, it’s important to follow the rules of shelter and separation set out by governments and health agencies. But, though the battle rages against this devastating, deadly disease, we can be still and know that when it comes to the sickness that is killing our souls, the fight has already been won. We serve a God who is not bridled by rules of sin or separation, by regulations of space, time, guilt, or shame.

“So, what do you think,” exclaims Paul in Romans 8:31-32, 39. "With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? Absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love."

This is the God who knows no quarantine.

This piece originally appeared in The Compass Magazine.

All Bible verses quoted are from The Message, by Eugene H. Peterson.

Being God is an unenviable job.

As George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many more are murdered for the color of their skin, as systemic racism abounds in a country that purports to offer liberty and justice for all, as hundreds of thousands die from COVID-19, as countless others suffer financial hardship as a direct result of the pandemic, our hearts break for the injustice and suffering around us. As each of our hearts breaks, God's heart breaks eight billion times.

Don’t get me wrong: there is joy in being God. Joy in the beauty of a hopeless person who finds hope again. Joy in turning our evil into good, our wrongs into rights. Joy in entering into a relationship with those he has created. Joy in knowing that someday every tear will dry, every broken heart will be mended.

Yet, there is an immeasurable sadness. Sadness in the pain, suffering, discrimination, and death so many of his children must face. Sadness at the evil he must allow in the name of giving us freedom of choice, freedom of will. Sadness when we so often blame the very one who died to make things right.

No wonder Jesus was called the Man of Sorrows.

Jesus wept. He wept at death when his good friend Lazarus passed away. He wept over Jerusalem’s imminent destruction, because its people failed to choose the path of peace. He preached about injustice, inequality, and servitude. He spoke out against violence, even while his own life was being sold for thirty pieces of silver.

God is the God of the broken heart. His heart breaks when we choose power over peace. It breaks when we choose violence over love. Discrimination over acceptance. Anger over forgiveness.

Does what breaks God's heart break ours?

A little over a week ago, I attended a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in The Dalles, Oregon, a town not known for its particularly progressive views. Before we marched down to the police station, we assembled in a park while several African-American members of the community spoke over a PA system about their experiences, their fears, and their hope for change. 

After being moved by their message, I was surprised to see a white man, dressed in a suit and tie and holding a Bible, walk up and grab the microphone. I held my breath as he began to speak. “If you would have told me four years ago that I would be speaking at a Black Lives Matter protest, I would have laughed at you,” he said. “I’m a conservative Christian, a Republican, and the last thing I wanted was to be aligned with a bleeding-heart liberal cause.”

He didn’t stop there, thankfully. This Lutheran minister, from a small church in a small town, got it. His heart had been broken by the things that break God’s heart.

“I have come to realize that this isn’t about politics. It’s about human lives, about my brothers and sisters of color. It’s about caring about the things Jesus would have cared about,” he continued. “And so, I’m here to stand with you, here to help bring about change for some of God’s children who are being oppressed.”

Does what breaks God’s heart break ours?

If it does, our hearts will break when we see injustice. Racism. Discrimination. Misogyny.

If it does, our hearts will break when we see anyone who is created in his image being treated like anything less than the sons and daughters of God that they are.

If what breaks God’s heart breaks our hearts, we will work tirelessly to enact the change that he, and we, want to see.

Yes, we have free will to do evil, to cause pain, to show prejudice. However, the flip side of the free will coin is that we also have the freedom to do good. To love everyone, regardless of the cost. To protest peacefully. To petition lawmakers. To give of our time and money to causes that champion those who are being oppressed. 

I pray that your heart, and my heart, are broken by what breaks God’s heart, and that out of that brokenness comes the resolve to bring about lasting change.

If you find your heart being broken, though, by things that don’t break the heart of Jesus, I would like to gently suggest that you head back to the Gospels to read and re-read the words of the Son of God. If the sign that you bring to a protest is one of hate, one of judgment, or one of condemnation, I hope you can ask yourself if the Jesus who knelt and washed his disciples’ feet, who touched and healed lepers, who hung out with a Samaritan woman, and who partied with sinners would be seen carrying the same sign.

Jesus was a Middle Eastern refugee, belonging to a group of people that far too many of his followers so easily turn their backs on today.

Jesus didn’t judge a prostitute who others were ready to stone to death. He attended dinner parties with everyone from dirty fishermen to despised government officials. He told parables extolling the virtues of Samaritans, hated by the Jews for their ethnicity and their religion. He treated women like the equals they are, not possessions like those around him did. He praised the less fortunate, the weak, the child, the outsider. He said the last shall be first.

The only people Jesus judged while on earth? The Jewish religious leaders. Pharisees and Sadducees who would rob the poor. Who would make money off of religion. Who would discriminate based on someone’s ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic class. Who were far more concerned with religious rules than with loving their neighbor. Who wanted nothing to do with change if it meant losing power, losing control.

Read Jesus’ words, and then tell me if you can really picture the God who fed five thousand hungry people, who refused to condemn a whore, who told us do good to those who hate us and pray for those who mistreat us--can you see this God angrily counter-protesting at a peaceful Black Lives Matter rally? Refusing to bake a cake for an LGBTQ couple? Upset about Confederate flags and statues being taken down? 

As Paul says in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” 

Knowing this, why aren’t more Christians at the forefront of movements that fight for the oppressed? That champion human rights? Equality? An end to violence and police brutality? 

These causes, so important to Jesus, are sadly not worth the time of many of his purported followers.

Yes, God’s heart breaks when we fall short, when we sin, when we fail. His heart breaks not because we have somehow broken his draconian, capricious commands, but rather because he knows that when we sin, we are only hurting ourselves, hurting others. Jesus put it best when confronted by a Jewish teacher of the law about which commandment was most important. The Son of God, the Author of laws but also of life, succinctly summed up his commands thus: Love God, love people. Mic drop.

When we love God and love people, God is happy, because we are happy. When we turn our backs on God and mistreat people made in his image, it breaks God’s heart, because he knows it will ultimately break ours, break each other’s.

Shortly before his death, the Man of Sorrows told a hauntingly prescient story about two ubiquitous farm animals. Jesus, foretelling his second coming, foretelling the day when no heart shall break again, said that when he returns, all the nations will be arranged before him. He will then sort people into two categories: sheep and goats.

What are the criteria for attaining sheep status, you ask?

Simple.

Jesus, in Matthew 25:34-40, sums up the entirety of what our lives as his followers should be about:

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. And here’s why:

I was hungry and you fed me,

I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,

I was homeless and you gave me a room,

I was shivering and you gave me clothes,

I was sick and you stopped to visit,

I was in prison and you came to me.’

“Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’”

Love others. Love them regardless of their race. Regardless of their gender. Regardless of their sexual orientation. Regardless of whether they’re rich, poor, homeless, infirm, incarcerated. This is how you become a sheep.

Want to know how to become a goat? Do the opposite. Judge. Discriminate. Oppress. Stand idly by when injustice is taking place. Worry only about yourself, your rights, your beliefs, your 401k.

I leave you with a warning, though: things don’t work out too well for goats in the end. 

Don’t be a goat.

Let your heart be broken by the things that break God’s.


This piece was originally published by Spectrum Magazine (www.spectrummagazine.org).






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​Life is a journey. A road. A path.

We’ve all heard the metaphors. They abound in song, in prose, in film.

Every day is a winding road. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.

It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. Life takes time. Effort. Energy. Blah, blah, blah. I get it.

Metaphors such as these are all fine and good when we’re making progress. When we’re moving forward, no matter how slowly. When we’re able to at least put one foot in front of the other.

But, I ask, what about those times when we’re stuck? When we’re off course? When we’re moving backwards? When we don’t even know what path we’re supposed to be on? What about those times when, instead of being on the road, we’re in the ditches?

Nobody writes songs about ditches, except for that fictitious band Mouse Rat. When you’re stuck in the ditch, chances are you’re not going anywhere anytime soon.

This is real life.

Not Instagram life. Not Tinder profile life. Not Christmas card life.

Don’t feel stuck? Lost? Off course? Give it time. You will. Soon.

It’s so tempting to think of life as a series of goals, of destinations, of social media highlights. And sometimes it is. Sometimes we move forward. Things proceed at least somewhat as planned. Before you know it, though, you take your eyes off the road, and you’re back in the ditch. Maybe you swerve to miss an unforeseen obstacle. Maybe the road itself unexpectedly ends. Maybe your vehicle suddenly breaks down.

Let me dispense with the road metaphors for a minute. Life seldom, if ever, goes as planned. Just when we put out one fire, another one ignites. As much as we try, often convincingly, to portray ourselves as having it together, we don’t. Whether it’s from forces internal or forces external, we often feel like our lives, our happiness, our sense of purpose, our very existence is hanging by a thread.

For every day spent on the road, we spend two in the ditch.

Even our best attempts to stay on the road fail. Whether it’s cancer, or anxiety, or bankruptcy, or a family in chaos, or a dishonest spouse, or falling off a mountain in Mexico, those dastardly ditches beckon.

Sometimes it’s not even a catastrophe that forces us into the ditch. Sometimes it’s a dead-end job. A loveless marriage. A sense of being unfulfilled, of lacking purpose. Sometimes it’s just the day-to-day, the monotony, the routine.

Next thing you know, you’re hopelessly stuck. And, you’re stuck being hopeless.

I have more bad news. Ready or not, here it is: there is no magic formula for getting unstuck. No timely roadside assistance. Navigating this life, its highs and lows, takes patience. Courage. Strength. Faith. You think there’s an easy answer? Think again.

Getting unstuck is not the work of a moment, but of a lifetime.

This isn’t your Instagram feed. This is real life.

However, there are three tangible things you can do to get unstuck. First, stop wishing and start doing. We can’t rescue ourselves from every ditch, but there are certainly some that are shallow enough to climb out of. Feel trapped in a dead-end job? Get a new one. Yes, finding that dream job isn’t easy, but no one ever landed it by simply throwing pennies and resumes into their proverbial wishing well. Stuck in a situation that you can change? Change it. Don’t wait for a better day or a stronger you.

Second, destroy your comfort zone. So often, we feel stuck because we’re unwilling to take risks. Risks that could end in that elusive life on the highway we’ve always wanted, but that could also result in catastrophic failure. Time precludes me from delving deeper into the wisdom of the Einsteins, the Edisons, and the Teslas of this world, for whom failure was a necessary part of invention and growth. You’re never going to learn to swim if you won’t even get in the water.

Third, learn to have patience with the process. Remember that this too shall pass. Yes, I know it’s easier said than done, but take it from me. My 2019 has been one enormous ditch. From dealing with peripheral neuropathy for months, to falling off a cliff and breaking 21 bones, to my spinal fusion surgery and subsequent recovery, to issues I can’t even discuss here, this year has been one son of a ditch. However, I have faith that this ditch will not have the final say. Time heals. Time changes. Time unsticks. Choose to have faith that there is a solution to the problem you’re facing, whether that solution lies inside or outside of yourself. Choose to have faith that that solution will become apparent in time.

Ditches are not our goal in life. But they lie on either side of the road. Waiting. Beckoning. While on the highway, we turn to anything to stay between the lines, or at least help us numb the pain of having lost our way. Lost the plot.

Work. Money. Sex. Booze. Travel. Relationships. Religion.

We even turn to God in hopes that He can make our paths smooth. Easy. Painless.

Unfortunately, that’s not his first priority. Yes, he wants us to be happy. But not when our happiness comes at the cost of our growth. Our faith. Our souls.

I highly doubt that professional drivers hone their skills on straight, flat stretches of highway. If setting the cruise control and keeping your car pointed straight ahead were the only requirements to a successful NASCAR career, you probably wouldn’t see nearly as many fiery crashes, but you wouldn’t see as many skilled drivers, either.

Jesus never said the road would be straightforward. He never even said he would keep us on the road. He only said he would walk with us. Down highways, through ditches. He never said the way would be easy. He only told us that he is the way. The truth. The life. “In this world you will have trouble,” he emphatically declared. Not won’t. Not might. If anything, life will get harder when we hand the wheel to the only One we can trust with it. Ironically, so many lose faith for this very reason: expecting smooth sailing, they balk at the first sight of stormy seas.

Jesus walked our road before us. He was well acquainted with discouragement. With dejection. With doubt. With ditches. Ultimately, his road led him to Calvary. A cross. Some nails. Mockery. Rejection. A cruel death. Why would we expect our road to be any smoother than that of the Son of God himself?

This is real life. Messy, painful, discomfiting. But there is hope. Hope that we don’t have to travel alone. Hope that through highways and ditches alike, we are growing. Changing. Learning. Hope that there is a destination at the end of the road, a destination without ditches, distrust, or despair.

Do you feel lost? I know I do. Are you hurting? Lonely? Scared? Tired? You’re not alone. We are all on this journey together. None of us actually know what we’re doing behind the wheel. So stop comparing your driving, your progress, your abilities to anyone else’s. If you’re in the ditch and someone flies by you on the road, don’t be filled with envy or exasperation. Your time will come. If you ain’t first, it doesn’t mean you’re last.

In the ditch? Don’t spin your wheels. This will only sink you further. Instead, trust that the One who can handle the valley of the shadow of death knows a thing or two about ditches, himself. He is not in the business of quick, easy fixes. He knows that the ditches are where our character is formed, tested, refined. Thus, he may not pull us out on our own myopic timetables, but he’ll give us the patience and strength you need until we’re back on the road again.

Life doesn’t start only when we get back out of the ditch. The hourglass of our lives doesn’t pause while we’re stuck. Time marches steadily onward. So, I encourage you: make the most of the trying season you’re in. Look outward and upward, not inward. You may find that through helping others out of their ditches, you’ve gotten yourself out of yours as well.

This, my friends, is real life.

This piece was originally published on Medium.