Addressing my fellow citizens of the United States: Let’s consider how our founding fathers understood happiness and the purpose and role of the federal government. And as we do, also consider how well the societies of the top 11 happiest nations correlate with the happiness understood by those founding fathers.
When those in political power celebrate ignorance, cherish cruelty, and delight in harming those outside their circle of moral care, what are open-hearted Jesus followers to do? When a society built on a social contract is ruled by antisocial people, how are those claimed by the Rabbi of Nazareth to respond?
Jesus told his followers that they were citizens of the kingdom of heaven. But where was this kingdom? Here, there, inside of them, or all of the above? He challenged them to expand their definition of “home” to include the whole human family, the whole world, the whole cosmos.
Living heaven on Earth means leaving the ways of Empire and embracing the wisdom of Creation, the ways of Kin-dom.
Esther is one of only two books in the Bible to be named after a woman (the other is Ruth). It is also one of only two books in the Bible not to explicitly mention God (the other is the erotic poetry in the Song of Songs). Spending a bit of time with Esther helps us to confront unjust leaders, even today.
It’s always the same old story. Location and time don’t matter. The greedy, rich, and powerful always take what they can from the rest of us, be they kings, khans, industrialists, or tech bros by the name of Henry, Genghis, Stalin, Hitler, Trump, Vance, or Musk.
Many Americans still don’t believe we are in the process of an authoritarian coup. But the more I understand about authoritarianism, the clearer that reality becomes.
Suffering love is the pinnacle value of Christianity. It is rooted in the suffering of Jesus on the cross–a reality we can never fully fathom: the aching loneliness, the wrenching pain, the sense of total abandonment. Suffering goes to the core of our human situation.
There’s an old saying that gets thrown around when tragedy strikes: “God has a plan.” I don’t know about you, but when I look at the history of the world and even the current political situation in the U.S., I don’t buy it. Maybe it’s well-meaning, maybe it’s just a knee-jerk response to pain, but let’s be honest—it’s a theological train wreck.
Over the past decade, our polarization—political, racial, religious—has grown exponentially. Vanderbilt University conducts surveys on American polarization, and in 2024, they released a study showing that both the right and the left continue to increasingly identify as “strongly” left or “strongly” right. Roughly 28% on both sides now identify as either “strongly” or “far” right or left.