Tag: body of Christ

The Alex Pretti Shooting: It’s Black and White

The black and white narratives could not be more divergent

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I am reeling in sadness today, and I realize my sadness is multi-layered. The shooting and death of Alex Pretti on the cold streets of Minneapolis yesterday is tragic, regardless of the narrative anyone believes about it. The narratives we believe also expose the polarization in the United States of America and, more specifically, the dark and tragic reality of the polarization in the body of Christ in this country.

Yesterday, as I read how believers from other countries are responding to the killing of Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minnesota, I was struck by how united they were in their narrative of what happened – unlike believers in our country at the moment.

The narratives we are telling are wildly divergent, despite many videos from different angles. The narratives people began to tell immediately after live coverage was shared to a watching world diverged as dramatically as black and white, and people have planted Christian flags on both sides.

The President and the Department of Justice issued public judgments while the crime tape was still being stretched out to mark the area for investigation. Alex Pretti is a domestic terrorist, they said. He had a gun and intended to commit mass murder. He was at fault for opposing the efforts of ICE to carry out their duties. It was a tragedy that he is dead but it was his fault for being there, getting in the way, and carrying a gun (which is ironic in itself).

At the same time, people immediately accused ICE agents of cold-blooded murder while the blood still oozed out of Pretti’s lifeless body in the frigid street. Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse, they said. He was a great guy who cared for people. He had a conceal carry license protected by the 2nd Amendment. He stepped in to help a woman, and his hands were not on his gun. ICE agents are at fault for unjustly, mercilessly, and wantonly killing him for expressing his First Amendment rights.

I realize that people, including me, rush to judgment on these things because of their biases. We have all seen the same videos, and we have reached opposite conclusions in keeping with our own beliefs and narratives. If you disagree with me on everything else, I hope you have the integrity and honesty to admit this much.

Christians who focus on Romans 13, law and order, the culture war, and support the President and governing authorities come down on the side of the administration’s narrative about what happened. Christians focused on the Biblical theme of justice for the poor and needy, not oppressing the foreigner, loving your neighbor, and caring for the least, come down on the side of the opposite narrative.

The facts are the same. We all saw the same videos. They differences lie in the the way we view the world and the basic assumptions that inform our worldviews.

But, how can that be? Shouldn’t Christians be unified in Christ? Don’t we all believe that Jesus is God, the second person of the Trinity, the Word of God through whom all things were made who gave up his life on the cross to save sinners from sin and death and rose again to give us hope for our own salvation? Why aren’t we all unified in our “biases” over this incident?

As Christians, we have sung, “They will know us by our love.” We have read the words of Jesus, who said, “The world will know us by the love we have for one another.” We have read that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life..” We follow a crucified savior who gave up his life because he loved us. We have all received by faith the righteousness extended to us by the grace of God, not because we earned it, but despite the fact that we didn’t.

Yet, we are divided by the narratives we have embraced as we watch the same videos and reach exactly opposite conclusions.

This troubles me, and it should trouble you if you are also a believer. Not necessarily because I think I am right or you think I am wrong about the narrative, but because it reveals that Christians, who claim to have a special hold on truth given by divine revelation from God with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are no different than anyone else in the world. Our unity in Christ doesn’t seem to matter. It doesn’t even seem to exist.

Continue reading “The Alex Pretti Shooting: It’s Black and White” →

Tribalism and the Body of Christ: What Unifies Us, & What Separates Us is Key

We can’t avoid the conflict of differing views, but we need to be careful how we differ with people and over what we differ with them.

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I have been listening to the podcast, Truth Over Tribe, beginning with the episode, How Tribalism Is Ruining Your Life, on Podbean. Check it out.

Whether you label it polarization or tribalism, I have seen people entrenching and doubling down in their political positions more than at any other time in my life. Thus, the podcast resonated loudly with me.

In writing this piece, I am not focusing on people, generally, or the state of governmental affairs. My focus here is the body of Christ and it’s witness in the world. People have always been divided. We have always had wars and fighting to prove it. The Church, however, should be different. The Church should stand a part, like a city of a hill.

Continue reading “Tribalism and the Body of Christ: What Unifies Us, & What Separates Us is Key” →

The 2020 Census and the Breaking Down of the Dividing Walls of Hostility

Fundamentally, Christians should align with Christ, and nothing else.

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The 2020 Census reveals a story of changing demographics in the United States. It should hardly come as a surprise that the story is diversity. “Over the past 10 years, people who identified as Hispanic, Asian or more than one race accounted for larger shares of the population….”[1]

I suspect we could say the same thing about many a decennial census over the history of the United States. During the history of this country, from one census to another, we can trace the movements of people, including the Spaniards and Portuguese, the English and French, the German, the Irish, the Italian, the African, the Chinese, the Poles, and on and on.

I grew up learning that the United Stated of America is a melting pot. The news of the 2020 Decennial Census is simply the continuation of the same story that is America. It is an uniquely American story, though rhetoric in the 21st Century might suggest otherwise.

The new census may reveal a plot twist of sorts, though: a “pivotal moment”. Whereas the American story of the past was primarily an European story, the plot is tending toward greater diversity. The population of “people of color” are increasingly “younger and growing more rapidly” then their traditional American counterparts with Eurocentric origins.

The population growth since 2010 “was made up entirely of people who identified as Hispanic, Asian, Black or more than one race”. We can speculate on the reasons for this major shift, but the fact remains that people of color are increasingly making up a larger percent of the population, and that trend will surely continue.

My thoughts, as always, turn to the impact on the Body of Christ and how the Church is responding… and should respond… to the times. These times are a changing, crooned Bob Dylan in my youth….. But then, they are always a changing.

Continue reading “The 2020 Census and the Breaking Down of the Dividing Walls of Hostility” →

C. S. Lewis on Individualism, Equality and the Church

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Thoughts and excerpts from Membership, published in the Weight of Glory and other addresses (by Harper One) by CS Lewis.

C. S. Lewis, the 20th Century English Literature professor, author and thinker, wrote Membership as a speech given at Oxford during World War II. In this speech, Lewis addressed the popular societal trend toward collectivism and the concomitant effort to relegate religion to private, individual belief.

His address was meant to be an encouraging call to Christian hope in a world threatened to be torn apart by war. We find ourselves in different circumstances, and the world as changed in many ways. We can no longer assume a Christian ideal as a collective rallying point, but is address remains stubbornly relevant in our modern world.

Lewis found irony in the dichotomy of exalted individualism in Western society that was, at the same time, becoming more collective in its political direction – individual rights and equality for all. In his typical style, he unravels the uneasy tension of this secular dualism at the seams, exposing the inherent incongruities and turning them on their heads, as he contrasts them to Christian paradoxes that, while seemingly inapposite, hold together in a more harmonious tension. Continue reading “C. S. Lewis on Individualism, Equality and the Church” →

United to God

God denied Himself and became one of us so that we can deny ourselves and become like God!

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“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” (Ephesians 1:7-10)

God’s goal is to unites all things to Himself. How then can we be united to God? Continue reading “United to God” →