Scapegoating Today

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

We have not moved beyond the ancient practices of ritual scapegoating—we have just become better at hiding them.
—Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats

Biblical scholar Jennifer Garcia Bashaw considers ancient religious practices of scapegoating: 

Scapegoats have existed since the earliest civilizations began to form. Ancient societies practiced ritual scapegoating, symbolically transferring the sin and blame of a community onto a person or animal in order to absolve themselves of guilt and to perpetuate peace among their citizens…. Israel did not use human victims … [but] in other ancient societies, humans did serve as scapegoats and these victims were exiled or killed for the good of the community. Human scapegoats tended to be people who were dispensable….

Modern societies use scapegoats as well, but where the ancient practices involved the ritual of driving out or killing scapegoats, contemporary practices of scapegoating have expanded, appearing in new and different ways. Scapegoating today manifests itself in discrimination of all sorts—social, racial and ethnic, political, and religious. [1]

The Gospels reveal how Jesus’s death on the cross was, in part, a punishment for protecting the sacred dignity of those deemed disposable. 

In his life, Jesus championed women, befriended and healed the poor and the disabled, and welcomed in the outsiders…. The Jesus who changed outsiders into insiders was pushed to the very edges of humanity, ridiculed by strangers, dehumanized…. If Jesus’s life reversed the fate of victims he had met, then his death reverses the fate of future victims. He becomes the scapegoat to end all scapegoats—and exposes the truth that could end human blame and violence once and for all. [2]

From our places of comfort, we are challenged to reverse the all-too-common scapegoating that takes place in our culture:

And so, it is together that we must follow in Jesus’s footsteps, conforming our lives and our churches to the values Jesus modeled…. We must call for and participate in the same kind of reversal that Jesus did. We must lift up the poor, the oppressed, and the outcasts and bring down the people, powers, and systems that create poverty, that marginalize the weak, and that scapegoat the outsiders. We must gather together at the communion table to remember the scapegoat’s death—and what it revealed—so that we might trade the needless cycle of fear, blame, and violence for the liberating cycle of confession, inclusion, and imitation of Christ. The reversal of powers, this movement from being a community that scapegoats to a community that liberates, is how we can participate fully in the divine reign of God that is remaking the world. It is how we will finally follow Jesus, in his life and his death, toward a world without scapegoats. 

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War of the Lamb

The White Horse Rider in Revelation

BRIAN ZAHND. MAR 30

Those who want to hold onto a primitive vision of a violent and retributive God often cite the white horse rider passage from Revelation. They will say something like this: “Jesus came the first time as a lamb, but he’s coming back the second time as a lion.” (Despite the fact that no lion is ever seen in Revelation—the lion is the Lamb!) By this they mean the nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels is going to mutate into what they fantasize is the hyper-violent Jesus of Revelation.

Sadly, the proponents of this flawed interpretation seem to prefer their imagined violent Jesus of the future over the nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels. At a basic level they essentially see the Bible like this: After a long trajectory away from the divine violence of the Old Testament culminating in Jesus renouncing violence and calling his followers to love their enemies, the Bible in its final pages abandons a vision of peace and nonviolence as ultimately unworkable and closes with the most vicious portrayal of divine violence in all of Scripture.

In this reading of Revelation, the way of peace and love which Jesus preached during his life and endorsed in his death, is rejected for the worn-out way of war and violence. When we literalize the militant images of Revelation we arrive at this conclusion: In the end even Jesus gives up on love and resorts to violence. Tragically, those who refuse to embrace the way of peace taught by Jesus use the symbolic war of Revelation 19 to silence the Sermon on the Mount.

This kind of hermeneutic has disastrous implications; it mutes Jesus’ message of peace and forgiveness. When we literalize the ironic and symbolic images employed by John of Patmos, we illegitimately use Revelation to give license for our own hellish violence. We reason, if Jesus is going to kill two hundred million people upon his return, what does it matter if we kill one hundred thousand people at Hiroshima?

But is John the Revelator really trying to tell us that in the end the Lamb is going to transform into the ultimate killing machine? Of course that’s not what John is saying!

First we must remember that all of Revelation is communicated in theatrical symbol—all of it!

Locusts that look like horses with human faces, women’s hair, and lion’s teeth.

An army of two million soldiers riding lion-headed horses that breath fire and belch sulfur.

A red dragon with seven heads in the heavens that sweeps away a third of the stars with its tail.

A seven-headed beast from the sea with the body of a leopard, the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion.

An angel in the sky with a giant sickle who reaps all the grapes of the earth and puts them in a winepress that generates a river of blood for two hundred miles.

These are all symbols! None of them are literal! Just as Jesus riding a flying white horse wearing a blood-drenched robe with a sword protruding from his mouth is a symbol. The question is, what is John communicating to us with his creative symbols?

To begin with, the rider on the white horse is called Faithful and True, and his name is The Word of God. John is not depicting a literal event in the future, but giving us a symbolic reality about the present—John is depicting the glorious triumph of the Word of God (Jesus Christ). The one called The Word of God is not riding the red horse of war, but the white horse of triumph. Jesus doesn’t overcome evil by war, but by his word. This is how Jesus wages his righteous war. Jesus doesn’t wage war like the murderous beast of Rome; Jesus wages war as the slaughtered Lamb of God.

As Eugene Peterson says in Reversed Thunder (his excellent book on Revelation), “The perennial ruse is to glorify war so that we accept it as a proper means of achieving goals. But it is evil. It is opposed by Christ. Christ does not sit on the red horse, ever.”

After riding the peace donkey on Palm Sunday to contrast his peaceable kingdom with the violent empires of a pagan world, Jesus does not later contradict himself by riding a warhorse in an exaggerated imitation of Genghis Khan.

Perhaps John of Patmos is asking too much of modern readers, but he assumes we will keep in mind that Jesus is ever and always the slaughtered Lamb. As Richard Bauckham reminds us in his Theology of Revelation, “When the slaughtered Lamb is seen ‘in the midst of’ the divine throne in heaven, the meaning is that Christ’s sacrificial death belongs to the way God rules the world.”

Christ always rules from the cross, never from an Apache attack helicopter!

John stresses that Jesus reigns through self-sacrifice by depicting the white horse rider as wearing a robe drenched in blood before the battle begins. Jesus’ robe is soaked in his own blood. Jesus doesn’t shed the blood of enemies; Jesus sheds his own blood. This is the gospel! The rider on the white horse is the slaughtered Lamb, not the slaughtering Beast.

To further make his point, John tells us that the sword the rider uses to smite the nations is not in his hand, but in his mouth. This is not Caesar’s sword, but the word of God. The Revelator so desires that we not miss this point, that he comes right out and tells us, “and his name is called The Word of God.” It’s like when a political cartoon labels the symbol to make sure we properly identify it. The sword is not a sword; the sword is the word of God.

If we combine all of John’s creative symbols the message is clear: Jesus wages war by self-sacrifice and by what he says. Jesus combats evil by co-suffering love and the word of God. This is the righteous war of the Lamb.

Christians are called to believe that co-suffering love and the divine word are all Christ needs to overcome evil. A fallen world addicted to war does not believe this, but the followers of Jesus do…or should! If Jesus conquers evil by killing his enemies, he’s just another Caesar. But the whole point of John’s Revelation is that Jesus is nothing like Caesar! The war of the Lamb looks nothing like the war of the Beast. Jesus is not like Caesar; Jesus does not wage war like Caesar. To miss this point is to misunderstand everything the Apocalypse is trying to reveal! The war of the Lamb is the same war the Apostle Paul describes to the Corinthian church.

“We are human, be we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:3–5)

This is the kind of war that is symbolically depicted in Revelation with a rider on a white horse called The Word of God who wears a robe drenched in his own blood and wages a righteous war with a sword coming from his mouth.

This is not a literal war, this is a symbolic war. This is not a future war; Christ is waging this war right now. I know Christ is waging this war right now because I am among those who have been slain by the sword of his mouth and raised again to newness of life! Jesus slays me. He slays me with his divine word. And in slaying me, he sets me free. This is salvation. John the Revelator is showing us how Jesus saves the world, not how Jesus kills the world.

The book of Revelation is not where the good news of the gospel goes to die. The book of Revelation is where the good news of the gospel finds its most creative expression. Through inspired dreamlike images John the Revelator dares to imagine a world where the nightmare of endless war finally succumbs to the peaceable reign of Christ. And I, for one, believe in the vision John saw.

The kingdom of the world has now become
the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ
and he will reign forever and ever.
-Revelation 11:15

Worthy is the Lamb!

BZ

P.S. This is a ten-year-old piece; but sadly it has gained a new and urgent relevance.

(The artwork is a detail from Ecce Agnus Dei by Matthias Grünewald, 1516)

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Individual Reflection

Where in your life are you currently part of a scapegoating pattern — whether as someone doing the blaming, someone absorbing it, or someone looking away?

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Group Discussion — choose one:

Where do you find yourself most resistant to the idea that co-suffering love is actually more powerful than force?

What would it cost your community — practically, relationally — to move from scapegoating to liberation?

When you hear “the Lamb who was slain is the one who reigns,” does that feel like good news or like a category error?

A Harmful Delusion

Sunday, March 29, 2026

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Palm Sunday

Father Richard Rohr identifies the human impulse to solve problems by blaming others: 

The human delusion seems to be this: We think someone else is always the problem, not ourselves. We tend to export our hate and evil elsewhere. In fact, this problem is so central to human nature and human history that its overcoming is at the heart of all spiritual teachings. Mature spirituality tries to keep our own feet to the fire—saying, just as the prophet Nathan did in convicting King David, “You are the one!” (2 Samuel 12:7).

Human nature always wants either to play the victim or to create victims—and both for the purposes of control. In fact, the second follows from the first. Once we start feeling sorry for ourselves, we will soon find someone else to blame, accuse, or attack—and with impunity! It settles the dust quickly, and it takes away any immediate shame, guilt, or anxiety. In other words, it works—at least for a while. So, for untransformed people, there is no reason to stop creating victims or playing the victim.

If we read today’s news, we see the pattern has not changed. Hating, fearing, or diminishing someone else holds us together, for some reason. The creating of necessary victims is in our hardwiring. Philosopher René Girard called this “scapegoat mechanism” the central pattern for the creation and maintenance of cultures worldwide since the beginning. [1]

It’s hard for us religious people to hear, but the most persistent violence in human history has been sacred violence, or more accurately, sacralized violence. Human beings have found a most effective way to legitimate their instinct toward fear and hatred. We imagine we are fearing and hating on behalf of something holy and noble like God, religion, truth, morality, our children, or love of country. It takes away our guilt. As a result, we can even think of ourselves as representing the moral high ground or as being responsible and prudent. It never occurs to most people that they can become what they fear and hate. It’s a well-kept secret. Without wisdom, we justify violent and even immoral actions for the sake of something honorable like “protecting the children.” [2]

Unless scapegoating can be consciously seen and named through concrete rituals, owned mistakes, shadow work, or repentance, the pattern will usually remain unconscious and unchallenged. The Scriptures rightly call such ignorant hatred and killing “sin.” Jesus came precisely to “take away” (John 1:29) our capacity to commit it—by exposing the lie for all to see. Jesus stood as the fully innocent one who was condemned by the highest authorities of both church and state (Jerusalem and Rome), an act that should create healthy suspicion about how wrong even the highest powers can be. “He will show the world how wrong it was about sin, about who was really in the right, and about true judgment” (John 16:8). [3]

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A Communal Ritual

Monday, March 30, 2026

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Father Richard describes the scapegoat ritual that took place on Yom Kippur, the Jewish holy day of atonement:

The word “scapegoating” originated from an ingenious ritual described in Leviticus 16. According to Jewish law, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest laid hands on an “escaping” goat, placing all the sins of the Jewish people from the previous year onto the animal. Then the goat was beaten with reeds and thorns, driven out into the desert, and the people went home rejoicing. Violence towards the innocent victim was apparently quite effective at temporarily relieving the group’s guilt and shame. The same scapegoating dynamic was at play when European Christians burned supposed heretics at the stake, and when white Americans lynched Black Americans, and continues to this day. In fact, the pattern is identical and totally non-rational.

Whenever the “sinner” is excluded, our collective ego is delighted and feels relieved and safe. It works, but only for a while, because it is merely an illusion. Repeatedly believing the lie, that this time we have identified the true culprit, we become more catatonic, habitually ignorant, and culpable—because, of course, scapegoating never really eliminates evil in the first place. As long as the evil is “over there,” we think we can change or expel someone else as the contaminating element. We then feel purified and at peace. But it is not true peace, the peace of Christ which “the world cannot give” (see John 14:27).

Jesus became the scapegoat to reveal the universal lie of scapegoating. He became the sinned-against one to reveal the hidden nature of scapegoating, so that we would see how wrong even well-meaning people can be. Pilate, a representative of the state, and Caiaphas, the head of the temple, represent this pattern: Both find artificial reasons to condemn him (see John 16:8–11 and Romans 8:3).

In worshiping Jesus as the scapegoat, Christians should have learned to stop scapegoating, but we didn’t. We are still utterly wrong whenever we create arbitrary victims to avoid our own complicity in evil. It seems to be the most effective diversionary tactic. History has shown us that authority itself is not a good guide. Yet for many people, authority figures soothe their anxiety and relieve their own responsibility to form a mature conscience. We love to follow someone else and let them take the responsibility. It is a universal story line in history and culture.

With the mistaken view of God as a Punisher-in-Chief that most Christians seem to hold, we think our own violence is necessary and even good. But there is no such thing as redemptive violence. Violence doesn’t save; it only destroys all parties in both the short and long term. Jesus replaced the myth of redemptive violence with the truth of redemptive suffering. He showed us on the cross how to hold the pain and let it transform us.

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Individual Reflection

Where in your life right now is it most tempting to locate the problem entirely in someone else — and what might it cost you to look the other direction?

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Group Discussion — choose one:

Where have you participated in — or quietly benefited from — a group’s need to find someone to blame?

What is the difference between the false peace that comes from expelling someone and the peace that holds the pain instead?

What does it do to your image of God to hear that there is no such thing as redemptive violence?

A Psalm of Peace and Justice

Friday, March 27, 2026

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures: he leads me beside still waters;
He restores my soul: he leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
—Psalm 23:1–3 (NRSV)

While Psalm 23 is beloved for its message of consolation, Diana Butler Bass recounts how she was challenged to read it through the eyes of those who face poverty, food insecurity, injustice, and marginalization. 

Psalm 23 a political tract?

I confess: I’ve never considered that possibility. But I took up … [the] challenge to read the psalm politically, with empathy toward a non-Western view. [1] The psalm’s central pivot is the line about paths and “for God’s sake.” The lines before lead up to that couplet—and the lines after flow from it….

In the Book of Common Prayer (the version I’ve read in worship and private prayer for forty years), the pivot reads: He revives my soul and guides me along right pathways for his name’s sake. In the King James version … that phrase reads: He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

I’ve heard scores of sermons about the “right pathways,” meaning that God guides us when lost and leads us on life’s journey. We can’t ultimately go astray. That’s pretty comforting….

And, of course, that is true. But it isn’t all.

Read Robert Alter’s version—a modern translation noted by scholars for its precision—and the pivot sentence contrasts sharply: My life He brings back. He leads me on pathways of justice for His name’s sake.” [2]

In the scriptures, right and righteousness are interchangeable with justice. But in North America? Well, not so much…. Very few middle-class church people would ever think of substituting justice for either word. Alter’s version, however, thunders justice as the pivotal word in the psalm.

Alter’s translation of Psalm 23:1–3 reads:

The LORD is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
In grass meadows
He makes me lie down,
by quiet waters guides me.
My life He brings back.
He leads me on pathways of justice
for His name’s sake.

Butler Bass emphasizes the call to share our restored lives with others for the sake of justice:

The psalmist proclaims, This is the reality of the Lord’s government, the beloved community, over and against all oppression and exploitation. Through it, we humans are restored to what was always intended: My life He brings back; Our lives He brings back.

The renewed life, however, does not remain content in grass meadows or by quiet waters…. Instead, those who are citizens of this sacred realm are called forth on pathways of justice to make God’s name—God’s sabbath reign—known throughout the world.

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John Chaffee 5 On Friday

1.

“Meanwhile, for myself, I have only one desire, and that is the desire for solitude-to disappear into God, to be submerged in his peace, to be lost in the secret of His face.”

– Thomas Merton in The Sign of Jonas

This is one of the early lines in The Sign of Jonas, Merton’s spiritual autobiography at the start of his monastic career.

It reads completely poetic.  I have no idea exactly what it means, but it feels true to me at the same time.

2.

“Our Lord needs neither our brilliant deeds nor our beautiful thoughts.”

– Therese of Lisieux

As an Enneagram 5, I am prone to living too often in my head.

I am also prone to believing my thoughts are more interesting than they really are.

Don’t get me wrong, some ideas are interesting and potentially worth sharing with people.  (Or, at least, I think so!)

But it is important for me to remember that even if I do not have “brilliant deeds nor beautiful thoughts,” God still loves me infinitely and unconditionally.  I do not have to earn one ounce of God’s love by any unique insights or shiny wisdom I might have stumbled across.

God can always do whatever God wants, and in one sense does not need our participation in the restoration of all things, but he chooses to include us in that project.

3.

“Thus, listening to sermons failed to give me what I wanted, and having had my fill of them without gaining understanding, I gave up going to hear public sermons.  I settled on another plan-by God’s help to look for some experienced and skilled person who would give me in conversation that teaching about unceasing prayer which drew me so urgently.”

– The Way of a Pilgrim

What I find interesting about this quote from the Russian spiritual classic The Way of a Pilgrim is that the Pilgrim says he is giving up on sermons.  You wouldn’t think that, would you?

But I will admit I went through a similar season in my life as well.

There was a point when sermons did very little for me.  Honestly, I am not embarrassed to say it.  Sometimes sermons feel the need to overexplain a mystery to death, when it would be better to leave certain aspects of the faith wrapped in nuance.  They also feel as though they rely on platitudes rather than inviting me into some deeper teaching.

So, in that season, I decided to start reading the old Christian mystics as if they were living mentors that I could sit down and talk with.

These included Bonaventure, Francis of Assisi, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, Hildegaard of Bingen, Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, George Herbert, Gregory of Nyssa, Athanasius of Alexandria, Origen of Alexandria, and so many others.

I don’t think anything else has had such a profound impact on my faith as to treat the old Christian tradition, regardless of denominational affiliation, as my personal mentors.

4.

“I’m not sure I have made this clear: self-knowledge is so important that even if you were drawn directly into heaven in prayer, I wouldn’t want you to relax your practices of humble and honest self-reflection.”

– Teresa of Avila in Interior Castle

“Honest self-reflection.”

I think about that often.

Yes, I am prone to overthinking and therefore will think about myself in more negative ways than positive, but I agree with Teresa that the world would be better if we could do that “honest self-reflection” more often.

5.

“There is indeed one great high priest, our Lord Jesus Christ.  But he is not the high priest of priests, but the high priest of high priests…”

– Origen of Alexandria

I have a volume of Origen’s writings that was compiled by Hans Urs von Balthasar.  Although Origen was posthumously deemed a “heretic” for raising particular questions (not even for taking a final stance), everything I have read makes a lot of sense…

And I would argue that Origen seems more orthodox than many internet preachers.

That said, there is a certain poeticism to his saying that Jesus is not simply a high priest among the priests, but that Jesus is the High Priest of the high priests.

Songs of Solidarity

Thursday, March 26, 2026

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann describes how praying with the Psalms can be an act of solidarity with our universal humanity:

The Psalms, with few exceptions, are not the voice of God addressing us. They are rather the voice of our own common humanity—gathered over a long period of time, but a voice that continues to have amazing authenticity and contemporaneity. It speaks about life the way it really is, for in those deeply human dimensions the same issues and possibilities persist. And so when we turn to the Psalms it means we enter into the midst of that voice of humanity and decide to take our stand with that voice. We are prepared to speak among them and with them and for them, to express our solidarity with this anguished, joyous human pilgrimage. We add a voice to the common elation, shared grief, and communal rage that besets us all…. When we do, we shall find that the words of Scripture bring power, shape, and authority to what we know about ourselves. [1]

Exiled from Cuba, theologian Ada María Isasi-Díaz (1943–2012) found solace in Psalm 137:

When I first read Psalm 137, I remember resonating with most of what the psalm says; I remember feeling it could appropriately voice the pain I was experiencing being away from my country against my will. After the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 I realized that my absence from Cuba was to a be a long one. Shortly after there came a day when my visa status changed from “tourist”: I became a refugee. Psalm 137 became my refuge: “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and we wept when we remembered Jerusalem” (137:1).

I recall vividly the day I dared to mention to a friend how much I identified with Psalm 137. Jokingly she answered me, “Are you going to hang your guitar from a tree?”… They were incapable of understanding the sorrow of being away from la tierra que mi vió nacer (the land that witnessed my birth). At times, my friends would ask me to talk about Cuba. Those around me could not figure out why I, who love to sing, always seemed reticent about singing “Guantamanera,” the song that uses for its verses poems from the father of my country, José Martí. One of them says,

Yo quiero cuando me muera 
Sin patria pero sin amo
Tener en mi tumba 
Un ramo de flores
Y una bandera.

I want when I die 
without country but without master, 
to have on my tomb 
a bouquet of flowers 
and a flag.

So I kept saying to myself, “How can we sing Yahweh’s song in a foreign land?” (137:4) [2]

Brueggemann concludes:

The psalms are not used in a vacuum, but in a history where we are dying and rising, and in a history where God is at work, ending our lives and making gracious new beginnings for us. The Psalms move with our experience. They may also take us beyond our own guarded experience into the more poignant pilgrimages of our sisters and brothers. [3]

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

Jesus Calling: March 26th

   Waiting on Me means directing your attention to Me in hopeful anticipation of what I will do. It entails trusting Me with every fiber of your being, instead of trying to figure things out yourself. Waiting on Me is the way I designed you to live: all day, every day. I created you to stay conscious of Me as you go about your daily duties.
    I have promised many blessings to those who wait on Me: renewed strength, living above one’s circumstances, resurgence of hope, awareness of My continual Presence. Waiting on Me enables you to glorify Me by living in deep dependence on Me, ready to do My will. It also helps you to enjoy Me; in My Presence is fullness of Joy.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Lamentations 3:24-26 (NIV)
24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
    therefore I will wait for him.”
25 The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
    to the one who seeks him;
26 it is good to wait quietly
    for the salvation of the Lord.

Isaiah 40:31 (NIV)
31 but those who hope in the Lord
    will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
    they will run and not grow weary,
    they will walk and not be faint.

Additional insight regarding Isaiah 40:31: Even the strongest people get tired at times, but God’s power and strength never diminish. He is never too tired or too busy to help and listen. His strength is our source of strength. When you feel all of life crushing you and you cannot go another step, remember that you can call upon God to renew your strength. Trusting in the Lord is the patient expectation that God will fulfill his promises in his Word and strengthen us to rise above life’s difficulties. Though your faith may be struggling or weak, accept his provisions and care for you.

Psalm 16:11 (NLT)
11 You will show me the way of life,
    granting me the joy of your presence
    and the pleasures of living with you forever.

Additional insight regarding Psalm 16: 8-11: This psalm (16:10 – “For you will not leave my soul among the dead or allow your holy one to rot in the grave.”) is often called the messianic psalm because it is quoted in the New Testament as referring to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Both Peter and Paul quoted from this psalm when speaking of Christ’s bodily resurrection (see Acts 2:25-28, 31; 13:35-37).

Today’s Prayer:

Heavenly Father,

Teach us to patiently wait on You with hopeful anticipation of Your work in our lives. Help us trust You with every fiber of our being rather than relying on our own limited understanding. Your way is better than ours. 

Waiting on You is the way You designed us to live—conscious of Your presence throughout each and every day. Grant us the promised blessings: renewed strength, hope above circumstances, and awareness of Your continual presence.

May our dependence on You glorify Your name, and may we find joy in Your presence, where fullness of joy abounds. You are a good God, and we are grateful. 

In Jesus’ name, amen.

Wednesday, March 25, 2026

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How we read the Bible—as the literal word of God or as an expression of God’s people and their experience of God—makes a significant difference in who we think God is. Brian McLaren uses a psalm of Exile as an example:

The best known psalm of Exile is Psalm 137. While the beautiful poetry of the first part of the psalm is often read—and even became a popular hit in the musical Godspell—the ending of the psalm is often regarded as one of the ugliest passages of the whole Bible. It is seldom read aloud in most church settings because of its horrific content.

When lovers of the Bible glibly refer to the Bible as “The Word of God,” without also taking seriously the reality that the Bible is also the testimony of human beings in great pain, they can find themselves unintentionally rendering God a monster.  

For example, read these closing lines of Psalm 137:7–9 in two different ways. First, read them as an expression of the agony and fury felt by displaced, dispossessed, oppressed people who are repeatedly dehumanized by their enemies and oppressors:

Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites
    the day of Jerusalem’s fall,
how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down!
    Down to its foundations!”
O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
    Happy shall they be who pay you back
    what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones
    and dash them against the rock!

Read in this way, this desire for horrific vengeance cannot be excused, nor can it be justified and attributed to God … but it can be understood. Of course, they would dream of and pray for revenge against the Babylonians who ransacked their country, kidnapped them, and now ask them to perform their native music for their captors’ entertainment. Again, when we understand their outrage, we feel their pain, but that doesn’t mean we justify it.

Now read the passage again, assuming that every word in the Bible should be read as God’s true opinion of a matter. Can you see why people who are taught to read the Bible in this way would get an idea of God as a heartless, vengeful, cruel monster?

Can you see how a wise and careful reading of Psalm 137 can help us read the whole Bible more wisely and carefully?

No, of course God does not take delight in the suffering and death of babies or the heartbreak of their bereaved parents. No! Of course not! If we see God as taking such perverse delight in violence, soon we will make ourselves in that God’s image.

Yes, reject that awful reading. But please, don’t stop there.  

Ask this question: How can we stand with God and share divine loving kindness in the midst of all-too-real and all-too-often-repeated human cruelty?

We certainly do not tell the oppressed to shut up and submit to their ongoing dehumanization. Nor do we give them encouragement to act upon their revenge fantasies.  

Instead, we dare to listen deeply, to understand and empathize, to put ourselves in the shoes of those who suffer and feel their fury and despair.  

And we don’t stop there either: then we see how oppression and revenge, if we let them take over, create vicious cycles that grow uglier and more catastrophic. We imagine how in our future, we could repeat the worst mistakes of our past.

Then we are ready to take our stand: If we want to break out of the vicious, violent cycles of our history, we must develop a new way of reading the Bible, a new way of seeing, a new way of being.

That’s why, in a sense, Psalm 137 is like an eye exam: What we see there tells us how well we see.  

==================

Grief in a Culture of Fast-Forwarding

Part 6 of the Lenten Series: The Season We’d Rather Skip

BEAU STRINGERMAR 24

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A few months ago a guy I grew up with sent me a message here on Substack. We played baseball together as kids. He said he used to think the world of me and my brother. He said he’d been praying about it and felt like he couldn’t stay silent. And then he told me he was genuinely worried about my salvation.

He wasn’t mean about it. That’s the part that made it so hard. He wasn’t trolling or picking a fight. He was a guy from my hometown who remembered me as a kid and believed with every fiber of his being that I was in spiritual danger. He told me my writing was misleading and manipulative. He told me I was bending scripture to fit the world. He quoted 1 Timothy and begged me to reconsider the path I was on. And then he signed off by saying he prayed for me to have the peace and love of Jesus.

I sat with that message for a long time, and I wasn’t angry. I was just sad. Because that message represents something that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough in deconstruction spaces. It represents grief. The slow, quiet kind of grief that settles in when you realize that people you love and respect are never going to be able to follow you to where you’ve landed. And that some of them will interpret the most honest season of your faith as evidence that you’ve lost it entirely.

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The Death Nobody Sends Flowers For

When someone you love dies, the world makes space for your grief, at least for a little while. People bring food, they send cards, and your employer usually gives you a few days off. There kind of a cultural script for mourning the loss of a person and even though that script is inadequate in about a hundred ways, at least it exists.

But when you leave a faith tradition, there is no script. No casseroles show up at your door. Nobody sends a sympathy card that says “sorry you lost your entire theological framework and half your friendships in the process.” There is no bereavement leave for the death of your old belief system. And yet the grief is still very real. It is heavy and disorienting and it can last for years.

I trust me, I know, because I’ve lived it. Leaving evangelicalism cost me relationships I thought were permanent. It changed the way certain family members look at me. It has rearranged my social world in ways I’m still sorting out. And the hardest part wasn’t the people who got angry, it was the people who got sad. The people who looked at me with genuine concern and said they were praying for me (not to be passive aggressive) but because they sincerely believed I was walking away from God. That kind of love, the kind that comes wrapped in the theological certainty that you’re headed straight for destruction, is one of the most painful things I’ve ever experienced. Because you can’t argue with it and you can’t fix it. You can only grieve it.

The Bounce-Back Problem

And our culture has a very specific expectation about grief. You’re allowed to be sad for a little while. A few weeks, maybe a month. And then you should be getting back to normal. Moving on. Finding your new church. Rebuilding your community. Getting over it. The timeline varies depending on who you ask but the underlying message is always the same. Grief is just a phase. It has an expiration date. And if you’re still in it past that date then something is wrong with you.

The church is often even worse about this than the broader culture. There is an unspoken expectation in many Christian communities that grief should resolve quickly into worship. Or that sadness should transform into praise. That the appropriate Christian response to loss is to fast-forward to the part where God works it all together for good and to skip the long, messy, formless middle where nothing makes sense and the only honest prayer is “how long, O Lord?”

Nicholas Wolterstorff lost his twenty-five-year-old son in a mountain climbing accident. In his book Lament for a Son, he wrote something that stopped me cold. He said “every lament is a love song.” I think about that constantly now, because it reframes everything. Grief is not the absence of faith, or some kind of spiritual failure…

Grief is what love looks like when it has lost the thing it loves.

And we have to stop rushing people through that process. 

Letting Grief Be Grief

Jesus never rushed anyone through their pain. When Mary and Martha were grieving Lazarus, he didn’t show up and immediately fix it. He wept with them first. He entered the grief before he entered the miracle, and I think the order matters more than we realize. Because it tells us something about the heart of God that all of our bounce-back theology misses entirely. God is not in a hurry to get past your pain. God is not standing at the end of your grief with a stopwatch, tapping his foot, wondering when you’re going to pull it together. God is sitting in it with you. For as long as it takes.

That message from my old baseball teammate still sits in my inbox. I haven’t deleted it. I probably won’t. It represents something I lost that I’m still learning to grieve. A version of belonging that doesn’t exist for me anymore. A world where everyone I grew up with was on the same page and the answers were simple and the people who loved you never had to worry about your salvation because you all believed the same things.

That world is gone for me, and I’m okay. But okay and grieving are not mutually exclusive. You can be further along than you’ve ever been in your faith and still feel the ache of what it cost to get there. Both things can be true at the same time. Lent makes space for that. The whole season is an invitation to stop fast-forwarding through the hard parts and just let them be hard for a while.

Try This

This week, give yourself permission to grieve something you haven’t fully grieved yet. Maybe it’s a relationship that didn’t survive your deconstruction. Maybe it’s a community you had to leave. Maybe it’s a version of God you used to believe in that you can’t believe in anymore. Whatever it is, don’t rush past it. Don’t slap a Bible verse on it. Don’t skip to the resurrection. (It’s not even Holy Week yet.) Just sit in the loss and let it be what it is. A love song for something that mattered to you. That’s one of the most faithful things you can do this Lent.

=======

Individual Reflection

What is one loss from your faith journey you haven’t fully grieved — and what has kept you from letting it just be what it is?

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Group Discussion — choose one:

• When you encounter the violent ending of Psalm 137, what does your gut reaction tell you about how you’ve been taught to read the Bible?
• Who in your life looks at where you’ve landed spiritually with genuine concern — and what does it cost you to receive that kind of love?
• Where have you felt the pressure — from others or yourself — to skip the hard middle and get to the part where it all works together for good?

Discovering Our Shadows in Exile

Tuesday, March 24, 2026

Beside the streams of Babylon, we sat and wept.
—Psalm 137:1

Father Richard Rohr reflects on the fear, violence, and oppression that empires and nation-states continue to create, challenging us to respond:

Few would deny that there’s a palpable and growing fear and anger in our country. This fear is felt deeply by those who are most vulnerable. As a follower of both Jesus and Saint Francis of Assisi, my primary moral viewpoint is not centered on the wellbeing of those who are on top, but first in those who are at the bottom. For the vulnerable who have now been rendered more vulnerable, I lament and pray and promise to stand with you.

A time of national introspection must begin with self-introspection. Without our own inner searching, any of our quests for solutions and policy fixes will be based in shifting sands.

I suspect that we get the leaders who mirror what we have become as a nation. They are our shadow self for all to see. That is what the Hebrew prophets told Israel both before and during their painful and long exile (596–538 BCE).

Yet the Exile was the very time when the ancient Jewish people went deep and discovered their prophetic voices—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others—speaking truth to power, calling for justice from their own political and religious leaders. Their experience laid the solid foundation for Jesus’s teaching and his solidarity with the poor and the outcast.

Maybe some of us have naively thought that we could or should place our loyalty in one political agenda or party. Remember, Yahweh told the people of Israel that they should never put their trust in “princes, horses, or chariots” (Psalms 20:7, 33:16–17), but only in the love of God. We must not imagine that political changes of themselves will ever bring about the goodness, charity, or transformation that the gospel offers the world.

We must not be afraid to allow conventional wisdom to fail and disappoint us. This is often the only path to wisdom. Imperial thinking focuses on judging who is worthy and who is unworthy, who is in and who is out. We who know about universal belonging and identity in God have a different form of power: Love (even of enemies) is our habitat, not the “powers and principalities,” the kingdoms of this world.

The present disorder is our time of exile and has solidified in us an urgent commitment to our work of action and contemplation. It seems needed more than ever before! Grounding social action in contemplative consciousness is not a luxury for a few, but surely a cultural necessity. Both the Christian religion and the American psyche need deep healing, and I do not say that lightly.

Only a contemplative mind can hold our fear, confusion, vulnerability, and anger and guide us toward love. Those who allow themselves to be challenged and changed will be the new cultural creative voices of the next period of history after this purifying exile.

____________________________________________

Sarah Young

Jesus Calling: March 24

    This is a time in your life when you must learn to let go: of loved ones, of possessions, of control. In order to let go of something that is precious to you, you need to rest in My Presence, where you are complete. Take time to bask in the Light of My Love. As you relax more and more, your grasping hand gradually opens up, releasing your prized possession into My care.
    You can feel secure, even in the midst of cataclysmic changes, through awareness of My continual Presence. The One who never leaves you is the same One who never changes: I am the same yesterday, today, and forever. As you release more and more things into My care, remember that I never let go of your hand. Herein lies your security, which no one and no circumstance can take from you.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

Psalm 89:15 (NLT)
15 Happy are those who hear the joyful call to worship,
    for they will walk in the light of your presence, Lord.

Hebrews 13:8 (NLT)
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Isaiah 41:13 (NLT)
13 For I hold you by your right hand—
    I, the Lord your God.
And I say to you,
    ‘Don’t be afraid. I am here to help you.

Today’s Prayer:

Dear Jesus,

In this season of our lives, You call us to let go – of loved ones, possessions, responsibilities, and the illusion of control. Yet, in the midst of these transitions, You invite us to find completeness in Your perfect and loving presence with peace that surpasses all of our understanding.

Help us, Lord, to rest in the light of Your love, knowing that in Your arms, we lack nothing. As we surrender our grip on what we hold dear, teach us to trust in Your care.

We find security in Your unchanging nature. You are the same yesterday, today, and forever. Your continual presence is our anchor amidst the storms of life that can bring sudden and unrelenting change.

Just as You hold us by our right hand, assuring us not to fear, help us to release our burdens into Your loving embrace. Grant us the grace to trust that You never let go of us, no matter the circumstance.

May we find the overflowing joy in worshipping You as we walk through life in the light of Your presence. Knowing that You are always with us, guiding us, and sustaining us. You are good, Father.

In the perfect name of Jesus, our constant and faithful companion, we pray. Amen.

Sunday, March 22, 2026

READ ON CAC.ORG

CAC faculty member Brian McLaren offers a brief history of the Babylonian exile, a defining crisis in the biblical story:  

It was about 800 BCE. The Israelites and Judeans had already survived so much. In addition to all the trouble within their respective borders—much of it caused by corrupt leaders—even bigger trouble was brewing outside. The two tiny nations were dwarfed by superpower neighbors, each of which had desires to expand. To the north and east were the Assyrians. To the east were the Babylonians, and to their east, the Persians. To the south were the Egyptians, and to the west, the Mediterranean Sea. How could Israel and Judah, each smaller than present-day Jamaica, Qatar, or Connecticut, hope to survive, surrounded in this way?

The northern Kingdom of Israel fell first. In 722 BCE, the Assyrians invaded and deported many of the Israelites into Assyria. These displaced Israelites eventually intermarried and lost their distinct identity as children of Abraham. They’re remembered today as “the ten lost tribes of Israel.” The Assyrians quickly repopulated the conquered kingdom with large numbers of their own, who then intermarried with the remaining Israelites. The mixed descendants, later known as Samaritans, would experience a long-standing tension with the “pure” descendants of Abraham in Judah to the south.

Judah resisted conquest for just over another century, during which Assyrian power declined and Babylonian power increased. Finally, around 587 BCE, Judah was conquered by the Babylonians. Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed. The nation’s “brightest and best” were deported as exiles to the Babylonian capital. The peasants were left to fill the land and “share” their harvest with the occupying regime. For about seventy years, this sorry state of affairs continued.

By 538 BCE, the Persian Empire allowed the exiled Judeans to return to the land and rebuild. They experienced new freedoms but remained under imperial rule:

How should they interpret their plight? Some feared that God had failed or abandoned them. Others blamed themselves for displeasing God in some way. Those who felt abandoned by God expressed their devastation in heart-rending poetry. Those who felt they had displeased God tried to identify their offenses, assign blame, and call for repentance. It was during this devastating period of exile and return that much of the oral tradition known to Christians as the Old Testament was either written down for the first time, or reedited and compiled. No wonder, arising in such times of turmoil and tumult, the Bible is such a dynamic collection! [1]

Psalm 42 expresses the pain of exile: 

I say to God, my rock,
    “Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I walk about mournfully
    because the enemy oppresses me?”
As with a deadly wound in my body,
    my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me continually,
    “Where is your God?”

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
    and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise him,
    my help and my God. (Psalm 42:10–11)

Exile: An Ongoing Reality

Monday, March 23, 2026

Brian McLaren considers the stories of empire and exile that appear in the Bible and continue to this day:

If you ask Jewish people what the central story of their Bible is, they will usually say the Exodus, the story of their refugee ancestors being enslaved by the rulers of the Egyptian Empire, until God liberated them and led them to freedom. Although historians and archeologists argue about how much of the story is historical and how much is literarily enhanced or fictional, biblical scholars date the story somewhere between 1500 and 1200 BCE.

Sadly, the non-fictional enslavement and mistreatment of refugees has happened too many times and to too many people over the centuries.

If you ask what the second most important biblical story in the Hebrew Scriptures is, many will say the Exile, when large numbers of Jewish people were taken to Babylon where they were made to serve the elites of the Babylonian Empire.

And sadly, mass deportation and domination of Indigenous peoples have happened too many times and to too many people over the centuries: There have been too many Trails of Tears, too many Nakbas, too many pogroms and internment camps over the centuries, right up until today.

Together, Exodus and Exile remind us that the same empires that produce luxuries for those at the top of the social and economic pyramid also produce great suffering for those at the bottom. And just as the gods of the emperors are portrayed as legitimizing their rule, for those at the bottom, God is seen as their only hope for liberation. In fact, I often propose that the English words liberate and liberation would be better translations for the Hebrew and Greek words commonly translated as save or salvation.

Many of the psalms are intense poems of pain from the Exile period. One of the best known is Psalm 137. You feel the pathos as the Judean exiles feel they have been dehumanized, turned into entertainment for their oppressors:

By the rivers of Babylon—
    there we sat down, and there we wept 
    when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
    we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
    asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
    “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How could we sing the Lord’s song
    in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
    let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
    if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
    above my highest joy. (Psalm 137:1–6)

In this psalm, the refugees in exile refuse to sing. They refuse to sacrifice their own dignity and humanity for the entertainment of their oppressor. Their pain echoes through the centuries and asks us: Where are people experiencing exile today? Dare we humanize them and feel their pain? Dare we take their story seriously—even if doing so offends the elites of today’s empires of violence and domination?

=============

Individual Reflection: Think of one specific community experiencing exile or forced displacement today. What has kept you from fully entering their story — is it distance, overwhelm, ideology, or something harder to name? What might it cost you to stop looking away?

---

 

Group Discussion — choose one:

Where are you currently being asked to sing a song you don’t have?

Who are the exiles you’ve been trained not to humanize?

What would it mean for you personally if liberation and salvation were the same word?

Jesus Heals Our Shame

Friday, March 20, 2026

After living with a violent father, psychotherapist James Finley found himself retraumatized by an abusive priest as a young man. Finley shares how Jesus met him in his deep shame and suffering:

I was now a young man living at the edge of a precipice of knowing that if God loved me and cherished me as real and lovable in his eyes, I could not pretend that I was not the real person God loved and called me to be…. 

It was in the midst of this road to nowhere that I began to sense that God was inviting me to give up trying to overcome my fear and to instead bring my feelings of fear and shame to Jesus. I was already committed in my heart to follow the directive of Saint Benedict in his Rule that the monk should “prefer nothing to Christ.” But at this point I needed to go beyond a theological understanding of the universality of Christ by praying my way into the deathless presence of Jesus. 

The felt need to pray in this way led me to imagine, as in a kind of waking dream, that I was alone on a moonlit night in the garden where the Gospels tell us Jesus would go to spend whole nights alone in prayer. In my mind’s eye I could see and feel myself searching here and there, looking for Jesus so that I might share with him how powerless I was to be true to who I sensed he was calling me to be….

Then suddenly, looking this way and that, I saw Jesus sitting alone in the moonlight at the edge of a clearing. I walked across the clearing and knelt at his feet. I could feel his hand on my shoulder as I leaned in close to whisper in his ear, revealing the burdens of my shame-based weakness and fear. 

Having poured out all that my wounded and hurting heart was moved and able to say, Jesus drew me in close and whispered in my ear three words that set me free, words that still echo inside me to this day. I heard him whisper: “I love you!” 

Dazed and amazed in being so unexplainably loved, the spirit within me let me know what both Jesus and I were waiting to hear me say. So I leaned in close and whispered my secret “I love you” to Jesus. And there in that instant there was the realization between us that the matter was settled once and for all. The matter being that the good news of God’s love for us is never measured by our ability to be true to who we know in our heart God is calling us to be. For the sole measure of God’s love for us is the measureless expanse of God’s merciful love, permeating us and taking us to itself in the midst of our faltering and wayward ways. 

==============

1.

“God is self-giving, radically forgiving, co-suffering love.”

– Brad Jersak, Theologian and Author

Brad is one of the most relatable theologians today.  I get the sense from him that he is a well-rounded person who has navigated the deconstruction process well, emerged on the other side, and become one of the more grounded and self-aware educators on the Christian faith.

This definition of God from him is something I muse over occasionally when I am driving in my Jeep.

2.

“People ruin their lives by their own foolishness and then are angry at the Lord.”

– Proverbs 19:3 NLT

Now that is just funny.

I guess we all do it.  We often want to find someone else to blame for our problems rather than taking responsibility ourselves.

Like any loving parent, God does not protect us from the consequences of our actions.  Remember in Galatians?  Where Paul says that we will “reap what we sow”?  God is not some cosmic being who protects us from hitting rock bottom.  If anything, it might be the best thing for us in the long run to hit that rock bottom.

(And, at that point, how interesting that some people thank God that they are finally able to take ownership of their actions and turn their life around!)

3.

“It is through our fulfilling of the commandments that the Lord makes us dispassionate; and it is through His divine teachings that He gives us the light of spiritual knowledge.”

– Maximus the Confessor, in Four Hundred Texts on Love (1.77)

The early Church had an understanding of “dispassion” as a virtue.

It is a word that we do not use much today, but it carries within it some profound wisdom.  Dispassion is a certain detachment from our desires that bring us suffering.  (Dis- meaning against, and Passio- meaning suffering).  The early Church quickly came to understand that it is our disordered loves/passions that cause us suffering.

For this reason, we must practice this virtue or habit of dispassion, to learn to have the right kind of detachment from outcomes and to allow our ego the humiliation of not always getting its way.

The Ten Commandments, then, are simply the starting point for us to learn how to cultivate dispassion and to come to realize that it is in our best interests not always to get our way.

4.

“Those who would know much, and love little, will ever remain at but the beginning of a godly life.”

– Mechthilde of Magdeburg, Medieval Christian Mystic

I am slowly re-reading Søren Kierkegaard’s Works of Love.  It is his treatment and analysis of Christian love, examining “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” from every possible angle.

When I first read Works of Love, it was a punch in the face.  As a head-oriented person who loves to read and think deeply about things, it was a shock to realize that even reading a book about love does not necessarily translate to loving other people.  It was a safe way to engage my brain without having to interact with others.  It was in that moment that I realized my tendency to avoid feelings by going into academic thought.

I want to think that, over time, I have become a little less head-oriented as a person and have been able to grow a little bit past “beginner Christianity” and actually love people.

5.

“Everything is waiting to be hallowed by you.”

– Martin Buber, Jewish Philosopher

We heard this quote last week in Church.

Martin Buber’s work has been an influence on me for some time, ever since I discovered his book, I and Thou.

The dichotomy of Sacred and Profane is something that makes sense during one stage of faith, but not so much in another stage.  We treat Sacred things as special and as things to be protected or revered, but then treat Profane things as things to be avoided, discarded, and the like.  But at a later stage of faith, it’s more so that there are things that are Sacred and other things that need to be made Holy Again.

The possibility of making something Holy Again is exciting to me.  It is not a passive sitting back, and it is not the flippant discarding of something “profane.”  To make things Holy Again is a mission, it is a calling, it is to join God in the Christ Project of the Reconciliation of All Things.

May we each make things around us Holy Again.

Systems of Honor and Shame Today

Thursday, March 19, 2026

Richard Rohr points out how honor-and-shame systems play out around and within us today:

One of the best ways to study Scripture is to use the lens of cultural anthropology; in other words, to learn about the social setting in which Jesus lived and the problems with which he was dealing. What we find is that the culture of his time was overwhelmingly dominated by an honor-and-shame system largely based on externals. In truth, we still live that way in the United States and Western Europe, although we pretend we don’t.

Honor and shame are what we would call ego possessions, personal commodities that we can lose or gain. We don’t have them naturally, so we have to work for our honor and then show it off and protect it. We have to deny our shame, which is now what we would call the shadow self. At Jesus’s time in history, and frankly with many today, there is no inherent sense of the self, no sense of natural dignity that comes from within.

Religion at its best and most mature is exactly what is needed for this problem. Without healthy religion and psychology, we will have no internal or inherent source for our own dignity and positive self-image, no “stable core.” Instead, we are driven to find our status and our dignity externally—by what we wear, our job title, by how much money we have, what car we drive, or even by how much “good” we do. That’s a pretty fragile way to live. We are constantly evaluating, “How am I doing? How am I looking?”

A transformed believer knows that their stable core dignity is something that God gratuitously gives from the moment of conception. Each of us is inherently, objectively, totally, and forever a child of God. We cannot gain or lose that by any achievement or failure whatsoever. God doesn’t participate in the honor-and-shame system.

In most honor-and-shame systems, which are almost always grounded in culturally male values, a “true man” always seeks the best, the top, and the most in terms of roles, power, status, and possessions. Jesus tried to free us from all these traps. Throughout the Gospels, we find numerous teachings promoting downward mobility. The most familiar of these may be, “The last shall be first, and the first shall be last” (Matthew 20:16), and Jesus’s consistent honoring of the least, the outsider, the sinner, and the physically or mentally challenged.

Some form of the honor-and-shame system is seen in almost all of history. In such a system, there is immense social pressure to follow “the rules.” If a person doesn’t follow the rules, they are not honorable and no longer deserve respect. And anyone who shows such a “shameful” person respect is also considered dishonorable.

Jesus frequently and publicly showed respect to “sinners” (see John 8:10–11) and even ate with them (see Luke 19:2–10; Mark 2:16–17). In doing so, he was openly dismissing the ego-made honor-and-shame system of his time—and ours.

=============

The Freedom of Hiddenness

by Henri Nouwen

Adapted excerpt (from Nouwen’s writings on hiddenness and humility):

“Our greatest temptation is to do good in order to be seen.
But Jesus calls us to a different way—the way of hiddenness.

In a world that rewards visibility, recognition, and success,
we are invited to live from a place where we do not need to prove anything.

When we can act without needing affirmation,
we begin to trust that we are already loved.

The question is not ‘How am I perceived?’
but ‘Am I resting in the love of God?’”

______________________________________________

Jesus Calling: March 19

    I speak to you from the depths of your being. Hear Me saying soothing words of Peace, assuring you of My Love. Do not listen to voices of accusation, for they are not from Me. I speak to you in love-tones, lifting you up. My Spirit convicts cleanly, without crushing words of shame. Let the Spirit take charge of your mind, combing out tangles of deception. Be transformed by the trust that I live within you.
    The Light of My Presence is shining upon you, in benedictions of Peace. Let My Light shine in you; don’t dim it with worries or fears. Holiness is letting Me live through you. Since I dwell in you, you are fully equipped to be holy. Pause before responding to people or situations, giving My Spirit space to act through you. Hasty words and actions leave no room for Me; this is atheistic living. I want to inhabit all your moments–gracing your thoughts, words, and behavior.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:
Romans 8:1-2 (NLT)
Life in the Spirit
8 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. 2 And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death.

Colossians 1:27 (NLT)
27 For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory.
1st Corinthians 6:19 (NLT)
19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself,

Silenced by Shame

Wednesday, March 18, 2026

Author and CAC team member Cassidy Hall reflects on the cost of making choices out of shame and the “toxic silence” it creates: 

For over five years, I actively participated in one of the most toxic silences of my life. I was in a romantic relationship with someone who wouldn’t publicly date me because they weren’t open about their sexuality. At the mercy of someone else’s comfort—or lack thereof—I participated in a silencing of myself in public places, around family members, with friends, at work, even at the grocery store…. This kind of silence, brought on by shame, creates long-lasting damage and knots to be untied for years to come. Silence where love cannot prevail is a place of toxicity, a place of stunted existence.

Hall describes the positive effects of “loving silence” cultivated through contemplative practice:

We need to name toxic silence as the silence that causes harm, shame, minimization, and damage to our world. And we need to name loving silence as the silence that is generative and creative, a silence that deepens our unity with self and others—the kind of silence that cultivates a more expansive and loving world….

When I finally stepped away from that relationship’s hamster wheel of toxic silence, I began to see how I had silenced other parts of myself. Beyond the ways I was hiding my sexuality, I also hid parts of myself informed by intuition—places of creativity and aliveness, places of openness and community, places of clarity and calm—ultimately the places where a loving silence thrived….

In the Christian context, the toxicity of silent bystanders creates and feeds countless acts of violence: the sexual abuse in many church settings and its continuation through empty apologies; Christianity’s lack of reckoning with its history of colonization; denominations’ refusal to honor and elevate the leadership and dignity of women, people of color, refugees, people with disabilities, and people from other marginalized communities; churches filling with Christian nationalism and white supremacy culture; the countless times the silent acceptance of bad theology has caused an LGBTQIA+ person to hate or harm themselves; and more. This is the silence of harm, violence, shame, and toxicity….

Toxic silence is embedded in the fabric of our daily lives…. Yet a [contemplative] loving silence can also be pursued, and we can seek and find it even in the chaos of our days. Sometimes it seeps in with our efforts to repeat an internal mantra or take an intentional pause, and other times it pours in like the colorful morning light through the east-facing window. This is the contemplative silence I continually seek and practice. This silence regenerates, regulates, allows for the emergence of loving presence and action. The more we engage in the silences that aren’t toxic—the beautiful, loving, and infinite possibilities of silence—the more we encounter silence as a creative, generative force and not a destructive one.

Is Jonah a historical book? Does it need to be? 

BRADLEY JERSAKMAR 18

I was grateful for another fascinating discussion with Pete Enns in my “Peace and Violence in the Old Testament” class today at SSU/JFI. One intriguing topic was around legend vs. history in books such as Jonah. 

Jonah is a wild ride. I love that book and have some opinions.

Let’s start with a caveat, echoing Pete’s humility. I’m fairly convinced of many things I don’t actually know for a fact to be true. Convictions I don’t feel the need to prove to myself or others with certainty. When it comes to biblical interpretation, I certainly don’t require my friends, colleagues, or students to agree with me. So I won’t impose a theory of Jonah on others as dogma. So I present these thoughts as a thoughts and as a fellow learner. 

Is the Person or Book of Jonah History?

One common question: When the NT preachers or authors (Jesus and Paul especially) reference OT characters like Adam or Jonah, did they think they were historical figures? And if they weren’t historical stories, does that negate their argument? And when Jesus associates his resurrection with ‘the sign of Jonah,’ what if Jonah didn’t literally rise from the dead? Even if the story were historical, the prayer from the sea creature still seems obviously poetic. In fact, I don’t know any conservative scholar (even literalists) who argue that Jonah died and was resurrected—even though the song reads that way.

Here is the text from Jonah to which Jesus refers:

Jonah 2:3, 7 “I cried in my affliction to the Lord, my God, and He heard my voice; out of the belly of *hades* [not just the sea creature]: You heard the cry of my voice. I descended into the earth, the bars of which are *everlasting barriers* [supposedly!]; YES let my life ascend from corruption, O Lord, my God.”

Jesus calls this the sign of Jonah. That he would descend to hades and ascend again, puked out from its embittered belly, its so-called *everlasting* [αιώνιοι!!] barred gates be damned… a great text to show how ‘eternal hades’ is undone by the Resurrection). 

I don’t think Jesus needs to take Jonah’s poetry literally to make his point about the resurrection. And if Jesus doesn’t need to take Jonah 2 literally, do we need to read the book historically? 

Some go so far as to say that if Jonah (or Eden, or Noah, etc.) is a Jewish moral legend, that undercuts my belief in Jesus’ actual resurrection. Does it? 

The More-than-Literal Point

I was once very into apologetics (mistaking it for evangelism) and this was all very troubling. I wasted a lot of time trying to find biological evidence of a fish that could swallow a man and spit him out alive for three days. Meanwhile, I missed the more- than-literal point that God is making through Jonah. Which is? That the Jewish revelation that God is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness extends even to our most hated enemy. And at the time, Assyria was at the top of the list. I was inclined to play my apologetics games far more than taking up the cross of loving my enemy. Just like Jonah. 

Now, whether to read the story as literal history… we can. But I don’t think we need to be faithful. Whatever Jesus thought about the story, he was already reading the song creatively as poetic prefigurement (foreshadowing his resurrection) to make his point. I see no problem with that. Could Jesus’ point be this simple? 

“Just as in the Jonah story, where the song from the sounds like a resurrection, 
that language anticipates something surprising I’m about to do in real life.”

It would be a little like me saying to my son (a big Lord of the Rings fan), 

“I am going to be at your apartment next month, on this date, for sure. Count on it. Just as Gandalf showed up at dawn for the Battle of Helm’s Deep, expect me to arrive at your place Tuesday morning.”

I’m symbolically referencing a fictional story my son knows and loves. I’m doing so symbolically to illustrate my assured and actual arrival. 

• He gets the reference. 
• He does not feel the need to remind me that the LOTR is not historical.
• The reference does not raise any doubt that my arrival will happen as promised. 
• Whether the Jonah is history or legend has no impact on the promise. 
• But neither would I feel any need to prove Jonah IS fictional. 

This is where we could learn from Jewish rabbis today. Those I’ve engaged roll their eyes at Christian modernists (liberal or conservative) who obsess over what ‘really happened.’ At last, the right use of the phrase “moot point.”

On Shrines 

One student wisely brought up shrines. They are an excellent illustration.

Yes, there is a tomb of Jonah. My student had been there. I haven’t. But I have been to the tombs of the patriarchs at Hebron (Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and Leah). And I’ve also been to the resting place of Mary the Mother of Jesus… both shrines (Gethsemane and Ephesus). I felt the holiness of accumulated devotion in those spaces. But I’m not at all sure that they were buried there. And I don’t need to be. As shrines to their memory, they tell a story. And over time, they have become sacred space where we can experience the beauty and power of their lives (or at least their story). 

My Shift

So a shift happened in me along the way. It didn’t occur overnight. But as a young Evangelical with a modernist bent toward literalism, I feared (and was taught to fear) that if I discovered the earth was over 7000 years old, or if the Garden of Eden isn’t somewhere in Iraq, or if Noah’s ark didn’t actually sit on Ararat, or if Job and Jonah were legends, I would diminish or even lose my faith. The motto was, “If the waters did not cover Everest, Christ is not risen.” 

No. That doesn’t follow. And weirdly, I didn’t lose my faith—only my ill-gotten certitude. Even better, God got bigger and more mysterious and filled me with more and more wonder … and the Bible became a more intriguing adventure and far richer treasury … and my trust grew dramatically when I didn’t have to believe God slaughtered all those people across the Bible’s pages. The barriers to experiencing Scripture as a place of encounter and communion with God were removed.

And just as importantly to me, when my dear Baptist mom sits in her armchair reading these stories for strength, comfort and encouragement, believing she is immersed in the Word of God, now I know she is. I don’t have to mess with that experience because that IS how the Bible is to be read—as a venue for encounter and communion with and by the Spirit of Christ. 

Did Jonah happen? I don’t know. 
Is Jonah true? Absolutely.

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Individual Reflection Hall talks about how stepping out of one silence revealed other places she’d been hiding. Where have you been living in a silence that feels like safety but is actually a slow shrinking — and what part of yourself has been waiting on the other side of it?

Group Discussion Jersak says he didn’t lose his faith when he loosened his grip on literalism — he lost his “ill-gotten certitude,” and God got bigger. Where has your own faith required you to give something up that you thought was holding it together — and what did you actually find when you let it go?