A Georgia police officer named Jacob Kersey made this post to his personal Facebook account earlier this month: “God designed marriage. Marriage refers to Christ and the church. That’s why there is no such thing as homosexual marriage.” The next day, his supervisor informed him that someone had complained about the post and instructed him to take it down.

When Kersey refused, the supervisor warned him that failure to delete the Facebook post could result in his termination. He was placed on paid administrative leave for a week, then told he could not share personal opinions on social media that someone might find offensive.

Next, Kersey received a letter explaining that “if any post on any of your social media platforms, or any other statement or action, renders you unable to perform, and to be seen as [unable] to perform, your job in a fair and equitable manner, you could be terminated.” By this logic, any statement made by any person on any subject that another person deems not to be “fair and equitable” is grounds for dismissal.

Realizing that he could continue his career with the department only if “I compromise my values, morals, and deeply held religious beliefs,” Kersey resigned his position.

“The core of who I am”

You and I cannot control what secular authorities do about our biblical beliefs. But we can control how we respond to what they do.

One option is to pay any price to serve Christ as our Lord. After he chose this approach, Jacob Kersey explained his response: “I am grateful for the opportunity that I was given to be a police officer. I do not take that honor and responsibility lightly. However, my integrity and Christian beliefs are at the core of who I am, and I will not abandon them.”

The other option is to succumb to cultural pressure to privatize our faith, treating Jesus less as our Lord and more as a means to our ends.

This temptation is more subtle and attractive than we may think.

“Honest but reluctant taxpayers”

C. S. Lewis likened Christians who engage in religious activities to “honest but reluctant taxpayers. We approve of an income tax in principle. We make our returns truthfully. But we dread a rise in the tax. We are very careful to pay no more than is necessary. And we hope—we very ardently hope—that after we have paid it there will still be enough left to live on.”

His analogy seems especially appropriate these days as tax preparation companies inundate the airwaves with ads seeking our business. However, I think an even better analogy for religious engagement in our culture is paying for insurance.

We buy a policy to obtain the benefits we wish to receive. We make our payments each month to keep these benefits available to us. We then draw on them as needed—medical bills, house expenses, etc.

But few people have a personal relationship with their insurance providers. I have no idea the names of those who insure our family, for example. We pay what is required (and hopefully no more) to receive the benefits we seek.

“Only pay for what you need”

I have written often over the years about this transactional religion so common to our culture. From the ancient Greeks and Romans to today, our society thinks we can give God (or the gods) what they want (going to church on Sunday, praying, reading the Bible, donating money, and so on) so that God (or the gods) will give us in turn what we want.

But I think there’s something even more foundational behind our impulse to treat God like an insurer whose benefits we procure by our religious “payments.”

You may have seen the insurance commercials on television these days with the pitch, “Only pay for what you need.” This is a tempting way to relate to God in that it limits his activity in our lives to what we want him to do in our lives. When we need forgiveness for our sins or direction for our decisions, he’s waiting on the other side of our prayers, or so we think. But if he wants to point out sins we don’t want to stop committing or lead us in directions we don’t want to go, that’s another matter.

Here’s the problem: God knows our needs far better than we do. Limiting his benevolence to our ignorance is unwise for us and grieves our Father.

“The deepest desires of your heart will be fulfilled”

To return to our insurance analogy, imagine that your insurers know the future better than you know the present. Consequently, they know about the storms that will damage your roof next spring, the leaking water heater that will flood your garage next fall, and the broken water pipes that will ruin your carpet the following winter. They therefore offer you insurance you don’t know you need.

Now, to extend the analogy further, suppose that they are willing to pay the premiums themselves. All you need to do is to ask for their best and trust their answers.

Would you make that decision?

If so, I invite you to make Henri Nouwen’s prayer your own:

I so much want to be in control.
I want to be the master of my own destiny.
Still I know that you are saying:
“Let me take you by the hand and lead you.
Accept my love
and trust that where I will bring you,
the deepest desires of your heart will be fulfilled.”
Lord, open my hands to receive your gift of love.

Amen?

Denison Forum

Let’s start with the good news: the White House announced yesterday that the US plans to end the coronavirus public health emergency on May 11. According to the New York Times, this is “a sign that federal officials believe the pandemic has moved into a new, less dire phase.”

Now to the bad news: A report released yesterday by the world’s largest humanitarian network states that the world remains “dangerously unprepared” for the next pandemic, which could be “just around the corner.” The World Health Organization is currently monitoring nine “priority diseases” that pose the greatest public health risk. One of them is labeled “Disease X,” acknowledging that “a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease.”

I found this news disconcerting but personally less relevant since there is nothing I can do about “Disease X” or any other pathogen. However, this headline also caught my eye: “Tens of Thousands of Americans May Have This Deadly Disease—and Not Even Know It.” I quickly read the story to discover the nature of this “deadly disease” and whether I might have it.

And I saw an online life expectancy calculator in today’s news and immediately took it myself.

Why I changed my sermon last Sunday

The brevity and uncertainty of life is on my mind and heart today because of something that happened two days ago at the Chapel where I speak on Sundays.

I was about to begin my message when our executive pastor told us that someone was in need of special prayer. It turned out, a couple in the service had received word that their thirty-six-year-old son had just died. He left three small children.

We gathered around the couple to pray for them and to grieve and weep with them. After they left to be with their family, I changed my message to a conversation about trusting God with our worst fears and grief.

We began by acknowledging the shock we all felt. Children are supposed to bury their parents—parents are not supposed to bury their children. This is every parent’s worst nightmare and greatest fear.

It’s something we think could never happen to us, until it does.

Filtering the world through two prisms

This is how many people approach the subject of death itself.

I was troubled about VEXAS, the “deadly disease” in the news, until I learned that I don’t have its symptoms. But I’m choosing to ignore the pandemic which could be “just around the corner” since there is nothing I can do personally to prevent it.

I think most of us respond to such threats in a similar fashion. We filter them through two prisms: Do they affect us personally? If so, is there anything we can do about them personally? If the answer to both questions is not yes, we find something else to think about.

This is because most Americans are pragmatists, measuring truth by what works for us. In fact, the philosophical school called “pragmatism” (from the Greek pragma, “action”) originated in the US and has been deeply influential on our culture.

Some pragmatic philosophers even believe that “a claim is true if and only if it is useful.” Since the story about the next pandemic is not useful to most of us, we feel free to ignore it if we wish.

You and I are not Jesus

The biblical worldview is far different.

In God’s eyes, every person is valuable as a bearer of his image (Genesis 1:27), someone for whom Christ chose to die (Romans 5:8). As a result, I should be concerned for those who have VEXAS whether I have the syndrome or not. And I should be troubled about the global consequences of the next pandemic whether I can prevent it or not.

The good news is that our Savior feels everything we feel, whether others empathize with us or not. In fact, he “loves each of us as if there were only one of us,” as St. Augustine said.

Now he wants to do the same through his church, the “body of Christ,” as we continue his earthly ministry today (1 Corinthians 12:27). However, you and I are not Jesus. We cannot feel as deeply as he feels for even one person, much less everyone in the news and in our lives.

But if we will ask, he will direct us to a hurting person we are to help in his name. He will give us his heart for this person until we “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15) and incarnate his grace in our compassion.

I believe he has such a person for each of us to love today. Will you ask him for yours?

The gospel on five fingers

Here’s the rest of the story: as we share Christ’s presence with hurting people, we experience Christ’s presence more deeply in our souls.

When people asked Mother Teresa why she loved the poor so much, she would point them to Jesus’ statement, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). But she did so in a very personal fashion: she took their hand and slowly wiggled one finger at a time as she said, “You-did-it-to-me.”

What will you do to Jesus today?

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Denison Forum