So focused on his work, he almost misses the insult hurled his way. “Hypocrite!” He looks up and can’t figure out who it was. He knows who everyone is but doesn’t know them at all — not invited to their parties, their ball games, their dinners. When he knocks on their door, they only begrudgingly open, shoving that month’s bill in his face as quickly as they can before slamming the door. Shunned by the community, left out because of his profession.

He only took this tax-collector job so he could help his mom — she had all those bills before she passed. They needed the money or else they wouldn’t have been able to keep up. They had felt like they were on a slowly sinking ship, and this job was the lifeboat. It was his duty to make sure she stayed afloat as long as possible! Don’t they remember that? Don’t they remember he’s one of them?

Of course, he said he would give up tax collecting when he didn’t need it anymore, but he got good at it and the pay was good. After all that heartache of caretaking for his mom and then her passing, a little security, a little cushion for himself couldn’t be bad, right? So what if that security came at his neighbors’ expense? They were going to have to pay someone anyway; why not him, right?

Hypocrite? Maybe. But he’s a richer hypocrite than they can hope to be. Who needs their parties, ball games, or dinners? Who needs them when he never has to wonder where his next meal comes from, or if he could get a new shirt if the old one got stained, or if he could afford to take a vacation to the lake. They say they hate him, but who would they call on when they need to build a new synagogue? Their contempt feeds his ego and self-importance, papering over whatever misgivings he might secretly hold. At least, that’s what he tells himself when lying awake deep into the night.

But he knows such justifications didn’t hold up to scrutiny. Deep down he knows the truth: tax collecting isn’t right. Charging more than what is owed only to line his own pockets — this isn’t honoring God, loving his neighbors. This isn’t what his mama taught him. This isn’t what he wanted to do and be — a sort of reverse Robin Hood, taking from the poor for the benefit of the rich (including himself.) He had dreams of making a difference, of helping the people around him, of being a teacher or a firefighter or a nurse … and now? Now he just can’t help himself. Now he’s alone. Mama gone and neighbors filled with contempt. There’s a distance between what his life is and what he hoped it would be: a brokenness whose hurt lingers.

“It’s the system! I’m trapped in a system bigger than myself!” he says to himself to console his sorrow. And that’s true, but his greed and want of comfort supersedes any attachment he has with those around him. He could have tried to break out of the system, but why do all that work and take the risk? Easier just to go along, play his part, and deal with the insults; he’s heard worse than hypocrite. Plus, he’s grown accustomed to a certain standard of living.

But then he hears a voice and is snapped out of his daydream and back to reality. “Follow me.” That’s it. That’s all that was said. That’s all that needed to be said. Like a gong, the Word reverberates long after it is spoken. It goes out and does not return empty, accomplishing what is intended. Out of nothing, something new is born. A way has been made out of no way. Deliverance has come to he who was broken and hurting.

He looks up and looks into the eyes of a man he’s never met but who seems to know everything about him and does not turn away. Jesus. He sees Jesus, the Word made flesh. And that invitation, that command really, “Follow me,” still reverberates. He hears the Word continue to sound but feels the call in his bones.

Follow me and leave that empty rat race trying to find happiness in the hollow category of “more.” Follow me and leave the self-justification and self-importance that only serve to separate you from those who would love you. Follow me and leave the excuses that keep you from seeing and feeling and believing the truth, tough as it is.

The Word that was spoken before time began, which will still be reverberating long after time ends, goes into the deepest valleys filled to the brim with hurt and the most jagged parts of his broken heart; it does not sidestep or erase or reframe but meets him right in those real places that everyone has. The Word meets him where no one, not even himself, would dare go. The Word meets him there to bring mercy: forgiveness and new life.

“Is it too good to be true?” No. It’s good because it is true.

“Follow me.” And he does. He gets up, leaves his kiosk, his booth, his cubicle and follows. He follows, leaving his corrupt job, broken vision, and hurting soul. He follows and immediately is shown that he is not alone; he never was.

He hosts a dinner party, a grill out really, and finds out that there are more like him — more who have heard the whisper of something new, something different, something hopeful. He didn’t put the word out, post it on Insta, or invite anyone — he had no one to invite, but still people came. People like him — people who are used to insults, people with skeletons in the closet, people who aren’t usually invited, and yet they are people who are willing to admit the truth of their hurt and brokenness, walking alongside others who are hurt and broken. They came and joined the party.

But of course, the Debbie Downers with the local HOA got wind of it — they always do. You know the type: the ones who think their stuff don’t stink. The ones who are all too comfortable telling other people what to do to get back on the up and up. The ones who make sure everyone knows how good and successful and right with the LORD they are. They come and try to shut the whole thing down. Why? The guests look … like they don’t fit.

“Why THOSE people here? Doesn’t he know who they are and what they have done? Can’t he get them to act right before calling, freeing, and forgiving them? There is a proper way to do things, and this isn’t it!” They’re talking about the Word, but they’re furtively side-eyeing him and all the other guests.

But then he hears the Word speak one more time.

The Word spoke, and it still reverberates throughout time to you and me right now. The Word spoke, and it still echoes into the deepest valleys of hurt and the most jagged edges of our brokenness. The Word spoke, and forgiveness and new life meet us right here and right now: “Healthy people don’t need a doctor, but sick people do. Go and learn what this means: I want mercy and not sacrifice. I didn’t come to call righteous people, but sinners” (Matt. 9:12–13).

The post Follow Me: A Reflection on the Calling of Matthew appeared first on Mockingbird.

The following story about an opinionated chef-priest and his loving, long-suffering wife comes from Chapter 3 of Robert Farrar Capon’s More Theology & Less Heavy Cream. Capon is a fixture around here, and in addition to being a master theologian of grace, he was none too shabby as a New York Times food columnist. For those interested in food, grace, or how to make amends after critiquing your spouse’s vegetable prep, look no further.

Pietro was making Danish pastry on his day off. Even if he said so himself, he had terrific moves. Rolling up the cinnamon-scented, raisin-studded sheet of dough, he sealed the edge smartly with tap water, sliced the roll into uniform schnecken with rapid-fire strokes of the knife and had them panned and rising in nothing flat.

The post Bed and Board: A Marital Vignette from Robert Farrar Capon appeared first on Mockingbird.

While Travels and “Proposal” remain his best-known works, Swift’s writings had a much more significant impact on Great Britain than these works alone. He was Irish by birth and spent much of his life in pro-Ireland advocacy. He was an Anglican priest on Sundays, and his insights about religion are rich and sarcastic. (He once wrote to the anti-church “freethinkers” of his time that they needed Anglicanism to rebel against so that their vices would still feel transgressive. Without a voice of condemnation, he surmises, their vices wouldn’t be nearly as thrilling and fun.) Beyond this, he was also a key thinker in the Tory party, active in their publishing work and sitting at the table for key strategy meetings.

His most impactful piece of writing is probably one of his lesser known. The Conduct of the Allies, written in 1711, critiqued his political opposition for their ongoing engagement in the War of Spanish Succession. The short 90-page book outlined, with much of Swift’s famous mix of logic, satire, and irony, why the country needed to end their involvement in the war. It was a smash hit, turning the tide of public opinion among the people and in Parliament right before an important vote on the matter. Two years later, Great Britain signed the Peace of Utrecht, ending hostilities, and Swift received a good deal of the credit (and an appointment as Dean at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin) for making that happen.

It’s worth noting how Swift was a master of satire and a public celebrity, and as a result, he made a tangible political difference. Why is it that modern satire hasn’t accomplished the same thing?

Like many millennials in their mid-twenties, I spent a season of my life getting the news from Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show on Comedy Central. The writing was clever, the guests were erudite, and Stewart himself embodies comedic exasperation like none other. Stephen Colbert’s follow-up act, The Colbert Report, offered its own form of news comedy as a satire of Fox News talking heads. Neither show was a news-first enterprise. And if we’re really honest, it’s debatable as to whether those shows were even comedy-first shows. The real currency of these programs was righteous indignation. Both shows featured a parade of the worst happenings in Washington, D.C., to an audience already jaded about the modern political system. While I won’t speak for others, it felt good to have my frustrations validated on a nightly basis by people who were smart, funny, and held in high regard.

If you want that potent cocktail of political punditry, satire, and righteous indignation, you can get it just about anywhere these days. Bill Maher and Marc Maron and Trevor Noah can give you that fix on their own shows and podcasts. John Oliver will give it to you with a British accent and at twice the concentration. This genre of satire news is most popular with the political left. The political right is, of course, happy to use righteous indignation for its own political ends, but outside of The Babylon Bee, they aren’t as likely to sell it in the packaging of satire.

The height of this left-leaning satire movement came sixteen years ago when Stewart and Colbert had their “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” on the Washington lawn. That was 2010, and it drew over 200,000 people. Though the billing was meant to spoof rallies organized by the left and right, the initiative betrayed an underlying assumption. The organizers didn’t just want to make people laugh: they wanted to change the political system. That potent cocktail that made political satire so popular had a higher hope. They wanted to achieve what Swift had achieved: a return to common sense, the ending of wars, and a shift of national attention to the marginalized. It’s hard to say that they came anywhere close to that goal.

Jon Stewart’s greatest political achievement across his years of hosting TV satire news was his advocacy for federally subsidized medical care for 9/11 first responders. That work shouldn’t be diminished. Thousands of New York first responders had their health collapse because of the dust and debris they inhaled in the fresh rubble of the World Trade Center, and Stewart genuinely made a difference for them. His platform on his TV show was, no doubt, an asset to this cause, but it wasn’t that his satire changed hearts and minds across America. His accomplishment was made with earnest pleas, testimonies before Congress, and repeated investment over the course of a decade to make sure the program survived budget cuts. It is an achievement, and one that Stewart should be proud of.

Can we say that Stewart’s peers did any better than this? And yet it’s also only one small policy victory among many more that never manifested. Swift’s satire ended a war. Why hasn’t modern satire achieved anything like that?

We could consider whether the change in time and media have made satire less pronounced. Some have said that Tina Fey’s famed satire of then Vice President candidate Sarah Palin was so good that it tipped the scales against her campaign ticket in 2008. Given that Saturday Night Live has a 50-year history of political satire, however, one moment of impact is more akin to the random success of a viral video than a carefully aimed bullseye. The destruction of any sort of monoculture has given satire less exposure. Proportionally, a popular booklet in the Georgian era of Great Britain is going to hold more sway than a million eyeballs watching a screen. It’s possible that modern satire has less impact because it reaches fewer people.

Still, I would argue that it’s not just the media, it’s also the message.

Literary types have long differentiated between two styles of satire, each named after its Roman founder. There’s Horatian satire, which is meant to be soft and sympathetic. It defuses and uses humor to address our shared follies. Then there’s Juvenalian satire, which is biting and sarcastic. It doesn’t assume that its targets are foolish, but it assumes they’re evil, and the result of this satire is not only laughter but outrage.

Swift was deft enough to leverage both of these schools in his writing. “A Modest Proposal” is harsh and Juvenalian, and Gulliver’s Travels is Horatian, though elements of both styles exist in both works. In The Conduct of the Allies, Swift declares the universal but dangerous desire for global prestige as folly (Horatian) while viciously skewering the political figures who exacerbated the problem (Juvenalian). Swift’s success wasn’t just a product of eighteenth-century London’s media ecosystem: he is an incredible writer who knows what he’s doing.

Both forms of satire are in the Bible, too. The easygoing Horatian satire is what Jesus uses to talk about our hypocritical spirit of judgment. “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye?” It’s a compelling mental image. Nobody is explicitly singled out; the shame is diffused throughout our universal life experience. Instead of being rejected, we’re all asked to recognize our own inner hypocrisy and engage in a bit of humble self-reflection. There’s not a lot of bite in this teaching, and it’s easy to ignore, but spend even a little time with it, and you’ll start to squirm in self-reflection.

The prophet Elijah has, perhaps, the most devastating example of Juvenalian satire in the Bible, mocking the prophets of Ba’al as they called for their God to show up and prove his existence. Despite the pagan prophets’ ecstatic shouting, self-flagellation, and earnest prayers, it wasn’t working. Their god wasn’t appearing no matter how hard they called for him, and Elijah took an almost perverse pleasure in rubbing it in. “Shout louder,” says Elijah. “Maybe Ba’al is asleep. Maybe he’s distracted in deep thought or away on a vacation. Maybe he’s on the toilet!” The paragraph ends with this conclusion: “There was no voice. No one answered; no one paid attention.” It’s as biting a satire of pagan religion as you’ll read anywhere.

But what’s remarkable about Elijah’s Juvenalian attack is that, like so many other attempts at satire, it didn’t accomplish its goal. Even though Israel’s God shows up and proves himself, and the prophets of Ba’al are put to death, Israel’s awful king responds to Elijah’s challenge by doubling down on Ba’al worship. There is no political change — in fact, there’s only change in the opposite direction. The king drives Elijah into hiding, and the prophet of God is so distraught at his perceived failure that he collapses to the ground in despair. Overwhelmed, depressed, and exhausted, he tells God he doesn’t want to be a prophet anymore and asks for permission to die. By this metric, of course, Jonathan Swift is the better satirist than this Old Testament man of God.

If I had to put a finger on the great limit of satire, it might be this: satire traffics in shame, and shame is one of the least effective ways to inspire a change.

Why do people change? What inspires people to a new way of thinking and behaving? It’s not rational thinking, and it’s not common sense. The great biblical insight, and the anthropology of the church ancient and modern, is that human beings are driven by their affections. “What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.” Human beings are attracted to love like a moth to a flame, and very rarely do we find satire overflowing from a place of love. Does modern satire cultivate any sort of intrinsically good affection in the heart of its hearer? Sympathetic souls are encouraged to derision and contempt. The targets of satire are driven to defensiveness and retaliation. It’s the law, condemnation and judgment wrapped in a veneer of smiles. Modern satire inspires fight and flight with very little hope of anyone on the receiving end taking it seriously, which is likely why it has proven so ineffective in its hopes for transformation. There has to be something more effective at social, political, or religious change than shame. “I hope my enemies see my joke and wither as worms unto a state of repentance in awe of my snappy wit and moral indignity” is not an effective strategy for social progress. (Neither, FYI, is sharing online video clips from the people who think this way.)

That’s not to say that satire is wholly useless. There’s a reason why the best headlines from The Onion start with phrases like “area man” and “local woman,” and why they get space in our regular Another Week Ends column. What follows is usually a word of humor that is universal in scope, true to human experience, and gentle in its ribbing. “Man Thinking About Just Packing Up And Making Exact Same Mistakes Someplace Far Away” hits on the universal temptation for what AA calls “the geographic cure.” “New Nike Running App Tells You What You’re Really Running From” (see below) has insights about human psychology that apply well beyond the realm of Fitbit athletes. There are elements of love and commiseration in that satire, where the writer and the target share in their mutual folly. Just because it isn’t being done doesn’t mean it can’t be done, but inspiring someone to helpful self-reflection is a different expectation than hoping that biting humor will change the world.

It was this realization that modern satirists weren’t making change but cementing division that soured me on the lot of it. That’s when I stopped tuning in to the famed talking heads of Comedy Central. As much as I appreciate a good jab at my ideological enemies, I don’t see how the ills of our age can be solved with the strategies of Horace or Juvenal. If you’re excellent at the genre, you might end a war. Perhaps, if you are fully committed to loving your enemies, you can get away with some knowing laughs. But as long as the human heart is driven toward love, there will be limits to what satire can accomplish.

The post Modern Satire’s Meager Accomplishments appeared first on Mockingbird.

Before we met, my husband explored the possibility of becoming a missionary in Japan. He studied the language and made Japanese friends. Yet choosing to stay did not initially remove the ambiguity. It simply exchanged visions of Japan for another ordinary Tuesday.

Did he miss God’s will by staying in Texas? What if Japan really was the road he was meant to take?

Few things are more compelling than a missionary story told once the ending is known. Missionaries get biographies — books full of conversion stories and accounts of great Christian figures. Their significance is obvious because we know how the story turns out. By comparison, the literature on waiting in the carpool line remains surprisingly thin.

The problem is that what-ifs live rent-free in our imagination. They never have to pay bills, survive disappointments, navigate conflict, or endure uncertainty. Imagined lives enjoy a remarkable advantage over real ones.

I am profoundly grateful he did not go; otherwise, we would never have met. Our life together is gloriously ordinary: two kids, two loyal dogs, and an opinionated cat.

Surely God’s will would be recognizable by its significance. It would involve sacrifice, risk, and a story worth telling at conferences. Nobody ever stands up and says, “God called me to pay the electric bill, love my wife, and show up for Morning Prayer.”

But grace is found in the life we have, not the one we imagine.

Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, likely expected to marry Mary, practice his trade, raise a family, and continue serving God. There is no indication that he anticipated angels, exile, or the responsibility of raising the Messiah. Then everything changes: Joseph learns that Mary is pregnant. His plan is to quietly end the betrothal, until a celestial being interrupts the situation entirely. The angel’s message did not confirm Joseph’s plans but interrupted them.

How often do Christians approach discernment hoping God will validate the future we have already imagined? We are encouraged to ask, seek, and knock, but often what we really want is certainty. We mistake our preferred outcome for God’s plan and become frustrated when God’s answer takes a different form.

Joseph does not debate the angel’s message or demand additional confirmation. He gets up and does the next thing. When instructed to take Mary as his wife, he does. When told to flee to Egypt, he goes. When told it is safe to return, he returns. His “yes” led him to Bethlehem and a stable birth, to Egypt as a refugee protecting his family from violence, and to Nazareth, where much of his life was spent in obscurity, in the ordinary work of raising Jesus.

His significance is obvious to us because we know the ending. Joseph did not know the ending, nor did my husband.

“Go with God.” Many people are inspired by those three words. They inspired my husband to explore missions, witness to countless individuals.

But the phrase carries more than one meaning. Christians utter those words at departures, disappointments, and gravesides. They are often less a declaration of certainty than a confession of our limits. We say them because there comes a point when we cannot see clearly enough to promise anything more.

Going with God does not remove suffering or uncertainty. In many cases, it is simply the most honest thing Christians can say when they do not know what comes next. Nor was the phrase ever meant to imply that God waits somewhere else — in dramatic departures or spiritually elevated lives. It was never meant to suggest that ordinary life is spiritually second class.

Could “going with God” sometimes look like nothing more than the fiftieth game of I Spy with the kids or a round of fetch with the dog?

Had my husband gone to Japan, his life would have required a different kind of faithfulness. I cannot reduce that reality into a formula about calling or God’s hidden blueprint. Discernment does not eliminate uncertainty. But I no longer believe that God waits only in dramatic departures or spiritually elevated lives.

The irony is that the life my husband once worried might be too ordinary became the joyful life that shaped us. The dishes, the bills, the school pickups, the church attendance, the marriage, the children, the friendships, the small acts of love repeated thousands of times — these were never interruptions to God’s work. They were God’s work.

Perhaps the greater danger is not choosing wrongly but overlooking the life and grace already given. Maturing in Christ may be less about finding the perfect calling than faithfully receiving what has been given.

The imagination is remarkably good at constructing alternate futures and then convincing us they contained the happiness, certainty, or significance we now lack. The roads not taken have one advantage over the roads we travel: they never have to disappoint us.

Grace does not require us to solve the mystery of the roads not taken. God is no less present in the life we received than in the life we imagined.

Sometimes grace arrives as ordinary faithfulness on a Tuesday afternoon.

And sometimes “going with God” turns out to look remarkably like staying.

Author’s Note

Anne Chester is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. The reflections in this essay are offered for educational and informational purposes only and do not constitute psychotherapy, counseling, or professional advice.

The post Japan or an Ordinary Tuesday? appeared first on Mockingbird.

…

M: Derrick! Thanks so much for doing this, man.

DB: Happy to do it.

M: So, in addition to your day job as a pastor and part-time professor, I hear you’ve been working on a PhD?

DB: Yeah, I don’t sleep much…

M: How would you characterize your congregation?

DB: City on a Hill is part of the Baptist tradition. We like to say, “We’re Baptists. We’re just not mad about it.” We do a lot of recovery work. It’s one of the things that we’re most widely known for in our community — trying to not only reach but also minister to and provide a pathway for virtually any kind of addict. So we have somewhere around 40 different types of groups that we offer over the course of the year, but not all at the same time. We also partner with other secular organizations such as AA, NA, and SLAA and have space in our church throughout the week for those types of meetings to take place. Many of our congregants are members of those meetings, and we also have 12-step oriented groups that are more Christ centered.

And so, this kind of recovery ministry that we do, it’s part of our DNA, and it’s been such a blessing. I think one of the reasons why we’re often mistaken for not being a Baptist church is that we’re not very concerned about Baptist culture or, you know, the politics of the SBC. I couldn’t care less. When you deal with people at a very fundamental level that are willing to say this is just how broken I am, it’s like all the other things don’t matter as much, and you begin to see people for people. It doesn’t really matter what political side you’re on or what cultural currents you’re imbibing. You’re just a broken person that needs the gospel, that needs grace.

That’s what attracted me to Mockingbird to begin with, actually. We used to have some members of our church — they moved away and are part of a church in Tyler now — but they introduced me to Mockingbird, the magazine and the website. And I eventually got onto the Mockingcast, got hooked on that, loved it. And then a few years ago, in 2021 or 2022, I flew up to New York for the conference, and I took some of the staff with me. And you know, they were all from a very evangelical, mostly Baptist background, and I just told them: “Guys, this is going to be totally different from what you’re used to culturally. But you’re going to hear — within the first 30 minutes — a profound recognition of grace that is going to stir and encourage you in exactly the work that we do.” And man, after that trip, they were all blown away by the work of Mockingbird.

M: That’s awesome. It’s really interesting to me that the first thing you mentioned in characterizing the culture of your church is its connection to recovery. That’s something that I think a lot of churches do somewhat but only over on the side. Lots of churches host 12-step meetings, for example, but it’s not really connected to anything else.

DB: Yeah, that’s right. I don’t want to disparage other churches — I mean, everyone’s doing their thing according to how they feel like God is leading them. But the problem that I see with so many other churches’ approaches to recovery is that it is a side thing. It’s almost a segregating factor in the church, where it’s like, hey, if you’re messed up, then you go over here. And our contention at City on a Hill is like No — I, the senior pastor, am messed up. I need recovery. Everyone needs recovery. You’re either ready to admit it or you’re not ready to admit it, but it’s there. Because everyone deals with sin. Everyone is fallen. Everyone has made mistakes and done things they regret. And so it’s not a matter of whether this would be helpful to you, but whether you’re ready to open up the can of worms that it’s going to inevitably open up in your life.

So we don’t want to segregate people. We don’t want to make a separate place for the sick addicts. Everyone is a sick addict. Everyone is a broken person in need of this kind of help.

M: Totally. So then, there’s a lot of overlap in the people who go to these various recovery meetings you host and the people who go to church services on Sunday morning?

DB: Yes. Huge overlap.

M: I love that. Bridging the gap between recovery and church — seems like there would be such a natural fit there.

DB: Yeah. Have you read Grace in Addiction by John Z.? Our men’s group went through that book and it was so, so good. What a gift to the church.

M: So, you have two main Sunday services at 9:30 and 11 a.m. How would you characterize each of those services, and how do they vary?

DB: The services are fairly similar. Let me say this: they’re planned the same. We don’t have different styles of worship or anything like that. We don’t do a contemporary and a traditional service. I have some ecclesiological commitments that prevent me from that. I want the church to function in such a way where if you regularly attend 9:30 and you happen to come one Sunday to the 11 a.m. instead, you’re still getting the same thing. Like, we’re still one church. I don’t want people to get into that mode of thinking “I go to the contemporary service” or “I go to the traditional service.” We all go to the same church.

That said, the 9:30 is definitely rowdier. They tend to be more the kind of people who’ve been around a long time, whereas there are definitely more guests at the 11. As a result of that, I think there’s just less congregational response during the 11, whether that be during worship or during the message. At 9:30, the congregation will talk to me. They let me know they hear me. At 11, sometimes I’m like, are they even awake? Haha. But there’s a lot of overlap too. We also offer Bible studies during both of those hours, so typically people will either go to church first and then a Bible study, or go to Bible study and then to church.

M: How would you describe the format? Are there certain prayers or songs that you say or sing every Sunday? How often do you do communion? What does that all look like?

DB: I think that’s a great question. I always like to point out when I teach ecclesiology here at the seminary that every church has a liturgy. There are no churches without liturgies. Some of them are just ill-defined. Some of them are so modernized that it doesn’t necessarily feel like a liturgy, but it is. I mean, it’s the same repeating pattern. Our church is not the most liturgical, certainly not as much as what you might experience in the Episcopal world. And I will tell you, as a Baptist pastor and professor, I lament that to some degree, because I think that there is real power in liturgy. There are certain aspects of Episcopal/Anglican liturgy that I think are so profoundly beautiful and wish that my tradition did more of that. And we’ve actually been subtly working it in.

For example, we do confess the Nicene Creed occasionally. Not every Sunday, but it is something that I’m trying to develop within our congregation’s context. I think that the power of ecumenism centered around the earliest creeds is really important. It pushes back against tribalism in a way that I think is really good for the church. When you realize, oh, I confess the same creed that my Roman Catholic friend does, then we may not see eye to eye on everything, but the most standard orthodox statement of faith in history is something we both agree on, and that’s a good thing.

M: Yeah, especially if you both actually believe it.

DB: Right! We Baptists are, you know, well known for saying really idiotic things like “No creed but the Bible.” I hear that a lot. And I’m like, that’s a creed. That’s just a really bad creed. It’s a very vague creed, actually. So let’s have creeds that actually are founded in orthodox faith and history.

So anyway, we do the Nicene Creed some. We take communion once a month — and that’s a shift from before. Under the founding pastor of our church, they only did communion about three or four times a year. But I wanted to establish more regular communion, and I think that goes hand in hand with the DNA of our church. Again, if we’re all broken, and if there is this desire to be sanctified — to receive grace in the midst of our brokenness — one of the things that more regular communion does is put me before texts like 1 Corinthians 11, which is going to challenge me to discern myself, that I don’t “eat and drink judgment” upon myself…

It’s because there’s that pressure. Every time we do the Lord’s Supper, they are reminded that if I take the Lord’s Supper and I’m living this sort of duplicitous double life, that I’m potentially eating and drinking judgment on myself. So there’s this sense that I need to deal with this. Not in a condemning way, but with a sense that this is not okay. And of course, every time they come into the office to confess those things, we are very quick to say to them: “Thank you for confessing that. God forgives you.” Right? This is, again, something our tradition doesn’t do very well, but I will tell people “You’re forgiven” — not because I’m forgiving you but because God’s word says that you’ll be forgiven when you confess these things.

As far as music, our church has a contemporary worship style. We have a full band, drums, the whole nine yards. We do play a mixture of hymns and more modern songs.

When it comes to sermons, I am mostly an expository preacher. So, most of the time, our sermon series just go verse by verse through whatever book of the Bible we’re in. We started Hebrews two weeks ago, and we cover every verse. There’s no verse we leave out. We walk right through it. And I usually preach for about 30 to 35 minutes. Sometimes there’s a call to worship afterwards. Sometimes there’s a reserved time of prayer. Sometimes there’s a benediction. There’s no definite pattern we follow. We just have sort of a template of rotating things that we might plug in or take out to keep things interesting.

M: I like it, man. I have to say though, your sermons are a lot longer than ours. Our priests have maybe 15 minutes to work with, max.

DB: Well, in my tradition, I’m actually on the shorter end. When I first started preaching, my sermons were like 50 minutes.

M: Wow, that’s hardcore.

DB: I think that’s a young man’s thing, like, I’m going to preach an hour. But why? You can say a lot in 30 minutes, and often I find that guys that preach for 40–45 minutes could easily have cut out 10–15 minutes.

M: Undoubtedly. So, when you do have new people come to your church, how do you make them feel welcome and encourage them to keep coming back?

DB: Well, we have a host team — all volunteer — and a hospitality team that puts out coffee and oatmeal and bagels and different things that people can access for free. Food is welcome in the sanctuary. We don’t have an unwritten rule against that. I drink coffee in the sanctuary, so anyone should be able to drink coffee in the sanctuary. And then we have greeters that are at all the doors and parking lot attendants as well. Again, they’re all volunteers that just love to welcome people into our space.

For guests, typically, we’ll give them the rundown of what we have to offer in terms of Bible studies and other things they can access. If they have kids, do they want to take them to the kids’ ministry? We have our own separate building for the kids’ ministry that is fully locked down, so it’s very safe. We also have student ministry during the 11 a.m. service that meets on the third floor of our gym building. That’s been fun. If people are in need, we have something called the City Life Center. So, we just kind of try to give them the information.

I have a younger person on our staff that develops all of our media stuff. She’s great. She puts out things that are very appealing looking, and that sometimes brings people over as well for further conversation.

There are just a lot of different people stationed in our main areas engaging folks that they don’t recognize and inviting them to other things. We do have cards that people can fill out. If they’re wanting prayer requests, they can do that and put their information down, and we’ll follow up with them. We have a deacon that does all the follow-up every week. We also engage people online. We have a YouTube channel and a Facebook presence, and we do a lot of really silly things on those channels.

One of the pastoral pillars that we try to lead by, and I say this all the time, is: we take what we do very seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. And we really want that to be the culture of our church. Like, we’re going to take God’s word seriously. We’re going to take worship seriously. But we’re not going to take ourselves very seriously.

M: In your mind, what is the single most important thing that happens on a Sunday morning?

DB: Worship. Now, I define worship as not just singing songs. I think we worship when we open God’s word. I think we worship when we pray. I think worship is something that is to be done collectively. I try to push back against the age of individualism as much as I can…

There’s a lot of other great stuff that can take place on Sundays — community and outreach and so forth. And I think outreach, evangelism, mission, all that stuff should not be relegated to Sunday but should really be relegated primarily to Monday through Saturday. Sunday is where you gather and you are encouraged, maybe in the midst of hardship from doing those other things. And you’re reminded this is why we do them.

M: I love that. I will say: I think that one of the critiques of evangelical or more “contemporary” worship styles — and I’m not just talking about music, I’m talking about the whole tone of the service — is that it often seems like it has to be relentlessly happy and upbeat, right? So is there a way for that worship to encompass a broader range of emotions? 

DB: Yeah. I mean, if it’s only happy, it’s dishonest, right? Read the Psalms. David is joyful one moment, and then the next moment he is like, “I’m dying. My bones are withering away.” So yeah, absolutely it must do that. And that’s one of the compliments we get all the time from people. They’ll say, “I don’t feel like I have to put on a mask when I come to City on a Hill.” And again, I’m not putting on a mask. There are days where I’m struggling and I’m very up front about it. Like, I don’t feel like worshiping today. I don’t feel like standing here and singing these songs. I’m going to do it, because I believe God’s worthy of it, but I’m not going to be happy about it. So yeah, I think it absolutely should engender all of the feelings. We’re whole humans, not just happy humans.

M: What’s your overall vision for children and youth ministry? What are some approaches that seem to work well for you guys?

DB: First of all, we’re very big on reminding our parents as much as we can that we are not the primary spiritual caregivers of your children. You are, as the parent. You are the primary disciple maker, not me. My goal is therefore to help you steward that great responsibility you’ve been given, and to encourage your children both in their love for the Lord and his word and in how to think Christianly for as much as I’m given the opportunity to do so. So that’s one side of it … Then it’s like, yes, Mom or Dad needs to be a spiritual caregiver of their child, but maybe Dad just got out of rehab and is holding on for his life right now, and maybe he doesn’t even know the Lord. So how do we engage a family and empower parents to do their God-given role while at the same time recognizing that maybe they are woefully incapable of it at this point? So that’s where we also step in and think programmatically about what we can give these kids that their parents are almost certainly not giving them right now.

In terms of teaching, for example, our youth meet on Wednesdays and Sundays. Wednesday nights are expository lessons through the Bible. They’re going to learn the Bible. Whatever book we’re in, they’re going to work through it. Then on Sundays, they are going to engage more in bigger worldview questions that are suited to each age group. So, middle schoolers are starting to ask that question of Who am I? High schoolers are starting to ask questions like Why am I here? What was I made for? What is my purpose? Young adults are wondering Where am I going? What does God want me to be? Who am I marrying? Where am I going to college? What is my career going to be? So on Sundays we try to approach different life stages with different worldview questions to help young people think about those things, while also providing a place on Wednesdays for them to just learn the Bible.

We also have other opportunities for engagement. We have one ministry called True Mark. This is the most Texas thing you’ll hear in this interview, but it is what it is. True Mark is actually a hunting ministry, and it’s been a very, very important ministry for us, way more important than I ever dreamed it would have been. What happens is we do father-son hunts, father-daughter hunts. We do veterans hunts. We do hunts with inner city kids that sometimes aren’t even a part of our church. For the father-son and father-daughter ministry; sometimes mothers come if there is no father figure whatsoever.

Anyway, there are a few things that happen on these hunts. One is it’s just an amazing experience. Kids almost always get their first deer on our hunts. We have really solid trained field guides that teach them how to shoot and then take them out, and they actually go hunting. And the properties that we are partnered with through various people are loaded with deer. So it’s an exciting memory-making thing. It’s also really good bonding time between parent and child, and especially if they’re coming out of a rough familial background, that is so critical. They also take food home. We process all the animals. Our youth minister actually processes everything. He knows how to do it all. So they each get many pounds of meat to take home and have for free, which is great.

M: This sounds fantastic. Hilarious, but also fantastic.

DB: It is, yeah. And there’s a powerful ceremony we do the first night of the hunt. If they’ve already shot a deer, we’ll start cleaning the animals — we teach them how to do all of that. And they each get a Bible. And we do this whole ceremony with the kids where we talk about the deer that they shot. We’ll ask them, like, “Did the deer know that you were there when you shot it?” And they’re like, “No.” “Did it do anything wrong to deserve to be shot?” “No.” “So it was an innocent animal?” “Yeah.” “And yet we killed it, right?” And we’ll have them dip their fingers in the blood and we’ll say, “The deer’s blood is not capable of doing anything for you as a person in need of forgiveness.” And then that’s when we’ll transition: “But the blood of the Lord is. He was innocent as well. He did not deserve to die. And yet his body and blood is infinitely more powerful than this animal you’ve killed.” So it’s just a powerful illustration for kids.

We’ve also done hunts with some of our inner-city kids in the neighborhoods that don’t have dads, and we’ve paired them oftentimes with retired law enforcement officials, because oftentimes kids in the inner cities have a very strained view of law enforcement, sometimes for good reason. So pairing them with an individual that represents something that they maybe have suspicions about and then developing these relationships with them down the road has been an amazingly powerful thing to watch. The grace that is exchanged between both of them is really cool.

M: That’s all very fascinating, and I definitely don’t want to get into the weeds here, but, no offense, Derrick, you don’t look like the most natural hunter. And you don’t sound like you’re from rural Texas. So how did this ministry even get started?

DB: Haha, yeah. My executive pastor Brian Duncan and a couple of the other guys in our church — one of them was a ranch manager for like ten years in Del Rio, and he is that guy, like everything you would imagine a ranch manager would be, an incredible guy — they just saw a need: we’ve got a lot of single parents with young boys especially that have never been fishing, have never been hunting, have never done the things that they grew up doing that meant so much to them. And it was like: we know how to do these things. So let’s try it with people at our church and see if there’s an interest. And there immediately was. Then it sort of developed from there. And then we were like, what if we did a father-daughter hunt? What if we did this or that? And it just sort of exploded into this amazing ministry. But yeah, the guys that lead these hunts, they are the guys that really know what they’re doing.

M: Switching gears: what is your best advice on preaching for someone right out of seminary? Other than, as you said, maybe don’t preach for an hour.

DB: Yeah, please don’t go an hour. So there are a few things. I don’t know how much of this is prevalent in your tradition. In my tradition, I hear a lot of guys who will be very hesitant to manuscript their sermons. Because, you know, I want to leave room for the Spirit, right? But that is the worst excuse I have ever heard in my life. I tell guys all the time: “You know the Holy Spirit is present in your planning as well, right? Like, he will also speak to you Monday through Saturday.” So I find that that’s just an excuse to be lazy and not thought-through or articulate in your sermons. Certainly, there are times when I preach where I feel as if the Spirit is leading me to really drill down into something that was not in my notes. But by and large, I feel like the Spirit leads me when I’m writing the notes as well. So, trust the ministry of the Spirit Monday through Saturday. That would be a big thing that I would say to pastors out of seminary…

Also, I would say preach Christ and his gospel. Always. Don’t miss the opportunity to proclaim the gospel to people. And there’s a saying that, again, is prevalent in my tradition, which is “Don’t bleed in front of your congregation.” Meaning, don’t be too transparent about the things that you’re struggling with. But I think that is the most antithetical Christian preacher posture you can have. Jesus bleeds in front of everyone. Obviously there are limits to how explicit you should be, but the idea that we should somehow present ourselves as not hurting or wounded is insanity to me. When I’m weak, he is strong. I mean, this is just basic Christianity. So yeah, bleed in front of your people. Be real. Be a human person. And remember that you’re speaking to real people.

You know, I preached a sermon on Sunday that was very theologically weighty. Hebrews 1:5–14. It’s like seven Old Testament allusions that present Christ as greater than the angels. There’s a lot to unpack and a lot that is theologically rich and wonderful. And I did all of that. But as I was working through it last week, I was like, man, this just feels like seminary. What is the single mom going to take away from this? What is the person who’s scared about the current political climate going to say about this? And in the end, I felt like the Lord just gave me the takeaways I needed to make it relevant to those people. It was the most theologically dense sermon I’ve preached in quite a while, and yet it was so applicable because, at the end of the day, when you distill down the supremacy of Jesus, there’s a lot of comfort in that. In a world full of chaos, Jesus is seated on the throne. He’s not worried, pacing around. In a world full of distractions, Jesus is exalted. There are so many things that want your attention, and yet the only one really worthy of your worship is the Lord.

So this is another sidenote for the new pastor out of seminary: you can do deep theology. You may be told that the average person doesn’t want all the theology, that they’re not going to understand it. No, they do want it, and they will understand it if you teach them. You just have to meet them at their level. You can’t assume they’re seminary students. But my experience has been that people are starving for rich theological beauty. It just has to be done in a way that they understand. But then don’t neglect to take that rich theological beauty and turn it into something that really pierces their heart.

M: Something many churches struggle with is how to talk about finances and fundraising in a way that is both healthy and not heavy-handed. What are your approaches on that particular topic?

DB: This is actually a very appropriate question for us right now. We just remodeled our gym, and it took money that we did not have. Now, normally, in especially evangelical traditions, money is a major thing. You feel like you hear about it all the time. Whereas in our particular context at City on a Hill, you never hear about it. That was a decision of my founding pastors — they were like, we’re never going to talk about it, we’re never going to ask people to give, and the Lord has provided for us, and it has been a very good thing. So, I would rather not hear about it than hear about it every Sunday.

But it occurred to me at some point that, if we’re being honest, in the evangelical and even non-evangelical American context, money is probably the number one idol in the life of the majority of churchgoers. So if the church is not instructing, if it’s not discipling its people on this issue, then we’re essentially just letting the biggest idol in their lives go uncontested. And that to me feels like not a fundraising issue but a discipleship issue. So last fall, I preached a four-week series titled “Money Myths.” And the point of it was not like “Give more money.” It was not “We’re building a building, and we need you to pony up.” In fact, I don’t think I really referenced the building at all…

With regard to our building project: we’re done with phase one, and we’ve got two or three other phases that we want to do to bring the campus into a more accommodating level, which is important because we’ve grown a lot. You know, three to four years ago, we had 250 people on Sundays, and last week we had almost 700 — and that’s just adults, not kids and students. So, we have really grown, and there are things we need to do to the campus to make it more accommodating for our current rhythm.

As far as the approach we’ve taken, what I typically will say is, “Listen, if we have been a blessing to you, if the ministries here have meant something to you and you’ve never financially contributed, I’m just going to ask you to consider what that would look like. It does not have to be a large amount. It doesn’t have to be any amount. We’re not doing this to earn your money. But if you feel led and would like to partner with us in this work, we would really be very grateful for that. These are the phases of work that we want to do. Right now we have enough money for this next phase, and then we’re going to halt the remaining things that we have planned until we have enough money to do those things. And so, really, the ball is in your court. If you want to see these things done more rapidly, then I encourage you to give.” We’re a debt-free church. We will not take on debt for those things, and so it’s just sort of in their court.

M: That’s great. What do you wish you’d known when you first started your ministry?

DB: Man, that’s a really good question. I wish I’d known that God does not always operate in the box that I think he’s going to operate in. I think I went into ministry thinking that, like, if you do A, B, and C things that honor the Lord, then God will probably respond in these other ways that directly correspond to that. And in my experience, sometimes God has done the exact opposite. And at the time it felt like, am I missing the mark? What is happening? But then over the course of time, I look back at some of the things that have happened and feel like, man, I am so glad that the Lord did that in that way. That was such a blessing in disguise.

Something I say to my staff all the time is “We just need to stay out of the way of what God is doing.” You know, in my tradition, there is this assumption that preachers are going to weigh in on every cultural thing that’s happened. And I had that same intuition when I first started in ministry — like, I got to make a statement! I got to weigh in on this! And the more I’ve lived and ministered, the more I realized it’s just a tactic of the enemy to draw us offside.

M: Yeah, it’s a trap.

It is. And the very moment you weigh in on something, you ostracize a number of people. And then the moment you criticize your own tribe, your own tribe turns on you. And so one of the things I tell young pastors all the time in the seminary here is “Don’t make ministry harder than it already is.” Ministry is hard. There are days where you’re tired. You’re like, what am I doing? Why am I here? Do I want to keep doing this for the pay that I get? There is zero need to make ministry even harder than it already is. And so I always try to ask myself, is my voice really needed in this thing? Because if it’s not, I’m not going to give it. Because I’m just going to piss someone off, and then it’s just extra work for me, and I don’t have time for the work I’ve already got. So I think, in ministry, let the main thing be the main thing. If I had to distill that answer down — what do I wish I’d known when I started? — just let the main thing be the main thing.

M: Totally. So, as a church that preaches grace, how do you manage difficult people?

DB: Haha. One of the things that we say a lot here is that “City on the Hill is a great place to heal. It’s a terrible place to hide.” What I mean by that is that problematic people — people that are living duplicitously for the sake of personal gain, perhaps — they get sniffed out faster than I know their name in our church. And the reason why is because every one of us were all really shady people at one time. Like, I know shady when I see it because I was it, right? You know, when sex addicts come into our church and have no interest in healing and they’re just there to maybe prey on people, well, I have like 25 recovering sex addicts that are like, “He’s a predator.” Like, “I’ve had five minutes of a conversation with him. He is not interested in any of this.” And that immediately puts him on our map. We don’t automatically kick him out, but it’s like, okay, let’s see where this goes, and let’s keep close eyes on them.

That’s, again, one of the benefits of being a messy church: messy people recognize messy people. It’s really difficult to carry out that kind of behavior in a place where everyone is like “A month ago, I was you.”

I will also say that we have removed members of our church, to be totally candid. We removed two of them last year. And I know that if you asked the people involved in the circle of those individuals “How did the church handle that?” the one critique they probably would say is the church waited longer than I would have liked for them to finally remove the person. I always want to err on the side of grace. So yeah, we do engage in discipline when necessary, but we really try to exhaust every effort before we get to that point.

When it comes to difficult people who are just on the more annoying side of things, we try to remember grace. We remember that their concerns are coming from a place of a felt need in their life, whether the sound is too loud or the room is too dark or the room is too bright or the chairs are this or that, or whatever … It’s like, you’re entitled to that frustration. I’m so sorry that that is affecting you negatively. If there’s reason to listen and hear actual critique, then we certainly will. We’re not above that.

M: Okay, last question: what aspect of your job do you hate the most, and what aspect do you love the most?

DB: I’ll start with what I love the most. I love teaching. I love seeing people get it for the first time. I love seeing people walk in obedience for the first time in such a way that they didn’t believe they could, and then they do and they’re like, “I can’t believe that just happened!” I love the joy of discovery and studying. I love God’s word.

The part of the job that I hate the most is probably the social pressure to, again, weigh in on everything, the social pressure to address certain political issues, to reduce faith into these very human categories. Having to contend with the overly religious right and left is so tiresome. Another thing I hate is seeing people destroy themselves. I hate seeing people in a place of rebellion that is so strong that they’re just unwilling to be reasoned with, and then to watch the fallout of it occur. Because it’s just so unnecessary. I hate seeing addicts lose their lives to overdoses. I’ve had to bury addicts that we were discipling that relapsed and died. And it’s just the senselessness of it that gets me, and yet it also highlights the real nefarious nature of sin and Satan. But I hate that, seeing people destroy themselves. That’s one of the worst parts of the job.

M: Well, Derrick, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thanks so much.

DB: I’m grateful. Please give Dave a big hug for me.

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Jesus’ interaction with the Pharisees is like going to a convention on vision where all the leaders are inflated by the certainty of their sight. The Pharisees are one group who cannot receive sight from Jesus. Their inability to recognize their own blindness seems to handcuff the miracle worker. 

Jesus tells Nicodemus, a Pharisee: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus can’t see. It’s possible to go through life with perfect vision but never really see.

Nicodemus has no clue what Jesus is talking about. Nicodemus doesn’t understand that the new birth comes through death, a movement from death to life. It is impossible for him to see the kingdom because he has not died to the framework that keeps him blind.

Nicodemus shows us a religious expert who cannot see. John 9 shows us what happens when the blind religious system that formed Nicodemus encounters someone who can.

The man born blind in John 9 presents a social and theological problem. He is completely misread by everyone around him. The disciples see him through the old sin frame. Either he sinned, or his parents sinned. That is the only explanation available to them. The Pharisees see him as a sinner and as a threat. His parents see danger. To the crowd, his identity is one who sits and begs. Jesus is the only person who really sees him.

One of the shockers of the story is that Jesus blows up the entire framework they are all operating in. The reason he is blind is so the glory can manifest. Nothing to do with sin. 

The blind man knows he can’t see. There are those who think they can see. He is certain he is blind. Others are certain they can see.

When he receives his sight, the community interrogates him instead of celebrating, and then they take him to the Pharisees. Good news and bad news: Jesus healed him on the Sabbath. This healing doesn’t happen in the context of the religious system and is therefore perceived as a threat. You are not allowed to play in the mud and heal on this day of the week.

Could you imagine? You are seeing for the first time in your life, and the next thing you know, you are escorted by a community (in which some believe you and some don’t) to be examined. The first place the community takes him is to a religious meeting to be scrutinized, and religious leaders are upset about the day of the week it happened on. The community is in bondage to the religious system and cannot receive the miracle. They cannot rejoice. They cannot let him see. They would rather have him blind than healed. Of all the places to take him, not to the mountains or the ocean or the woods but to the religious authorities. 

The Pharisees are authorized to interpret what happened. They are the arbiters of religious life and experience, and they, along with many in the community, believe they are called by God to do this.

His testimony to the religious leaders causes division among them and is ultimately condemned. The healing isn’t recognized because it happens outside their framework, and in their minds, healing can only happen through the framework. Anything outside the rigid framework is obviously suspect. There is a right way to do this, and this ain’t it.

This is what spiritual blindness looks like. It can look like certainty or exclusivity. Sometimes it looks like religious expertise. Sometimes it looks like a room full of people who know exactly who is healthy, who is sinful, who is mature, who is safe, who is dangerous, who is in, and who is out. This type of behavior is at its worst and most dangerous when it’s a group that collectively discriminates righteousness from ungodliness. Groupthink easily slips into a fog where vision gets muddy, and hearing and seeing become nearly impossible. 

I’m clean, and you are not. I can see the speck in your eye, but I can’t see the plank in mine. Self-righteousness blinds. The gospel critiques this because vision, hearing, and insight come to the one who knows he doesn’t have them. 

The implication is that the man is somehow wrong. His lived experience cannot be trusted. He is talked down to and his testimony is shamed. The man doesn’t know it, but he is talking to blind people.

Even his own family is afraid, self-protective, and unsupportive. They are living under the threat of guilt and possible excommunication. They don’t want to assume any connection or responsibility for this. He is responsible; he is of age. They want no part in advocating for him. He can speak for himself.  He is really growing up today. Their son, who just received his sight, is on his own.

Carl Jung writes:

The words “many are called, but few are chosen” are singularly appropriate here, for the development of personality from the germ-state to full consciousness is at once a charisma and a curse, because its first fruit is the conscious and unavoidable segregation of the single individual from the undifferentiated and unconscious herd. This means isolation, and there is no more comforting word for it. Neither family nor society nor position can save him from this fate, nor yet the most successful adaptation to his environment, however smoothly he fits in. The development of personality is a favour that must be paid for dearly.

That is what is happening to the man born blind. He is paying a big price for his healing. His sight is separating him from the blind herd. His vision makes him a target and then isolates him. His healing doesn’t bring him into community. It makes him a witness against the blindness of those who claim to see.

El Greco, Christ Healing the Blind (1570)

So they gaslight him:

Then again called they the man that was blind, and said unto him, Give God the praise: we know that this man is a sinner. (John 9:24)

Sin is brought up again. We are back in the guilt framework. It is what a system like this needs in order to function and survive. One translation says they “hurled insults at him.” Who does he think he’s talking to? Then they reveal how threatened and inferior they feel: “Are you trying to instruct us?” How could he have anything to teach them? They don’t have anything to learn, especially from him. They know it all.

This is what dead religion does to the whole person, healed and in his right mind. The Pharisees are confident that the man is a sinner and that Jesus is a sinner. Jesus never calls him a sinner; only the Pharisees do. The Pharisees say he has been in sin since birth, the complete opposite of what Jesus says about him. And in doing so, they displace their guilt onto him to cleanse their own conscience. He is the problem, not them. When the problem is always out there, always someone else, it takes the spotlight off crippling dead religion.

Having been healed, the man has experienced a new reality, one outside the sin framework. He narrates his deliverance without reference to sin or guilt: “I was blind and now I can see.” He is describing something to them they cannot see.

They are blind to the reality before them, to anything that does not fit within their framework. It is impossible for them to understand anything he is talking about. No one cares about his healing or his vision. He is wrong.

In a way, Jesus’ healing leads him to this very place. One of the most powerful institutions has publicly humiliated, labeled, and scapegoated this man. This is what the blind do to people with vision when they are exposed. The only person in the building who can see gets thrown out. He is discarded, even by his family. Counterintuitively, this is good news.

Dead religion cannot cure blindness because it depends on blindness. If there’s something wrong with you, dead religion promises, the solution is here — you just need to do a little more, be a little more. Wholeness is a threat to dead religion because whole people don’t need it. The arrangement is they have sight, you don’t, and you need them to see. But when you are healed you don’t need the mat, the cane, or the crutch, and you don’t sit and beg anymore. If a healer starts healing a bunch of people, then he might put the whole thing out of business.

Have you ever noticed how many sick, blind, lame, mute, and demonized people are sitting at the door of dead religion in the Gospels? And how disruptive and controversial their healings are? There is a system of dependency there. Dead religion sets its hooks at the site of people’s wounds, then keeps them on the line by promising something it can never deliver. Being healed is threatening because it removes dependency. This is not a place for someone with vision.

If rescue happens outside the religious leaders’ framework, then suddenly their framework is no longer needed. The invisible lines that tied the man to the expectations of those around him, the system of dependency on human systems or criteria, have been exposed and severed. He is no longer of the world but is liberated from it. His being cast out is simultaneously his being set apart, for it is in the wilderness of exclusion that a relationship can begin.

Jung writes:

The individual becomes morally and spiritually inferior in the mass, and for this reason they do not burden themselves overmuch with their real task of helping the individual to achieve a metanoia, or rebirth of the spirit … I can therefore see it only as a delusion when the Churches try — as they apparently do — to rope the individual into a social organization and reduce him to a condition of diminished responsibility, instead of raising him out of the torpid, mindless mass and making clear to him that he is the one important factor and that the salvation of the world consists in the salvation of the individual soul.

If the Pharisees knew of their own blindness, they would have freedom from sin or guilt. Their sin is that they think they can see. Some translations say their guilt remains. Their denial of their own blindness is what prevents Jesus from opening their eyes. All of it could wash away if they could come to grips with how blind they are. Because they can’t, they suffer under the weight of guilt. For judgment he came into the world.

Jesus appears to him the second time the way he did the first time: outside the religious system of the day. Jesus hears that he has been excommunicated and goes looking for him. Jesus is a friend to the excommunicated.

The man has found the real thing, the most essential thing. Something so much better than what he was just kicked out of. In rejection, he gets it. He worships and believes.

Sources:

C. G. Jung, “The Development of Personality,” in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 17, The Development of Personality, trans. R. F. C. Hull.

C. G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self, trans. R. F. C. Hull.

The post Blinded By Religion appeared first on Mockingbird.

Summer is just around the bend. The warm air has already reached us here in Portland, OR, and wrapped her hair in a bun, leaving our necks exposed to sweat it out. Depeche Mode plays “Personal Jesus” on the radio, and I smile when I think of Johnny Cash’s version. That old man in black sure knew a thing or two.

Most of the people I meet with in spiritual direction want one thing — to feel themselves beloved on this earth (just like Raymond Carver). “A Late Fragment,” he called it. As if something realized at the last minute. One last grab or touch onto Someone’s garment — wait. Something I can hold and feel and know is real. Tell me again. A frayed fragment of imagination, someone listening on the other line, someone to hear our prayers, someone who cares. Tell me I’m not just imagining it. Tell me it’s true.

Sometimes I know it’s true. When the windows are down and my hair is up and summer comes sweeping me off my feet. That’s what I’m afraid of. Being swept up.

***

I snuck away yesterday to my favorite Benedictine abbey, tucked away on a hill in Mt. Angel, Oregon. I asked six other women if they’d like to join me to steal back some time before summer arrives with our kids’ LET’S HAVE FUN NOW requests and our jobs’ demands while the air, quite literally, gets hotter and thicker. Stealing back time — a phrase Martin Laird refers to in his book Into the Silent Land as something that happens when we sit in centering prayer.

I drew a circle around the date I’d go to the abbey. This day I will steal back some time. This day, I will find my feet again and not be swept up.

I print out six copies of Jan Richardson’s reflection on Holy Absence, “A Blessing of Rest,” and a print of her artwork Circle of Quiet. A golden circle painted through overlapping textured squares. I’m not sure what we’ll find, but this circle cuts through time with one long continuous shhhhh, finger to her lips, Do Not Disturb sign. There is a war within a prayer closet.

I enter the abbey’s church an hour before their noon vesper. I am held within the circular architecture of her dome and archways. The only thing square is the bench upon which I settle, the tiles under my feet, and the seats the monks rise and fall upon while singing the Psalms.

I let this circle of quiet settle around me like a hush after a rainstorm hits hot pavement. I need silence to find myself, to find God, and I am desperate. Finally, after twenty minutes of listening to silence, it arrives.

I am within, now.

I am chiseling away at something. Some sort of recovery. I’m sorting and sifting, trying to find an origin of myself that was lost. I realize I’ve been at this for years. Recovering memories from my younger self, looking for God back then too. Another realization rises — I am chiseling away at my own soul. I have become my own source of judgement, blindly seeking recovery. There in the debris lies a chisel. Where has this come from? This incessant need to be so hard on myself. The chisel is sharp, and I’ve kept it in the fire for too long.

Martin Schleske, in his forthcoming book Listening Hands: Eavesdropping on the Sound of Life, describes this sharp, brittle chisel as a “blue-backed” blade. A blade that has become blue in the fire for the sake of sharpening. But it is overzealous and brittle, leaving notches and gashes in the grain of our soul where the Lord wishes there were only smooth engravings. In my recovery of self, I’ve found a tool. Something handed to me at a young age.

Here, work on yourself. This is how you will become holy. This is how you’ll become pleasing to Jesus. I am the firstborn daughter, and I was good. Look at all the ways I can prove myself. To do nothing? To not earn my keep? That I was a failure — an irresponsible letdown. When you let down the people you love, love becomes elusive. The thing is, the evil one loves to entice us with the law. I am allured by the temptation of refinement or sanctification and handed an overly sharp blue-backed blade. I’ve found it. Now I know where it comes from. It came as a whisper so long ago from the branches of The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil — Did God really say? Did he really say I am good and he delights in me? I would much rather be my own judge. You’re not good enough to be loved by God. You’re not worth it. The hand that holds this brittle, overly sharp blade is blind, impatient, and judgmental. It’s the sort of pride that relishes self-contempt, delights in being hard on ourselves. It’s the pride that says look at me, I’m bad, look how special I am by refining myself. By listening to the excuses of the evil one, I chiseled away at my soul, becoming inwardly hard until burnout became inevitable. In my soul, I truly believed that I was not worthy of God’s love. Not because I had done anything bad, it was the exact opposite — for eighteen years I had been good and been praised for it. Loved for it. To admit that none of it mattered and God still loved me was like a quick inhale of relief, but still holding my breath to open my eyes and make sure he’s not mad at me. I think this is why legalistic systems are so alluring. Their perceived safety, control, predictability, and performative rewards are enticing to sensitive souls. The evil one likes to use these systems to point out sin where there is no sin. Turning common everyday grace into something to be examined and criticized. If he can’t make our soul hard, he will tempt us to over-refinement. To quote Martin again, an over-refined soul is

a soul that suffers under the pressure of qualms and is scorched by its holy standards. Right where the blade is thin and sensitive, where it is impossible to distribute the heat, it burns, becoming blue-brittle — in modern day terms, it suffers burnout. The overly refined soul is never satisfied. It constantly craves a life that is happier, more fortunate, more sacred and holy. It sharpens itself blue through impatience and self-judgment … When you stop believing that God is your enemy, his mercy will heal your heart and you will become more merciful and gentler with yourself. You will stop taking to heart things that are not about you. The Holy Spirit says to the overly refined soul: “It is not you, but the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29).

And so, within this great circle of quiet, I lay down my blade. Consolation arrives from the Giver in the forms of courage and tears. But I think to myself, what a mess I’ve made. This is no matter to the One who loves us. We can lay down our blades, our sorting and solving, our fixing, our wrestling. “Why don’t you come and rest for awhile?” he says. Let that circle of struggle become a circle of quiet. It’s okay for us to remove ourselves. Let it become a “holy absence,” as Jan Richardson’s spiritual director called this circle of quiet. After all, our Lord is far more merciful and gentler on us than we are. Perhaps in all of our becoming, he is asking us to step away for a Sabbath within the corner of our souls and trust that in our absence, his good spirit is at work.

***

I return home with my friend in my car. We talk about this new-wave holiness sweeping over younger Christian women into an ideal utopia. The same insisting hand, chiseling away trying to find the origin to themselves. I reach my hand out into the wind of my rolled-down window, warm air greeting me in a rush, touching faith. Johnny Cash, this time. Touching that late fragment. Being entirely, and completely, swept up.

The post Circles of Quiet appeared first on Mockingbird.

I started to edit. After about 45 minutes, the number of single-sentence paragraphs became jarring, though not as much as what I can only call the incessant “groupings of statements” — small variations of the same thing, said three or four times in an almost preacherly way.

A few days prior, I’d attended a conference where there was a lot of talk about AI encroachments, so midway through it occurred to me that “huh, maybe part of this isn’t totally authentic.” So I googled the author, apparently a retired pastor living in the Midwest. The search returned the titles of a few self-published books on related topics, even a LinkedIn profile, albeit with no verifiable “connections.” I couldn’t find any pictures, though, which is odd for someone claiming to be retired clergy. I then consulted Goodreads, where plugging the “person’s” name into their search bar yielded 424 published works — all since 2024!

Disconcerted, I texted a friend in publishing who advised me to run the file through Pangram. Lo and behold: 100% AI-generated! Even more unsettling was the fact that, before I noticed anything fishy, I’d been in touch with the “author” asking if we should hold off on the post ’til closer to their (allegedly forthcoming) book’s release. They’d promptly replied, informing me that the cover had gotten pulled for redesign and wouldn’t be ready for preorder for a bit, but please by all means, go ahead and post. In other words, they “lied” to me?

I decided to run another recent article through the filter — one with a similar tone — and … bingo, another nonhuman submission. This time the subject was how to read scripture more honestly and prayerfully(!). I had again corresponded multiple times with the author/bot about edits, too. I don’t quite get what the endgame is, but it freaked me out, coming as it did a few days after Pope Leo’s encyclical. 

It feels absurd to have to say such a thing, but I suppose this is the world we live in now: Mockingbird intends to remain “By Humans, For Humans” come what may. As if you needed another reason to support our work! Oh and Christianity Today posted a pretty good AI Use Policy for Writers that we will do our best to abide by. 

2. The web is not exactly lacking in think pieces on the predicament I’ve just described. One that caught my attention was L. M. Sacasas’ generous take “Do Not Resign from Life” over on Substack:

We’ve made machines that can fly faster and farther than the swallow-tailed kite, but in no way does it follow that the kite should cease from its flight or that it is somehow diminished because of the advent of flying machines. That there is something else in the world that flies tells us nothing about whether the kite ought to fly. Of course it should fly because the point of flying for the kite is not to somehow demonstrate its uniqueness. It is blessedly free from such forms of existential angst, the experience of which might be the thing that does distinguish us as a species!

It seems to me that we would be better off if we were less preoccupied with the question of human uniqueness, if we took for granted that we are creatures of certain sort making their way in the world with a distinct set of capabilities and potentialities and that we ought to exercise these capabilities and develop these potentialities not because they make us special but because they make us happy. […]

Why should I cease from inhabiting the playground of language because a machine can pretend to play in it as well? Why should I abandon the exercise of judgment or the pursuit of knowledge? We must pursue these things not because the dignity of our humanity is on the line, but because our joy is.

Speaking of joy, that’s just one emotion the World Cup is poised to bring us meatbags this summer. Hopefully all the theme songs are as inspiring as this one:

2. The best rejoinder to the creeping AI-ization of all things I’ve come across this week has to be Alan Jacobs’ investigation into “[W. H.] Auden’s Faith” over at Homebound Symphony. With characteristic expertise and calm, Jacobs refutes Auden’s biographer Edward Mendelson’s claims about the great poet’s convictions (or lack thereof). This first anecdote is one I’d never heard but will definitely be repeating:

We know that Auden believed that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical person who “was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” There’s a funny story Mendelson has told about a lecture that Joseph Campbell gave at Smith College, when Auden was teaching there, in which he spoke of the oneness of Jesus and the Buddha, each of whom had spears thrust at him, though in the case of the Buddha they were transformed into flowers. Auden shouted from the back of the room, “ON GOOD FRIDAY THE SPEARS WERE REAL.”

Indeed! Also new to me was the passage from Auden himself that Alan reproduces earlier in the post:

The Gospels put the command to love God before the command to love our neighbor, not because it is more important, but because until we know who God is and how He loves us, we cannot grasp who our neighbor is or how we are to love him. The Word was made Flesh so that we might know, and the first thing which Christ forces us to realise is that the True God and the love he bears us are not at all what we expected or want: indeed, we thoroughly dislike both.

3. Before we leave off the embodiment theme, the Atlantic ran a wow-to-the-deadness-inducing article from Einstein’s Dream author Alan Lightman on “The Ordinary Miracle of Existing.” I may not find his conclusions terribly compelling — at least, would suggest an alternate object for our gratitude — but the same does not apply to the wonder he evokes at the miracle of, well, grace:

There are a hundred thousand billion unique and different human beings that could result from each procreation event. Only one of those possible combinations led to each of you reading this article at this moment. Here’s a way to visualize that extremely tiny fraction. If you took a very long ruler that stretched from here to the planet Pluto, one inch of that distance would be you. The rest of the distance would be other possible human beings that could have been, but never were. Each of us has won a lottery with a hundred thousand billion different players.

Being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck we will ever experience. Yet it is the easiest to overlook, to take for granted. We wake up in the morning, have our coffee, make breakfast, send the kids off to school, check off items on our to-do list. And we forget that beneath all of it lies something profoundly rare: existence itself. The simple fact that we are here, conscious and aware, is so unlikely that it borders on the miraculous. Because we experience that miracle every day, we treat it as ordinary, even guaranteed, mostly unnoticed at all. […]

As each of us dwindles in size by comparison to the cosmic stretches of space and of time, our individual lives, our improbable existence becomes more and more important. With the understanding of my great good fortune, I also feel a sense of responsibility. But to whom, or to what, am I responsible?

4. Back on terra firma, over at the NY Times, Jessica Grose urges readers to “Stop Location-Tracking Your Friends and Lovers.” What is more depressing here: the fact that the practice has become so commonplace that her injunction warrants a headline in our paper of record, or the fact so many people have good reason to disregard it? I’m not sure. But I am sure that Grose comes up with my second-favorite aphorism of the week (the first being “the spears were real”), the closing observation that “surveillance isn’t always the basis of a solid bond.” Laugh or you’ll cry, my friends:

I did a nonscientific, casual survey of friends and colleagues, and there seemed to be a real generational divide: Roughly, anybody under 35 seemed to think location sharing was no big deal, and one shared her phone location with 34 people. People over 35 said they might share their location briefly if they were going someplace dangerous, or needed to find someone at a crowded concert. But they did not share as a default. Most of them felt that having their movement tracked was invasive and micromanaging. […]

Sinead Smyth, a family therapist based in California, thinks there are enormous, and mostly negative, implications to location sharing for couples and friends. “It generates more suspicion and questions than it provides answers,” Smyth wrote in an email. “What happens if the partner turns off the sharing? It inserts the notion of wrongdoing into a relationship unnecessarily, which can lead to increased defensiveness, secrecy, conflict and lower trust.”

5. I’m coming up short with humor this week, apart from the Reductress headline “Woman Who Says ‘Go Big or Go Home’ Should Really Choose Going Home Occasionally.” Fortunately cartoonist Natalya Lobanova dropped this bit of perfection on Instagram:

6. Actually there are more than enough tidbits in this next article for it to qualify as humor (adjacent). I’m referring to “The Men Who Lie About Their Height” by Brady Brickner-Wood in the New Yorker, which explores the increasingly absurd lengths to which men will go to silence the accusation of little-l law (in pursuit, usually, of love). How tall is tall enough, Mr. Wembanyama? It would appear the answer is, “Just a little taller.”

In recent years, the rise of dating apps — some of which allow users to set height preferences when browsing potential matches — has made height exaggeration even more ubiquitous. “I have gone on dates with multiple men that have all starkly lied about their height. STARKLY,” one woman shared on Reddit. “This has happened multiple times and I’m just so confused.” Some men argue that these lies are necessary to land a date at all: it’s common for women to specify on their profiles that they’re only interested in men taller than them, leaving shorter guys stuck between, on the one hand, being truthful and ignored, and, on the other, lying and getting more matches. Studies suggest that men are frequently opting for the latter.

In 2008, a group of researchers found that more than eighty per cent of surveyed participants physically misrepresented themselves on dating profiles, with men distorting their height significantly more than women did. […] Some women have even begun using A.I. tools to assess a man’s photos in hopes of using his proportions and surroundings to estimate his true height. […]

The online subculture known as looksmaxxing claims to offer a set of newfangled solutions for men—many of them short, many of them incels—to increase their sexual and social status… The methodology for achieving such goals spans from the mundane (lift weights; eat healthy; take showers) to the deranged (smoke methamphetamine; smash your face with a hammer; inject high doses of anabolic steroids).

For men under six feet, looksmaxxing influencers suggest several solutions for increasing their “sexual market value”: stand on your tiptoes (“tiptoemaxxing”); wear platform shoes; perform spinal stretches; or, to truly ascend, undergo a limb-lengthening procedure that can add up to six inches of height. And men are indeed lengthening their limbs, flying to international clinics, having metal rods inserted into their bones, and then, after a brutal recovery process, relearning how to walk. […] With enough optimization and intervention, their argument goes, the body can be manipulated into becoming fully knowable, mastered, perfect. And, once they become perfect, they’ll never need to tell a lie again.

7. Finally, Nadia Bolz-Weber preached the best Trinity Sunday sermon I’ve encountered in eons, “Creatures from the God Lagoon”, which you can read on her Corners Substack. I dare say, it speaks to people of all shapes and sizes.

We know what 1+1+1 is. It’s supposed to be 3. But here’s the thing about supposed-to-bes: supposed-to-bes are not always helpful in the end. If our kids majored in computer science, they were supposed to be employable for life. If we are good people, bad things are not supposed to happen to us. If you eat broccoli every day, you are not supposed to get a cancer diagnosis. Supposed-to-be’s are just our brains telling us we are justified in resenting reality. […]

In the Gospels the disciples were in their own crisis of supposed-to-bes. They were supposed to be Jesus’s team – supposed to stand by their teacher but they couldn’t stay awake one hour. Jesus wasn’t supposed to die but he did. And then Jesus was supposed to stay dead, and he didn’t.

So after several days of things not going the way they were supposed to, Jesus stands among them – Holiness in the flesh right before their eyes, but some doubted. Those are my people. The ones who can’t see God right in front of them because they are too wrung out by how whatever is happening is not what they think should be happening. […]

But here’s the thing, friends – God only exists in what is real, God is nowhere to be found in imaginary places where everything is just the way we think it is supposed to be. God is only in reality. And our disappointments are often born in the gap between what is and what our very confident brains insist what should be. […]

Maybe the last thing we need is a God who makes complete sense to the same brains that keep using formulas that make us miserable. Because a God I can fully explain is just a God I invented. And I’ve tried that. My invented God has let me down every single time; because my invented God is basically just me, with super powers and slightly better judgment. […]

Right now, I really need a 1+1+1=1 God. A God bigger than my explanations. What I need is a peace that passes understanding. A peace that sees understanding nods its head and keeps on going. Since life doesn’t unfold the way it’s “supposed to” then what I need is a God who defies the reason and logic and Newtonian physics of my own ideas of who God is “supposed” to be.

Strays

• “Wendell Berry’s Wisdom for Living in Time” in Plough
• Weekend listening rec is definitely the long-awaited new episode of PZ’s Podcast, “Lorna Doone? Brigadoon!” Oh and the last Mockingcast of the season has been recorded and should post Monday morning. It’s a fun one.
• Spotify subscribers should do the right thing and pre-save Andy Squyres’ new Praise Songs EP, which is out next week. I’ve had the delight of listening to an advance copy, and you guys…!
• “The Strange Appeal of the Solitude Influence” by Faith Hill explores “one of the more supportive corners of the internet I’ve seen. But it was also odd: strangers gathering, to celebrate being alone.”
• I alluded to it in passing above, but this past week, we sent out our semi-annual fundraising appeal. If Mockingbird means something to you, we sure could use your help. As always, monthly donors receive a complimentary subscription to our print magazine, as well as snazzy a ballcap.

The post May 30-June 5 appeared first on Mockingbird.

SYNOPSIS

Katie Davis reports on a hometown friend, Bobby, who has “Returned to the Scene of the Crime.” Known to others as a robber and a con, Bobby has cleaned up and come back home looking for a fresh start. He even decides to coach a little league team. Working with kids who are a lot like him, e.g., Benjamin, he finds a new identity.

There’s the holiday dinner, when everybody’s back in town. Sitting around the table that fed them, and didn’t feed them, each family member finds themselves sucked back into their old roles again — or struggling with all their might not to be.

There’s the inopportune run-in with the ex-girlfriend, the trivial formalities amidst whirling heartache and inexpressible distance. You see the face of someone you once loved and feel the sad weirdness of that “once” being a once and not an always, the revelation that you haven’t seen that sweater on her before, that her life’s somehow continued without you.

There are the various reunions with friends — the ones you’ve kept up with, and the ones you haven’t. The receding hairlines, the weight gain, the new spouses, the career trajectories; you compare what you wanted to be then with what you are now. You make retrospective judgments about whether or not you landed on the right side of the tracks.

Returns are almost never easy, most certainly when you are returning to a place where you had some trouble. Even if things have changed, scars inevitably remain, the people you’ve hurt, the memories stained into the fabric of the place itself. You are still you, and the places you’ve left behind are still charged with your past. In many ways, the presence of your absence lingers.

Still a Scumbag: Coming Home to Your Inner Thug

So it is with Bobby’s neighborhood, the scene of the crime, with many of the same actors lurking around, and Bobby still cast in the role of criminal. Despite the fact that he has “gotten his act together” — he’s no longer using, he’s even coaching a little league team — his past still looms skeptically like Katie Davis from her stoop, waiting for him to crash and burn.

Katie Davis: I haven’t seen him in a few months. And he’s kind of gliding along, smoking a marlboro. That’s the way he’s carried himself since sixth grade, when I first met him — one of the bad boys from over on calvert street . . . . inside I’m thinking, “Who’s he kidding? he’s rail-thin, he’s sweating. it looks like he’s been using all winter” . . . . Bobby flicks his burning cigarette into the street and watches me, waiting for more reaction. This is the same Bobby I loved and tried to save for a whole year, Bobby who stole $60 from my house to buy heroin and swore to God, swore to his own dead daughter, that my dog Purdy ate the money. And this is his latest plan to get clean, coaching a bunch of 10, 11, and 12-year-olds, rounded up by the D.c. Department of recreation. All I can say is, “That’s great.”

“Never accepted in your hometown” is an understatement. Whether or not you’re different than the name you made for yourself, you’ve got the same name, and you’ve got to face the faces that know it. As William Faulkner famously said, “The past ain’t dead. Hell, it ain’t even past.” Bobby’s past is very much alive in the eyes of his hometown — he is still imprisoned by the name he earned, not Bobby but “two and a half years on assault and possession charges.” The name he must confront is Thug.

Bobby’s change of heart does not mean that he has detached himself from the “crime scene,” merely that he is awake to it. Katie observes in his voicemail, “I know Bobby’s clean because if he were still using heroin, nothing could puncture his detached haze. He’s sounding awake and rattled.” He is no longer detached from the reality of his circumstances — he sees clearly what others see in him. In a sense, he has accepted his own innate urges, his inner-criminal. Here is how Bobby puts it:

Bobby: It’s hard to explain, really. it’s a roller coaster of emotions. There’s times — and right when I’m feeling like the world is wonderful, when everything is going my way, I’ll see someone that I had conned out of a few hundred bucks. And the voice in my head will immediately say, “See there? You’re still a scumbag. remember when? Look, that’s who you really are.”

. . . it depends on how I feel. And there’s times when I might be feeling real insecure and I’ll put that macho thing up. And I’ll put the cocky thing up and hope they say something wrong to me so that I can go south with it . . . . I want to. There’s a part of me that still wants to be a thug. There’s a part of me still very capable of being a thug. I just wouldn’t be able to be a real good thug with my hands because I’m older. I’d have to get a weapon now.

Some might claim that the inner-criminal is automatically chased away by turning one’s life around. It does not work this way for Bobby, nor does it for anyone. If anything, it seems that Bobby is more aware of his scumbaggery than ever. If one doesn’t understand what one’s done and who one is, how can there be any hope of getting better? The steadfastness of one’s inner-scumbag is the properly low anthropology that bouts with addiction reveal to a person. As the Big Book of Alcoholic Anonymous proclaims, “Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago” (The Anonymous Press Mini Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous. Malo: The Anonymous Press. 2008. p. 24). Bobby may now be clean; he may be in the dawn of new life, yet he remains on intimate terms with the compulsions and desires that would propel him right back into the old life. He knows he is an inch away from thug.

Bobby’s change of heart reveals a counterintuitive truth. The crime scene is where real change happens, not at the margins but the heart of the problem, where healing is most painful. Confronting the crimes of his youth, the people he has hurt, the lies he has told, Bobby must come honestly before himself, which often involves making a hopeless assessment of his circumstances. As he passes someone he’s conned in the past, he immediately condemns himself: “This is who you are. You cannot be anyone else. Your past is your present and your future.” Despite that the rest of the story contradicts this assessment, it is no less true that, when brought to confront the depths of who we are and what we have done, a powerful and tempting surge of nihilism accompanies. Bobby returns to the scene of his crimes a new man and yet that new man stands in conflict with himself.

“Coach:” The Twofold Ministry of Imputation

Fortunately, Bobby’s story doesn’t end there. From the moment that the kids begin to call him “Coach,” something beautiful happens. We see how the disasters of Bobby’s previous life serve as preconditions for new life and new hope. Returning to the baseball field where he once went prodigal, he now hits groundballs to nine neighborhood kids who call him Coach.

Bobby: You know, it didn’t really hit me at first, you know? I took them to a picnic a couple of weekends ago that some recovering alcoholic and addict friends of mine threw. And to hear people there, “Hey, Bobby. Hey, Bobby,” and then to hear this group of kids that I came with, “Hey, coach. Hey, coach,” that’s when it sort of hit me. Hey, man, That’s who you are. And these people now see me as Coach, not just Bobby the recovering dope fiend, you know? He’s Coach. so that makes me feel good to have these kids call me coach. So now, I have this little small part in shaping what their day’s gonna be like, you know?

From the heart of his own personal tragedy, from the neighborhood where he “got it all wrong,” comes a new name. It is more than a new name, it is a new identity. The same re-dignifying takes place in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our old natures are taken in by Christ and we are covered with, or imputed, the clothes of righteousness and favor. In the same bad neighborhood, we are given a brand new name. We are reckoned Righteous (Genesis 15:6) despite our conflicted desires and wanderings

Does this mean nothing inherently changes about Bobby’s life? Is imputation, as one theologian has put it, merely a “‘legal abstraction’”? No more than a court verdict is merely a legal abstraction. Bobby is called “Coach” by these children. To the kids, he’s not a dope fiend, or a thug, or an ex-felon. He even tries to convince them of this, but they don’t hear it — they can only see him as Coach. And the transfer of title profoundly changes Bobby. As being given a gift — the gift of nagging, whining, punk kids, no less! — Bobby is suddenly given purpose, clarity, and love. It is as if the imputation itself evokes the office it named. That is, being called “Coach,” he became a coach. He sees the very place of his pain and suffering — his neighborhood — as a new neighborhood with new — tenuous though they are — desires:

Bobby: I don’t want to have to avoid my neighborhood. I don’t want to have to avoid my community playground because I let these kids down because I’m a drunken dope fiend [bleep] bum, which is what I’d become if I go have a beer right now or some dope right now. Tomorrow I’m a bum because all the good feelings are gone.

I don’t want to feel the shame which I felt from relapses. And it’s big time shame. it’s shame. I won’t be able to look these kids in their eyes, in their faces. I’ll duck them. God, I’m 42 years old, and I would have to come in my own neighborhood and duck children because I’m ashamed. I don’t want that.

. . . I was walking after a practice like a week or two ago. I swear to god, I walked across Duke ellington bridge to the subway, and I started crying. I start crying because I was so [bleep] happy. So happy that, damn, this is probably going to work out. I’m probably going to be able to pull this off.

New Life for Bobby and the Bobbys

New life also arises here out of incarnational love. Not only has the rag-tag group of younger Bobbys imputed to Bobby a new life; Bobby is able to pour an irrational amount love and support into his team precisely because they are younger versions of himself, because he sees himself in them. He loves them because he has been them. This is most clearly expressed in his love for Benjamin, who reminds him of himself at that age:

Bobby: Benjamin, he’s my favorite because I just see me, more so than any other child on that team. I don’t know what his home life is like. But from what I can see, he’s emotional. And when he feels cheated or done wrong, he reacts exactly like I always reacted—violently, verbally with the violence. And he just goes off and, “[Bleep] you, and [bleep] the team.”

Well, that’s me. That was me. And in ways, it still is. When I get my feelings hurt, I don’t always say, “You really hurt my feelings.” I say, “[Bleep] you, mother [bleep]” And you know what I do? What i’ve done for a lot of years is I would hurt myself because someone hurt me. Well, Benjamin does that at practice.

No love feels genuine except that which moves into our places of pain. This is the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) — love reaching into the ditch and pouring its life into the beat-down stranger. Likewise, it seems that the ministry that best reaches people is motivated by this kind of love, the honest kind that accompanies suffering. This kind of love cannot be faked or manufactured. Many times it is only as powerful as the Other’s ability to understand and empathize with the sufferer’s suffering. And this is why Bobby favors Benjamin — he completely understands where the boy is coming from. There’s no judgment, there’s only compassion because what holds Benjamin back still lives inside of Bobby. This is what theologians call communio peccatorum, the community of sinners, the grace that can spring up between two people who come from the same home: the common neuroses and baggage allow an avenue for compassion that could not exist between two people from different backgrounds.

This is not a hard and fast rule, but it seems to be true in many circumstances. We trust people who we feel understand what we’re going through, and we tend to parse the words of those who do not. If we feel our context is not understood, it is nearly impossible to be convinced of anything. On the other hand, there is a reason why we feel more comforted by the presence of people who come from where we come from. All the more so in ministry: in the ditch, no one wants to hear from someone who’s never been there. The good news is that, despite the circumstantial differences, we have all been in the ditch — ministry entails knowing yourself well enough to communicate your compassionate sameness with whomever you find lying alongside you there. Ministry involves “Breaking the Fourth Wall,” speaking from your inner ditch in such a way that it trembles into your neighbor’s heart, who is also in the ditch (Zahl, Paul F. M. “Breaking the Fourth Wall: A Mockingbird Preaching Seminar.” Pensacola: 2010. http://www.mbird. com/2010/12/breaking-fourth-wall-mockingbird/). Ministry is not condescension; a beggar cannot condescend to another beggar — he can only meet him where he is, which is where they both are, and point to the only one who can condescend.

This is why Bobby loves Benjamin, not because Benjamin is who Bobby used to be, but because Benjamin is who Bobby still is. There is no other explanation; Bobby does not self-consciously ascribe to some radical inner-city social justice ethic; he has not (to our knowledge) taken social work classes in the evenings; he has not read up on “How to Love the Tough Kid”; he is the tough kid, he is the inner-city, he is the thug. No reading need be done, nothing need be accomplished that hasn’t already been given. This is the givenness of authentic ministry, an imputative power one has solely based on the life one has already lived. You share the message of love in the way the message was brought to you — which, coincidentaly is the only way you will be able to share it, at least with any depth. Any other process would have left Bobby exhausted and resentful, and Benjamin angry and patronized. The same can be said of church dynamics:

In the first place, preachers require a history of grace in relation to their own personal sin and sorrows. Unless preachers have individual knowledge of their own form of original sin and total depravity, they have nothing to offer to which anyone else can relate. Grace has to be the core of preachers’ own story in order for their sermons to carry any impact. if this is not so, they will preach law and exhort. Then they will become angry at their own dispirited and paralyzed listeners. (Zahl, Paul F.M. Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2007. p. 233.)

We have all been on both sides of this equation. You know when you’ve felt condescended to, and you know when you’ve felt understood. Condescension happened when you had just finalized your divorce, and received all the pity-glares at church. Condescension was when someone gave you hollow advice after you lost your job and your depression kicked back in. Most of the time, those who condescend are also those who are obsessed with their own ability to fix. You almost want to gain more weight just to prove them wrong. The crazy thing about the opposite — compassion — is that it rarely advises at all. It never seeks its own way, but only advocates for you: it never sits so that but simply sits with. You suddenly feel that the issues you are battling are so common that you actually forget the self-defenses you had set up. You don’t need to defend yourself. There is nothing you can say that hasn’t already been understood or experienced by the person you’re with. You are not alone, and it’s okay.

In fact, imputation happens on two levels in this story. In the same way that the title “Coach” was thrust upon Bobby, Bobby gave his scruffy group of unreliable and disrespectful thugs the name “Team.” Another case of “Love to the loveless shown / That they might lovely be” (Crossman, Samuel. “My Song Is Love Unknown” (1664). The Hymnal 1982. NY: The Church Hymnal Corporation. 458).  Troublemakers become something altogether different on that grubby baseball diamond.

The Effect of Imputation: Do We Ever Change?

Or don’t they? One might object that there does not seem to be any discernable change in the boys. The fields stay shabby, the boys get to play two baseball games the whole season, they’re still getting in fights, Benjamin’s disappeared — what kind of lessons are these kids learning about love? That it is good to hope, even if hope gets you nowhere? If “imputation evokes the office it gives,” where’s the Team here? They still seem like a ragtag group of delinquents.

These questions are the questions we ask about our own lives as well, about those who are dear to us, about the world at large. Why don’t things change that much on the whole?

Well, it seems clear what the answer is not. Change is not a matter of choice. When radical transformation does happen, it is the miraculous exception, not the rule. But its recipients often promote the illusion, however well-meaning, that radical change is possible with the right kind of stuff. “If you can summon the mojo, you can make the change.” This flies in the face of the countless people who have honed their mojo until they were blue in the face, and found the same face in the mirror when they came around again. These narratives advance a linear mythology of progress and leave out the inconvenient circuitousness and seasonal loop-deloops. We are talking about recidivism. People may always be moving closer to old age, but they are also always moving back to where they started, and around again. Our obsession with forward progress binds us to a shallow understanding of how we actually work.

Despite this, changes do happen, things do move forward, improvements are made — just seldom as quickly or as overtly as we would like. We often don’t know we’vechanged or how life has changed us until we stop and look back. And even then, such measurement is rarely a conscious or intentional project; it usually happensdespite us, especially in the face of love. The same is true with the boys on the team. Sure, they still bicker and run off, but they have experienced the love of their coach — and the changes come embodied in an awareness and acceptance of it.

Boy: When he told me that he came from prison and got shot in his neck, I thought he was just another one of them people who like to talk about their life and then get over it. But I learned to understand him.

KD: How do you understand him?

Boy: He don’t want no trouble. he just wants us to listen to him. But I guess as you grow into people, you start to have more patience.

KD: As you roll into people?

Boy: Grow. You start to have more patience. And I think that’s what’s happening.

KD: The Department of Recreation gives Bobby an ID badge, which he wears around his neck when he comes down to the neighborhood, like a sign. “i am no longer a dope fiend. I’m doing something good.” Most people might keep it in their pocket. Bobby wears it right on his chest.

This is the badge of love. It is the love that has begotten love without expectation for change. It is the love that shows up. When “the grass is shin-high, there’s a pile of dirt in the outfield,” with “no fans, no parents,” Bobby is there with his boys, the Coach and his Team. Jesus, our Good Samaritan, wears the same badge of love. Having gone to the ditch before us, the scene of the crime, he accompanies our grief, comes to us in our sufferings, and gives us new life.

For more, check out the full This American Gospel, available on our site and Amazon. The full TAL story (Act 3 of Ep. 164) can be found here.

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