Hello, my friends,

Before we get to my newsletter today, here are a few resources to consider:

​-Good Neighbor Map: in this moment of social conflict and political division, I encourage you to participate in something truly special—a Christian storytelling platform called the Good Neighbor Map, where you can share your much-needed stories of Christ's love, kindness and compassion in action. Let’s show the world what Jesus’ love really looks like. Share your story through the link above.

​-Fighting Despair by Hidden Brain. Every morning, you wake up and face the world. What does it look like to you? Do you see a paradise of endless opportunities, where people are friendly and helpful? Or a world filled with injustice, where people cannot be trusted? In the final installment of this year's You 2.0 series, we talk with psychologist Jamil Zaki about how we become disillusioned and distrustful of the world, and how to balance realism with hope.

​-He wore a toga and spoke Latin. This ancient philosopher can help you survive the anxiety of the 2024 election. I studied stoic philosophy in seminary and so I was really intrigued by what this article had to say. I wasn't prepared for how comforting and hopeful it really was. It reminded me of the prophets of the Old Testament. I really encourage you to read this.

Okay, onto today's content:

Exhausted By The Worship Of Power.

I’m exhausted.

As many of you know, Rebecca and I welcomed our daughter Reese into the world in March. Around two months old, she went into a sleep regression cycle and has not balanced back out since. She then got a little cold and then hit a growth spirt back to back. Needless to say, Rebecca and I haven’t gotten a full night’s rest in over 6 months now. The night before I wrote this, for example, I was up with her from 9pm to 1am as she slept off and on. Rebecca then traded me at 1:30am where Reece repeated that same pattern for her until 5am. This has been our nightly routine for months now.

Our weekly schedule is such that when one of us is working, the other one is home with our kids, so we can be really present with them at this young age as well as save on expensive childcare costs. My wife works three days a week and I work four, which doesn’t leave us a day of rest or much time for anything other than work and taking care of the kiddos. The lack of sleep has really taken its toll on us mentally and physically. There have been several moments over the last few months when both the kids were crying in the middle of the night and Rebecca and I just broke down and cried together too. Trying to hold everything in life together in this season has just felt nearly impossible.

We are exhausted.

On top of the busyness of life, I feel this way about the state of Christianity in our country right now too. As the election draws nearer, it feels like the already persistent power grab has gone into hyper drive. Given the messages I have received from so many of you, I know I’m not the only one who feels that way either.

Just the last 10 days alone have been so grievous, frustrating, and exhausting.

We had people in high positions of power circulate demonizing lies about Haitian immigrants, which caused bomb threats, school shooting threats, and other forms of intimidation against the Hatian community in Springfield Ohio and beyond. These baseless claims seemed to pour accelerant on the already hateful and demonizing rhetoric against immigrants in general. Folks like Mr Vance and Mr Trump who doubled down on these callous lies both claim to be Christians, which naturally leads to other Christians circulating such lies as well, following their lead.

Then if that were not enough, our country carried out 5 executions in just one week, which is more than we have in decades. 3 of them that I looked into personally all had new evidence brought forward that put their guilt in reasonable doubt. The execution in South Carolina was still carried out even though one of the key witnesses in the case stepped forward and confessed that they lied! Then the execution in Missouri of Marcellus Williams was carried out despite pleas from the prosecutors, jourors, the victim’s family, and the office that tired him to stop his execution. The governor of Missouri and 6 supreme court justices all rejected this request. All of whom also claim to be Christian and “pro life.”

To top it all off, the State Superintendent of Oklahoma continued his efforts to put what he sees as Christianity at the center of all public schools by requesting that 6 million dollars of tax payer’s money be used to put Bibles in every public school in the state, in order to, and I quote, “insure that the left doesn’t censor American history.” This is a trend in several other states as well, as in Louisiana where they have mandated the Ten Commandments be displayed in public schools throughout the state. When I saw this news from Oklahoma, I posted on X saying, “Just imagine the response from American Christians if a total of 6 million dollars of tax payer’s money were going to be used to pay for putting the scripture from any other religion that wasn’t Christiaity in their state’s public schools.” My comments immediately filled up with many saying things along the lines of, “we would protest that, because no other religion is true but Christianity. Only Christianity should be enforced.”

I am exhausted. I’m frustrated. I’m grieving. Much like my current experience with my sleepless baby, it feels like it will never end and trying to hold it together is impossible.

When you worship power, compassion and mercy will look like sins.

When you worship power, cruelty towards your "enemies” will look like righteousness and truthfulness.

When you worship power, tyrants and bullies will look like your saviors.

When you worship power, the value and dignity of others will be solely measured by their conformity to you.

I'm exhausted by the worship of political power.

So, in light of all this, I then have to challenge myself to look for things that fill me with hope.

I will read passages like Romans 8:26-28, which says in The Message translation, “Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. The Spirit does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. The Spirit knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our labored condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.”

I then try to imagine what leads Christians to worship power in the ways we are seeing these days. I try to put myself in their shoes. While I understand that some, especially those with a lot of power already, simply just want to stay in control of other people, no matter how much harm they cause, I find that for the most part, the average Christian that worships power does so because of what they fear.

They fear immigrants threatening their family and country, so lies are believed and spread and they seek power over them.

They fear losing “law and order,” so severity and showing no mercy towards offenders leads the way, no matter the possibility if innocents.

They fear losing their religious influence, so they support legislating their religious beliefs in a way that they themselves would reject if another religion did it to them.

I think they fear these things because of what they love. Their faith, their family, and their country. These are all things I love too.

Trying to boil down people's rhetoric to their actual motivations helps me to not allow their fear to be contagious in my own life. I can’t respond to their fear with fear of my own, but rather, I believe I must respond with love.

So, when I hear those close to me demonize immigrants, love challenges me to listen beyond the noise of the words and listen to the fear of losing their country and for the safety for their families behind the words and find ways to speak peace and truth.​

When I hear those close to me advocating severity as “law and order,” love challenges me to hear what they fear behind those words and gently ask how they might like to be treated if they were a convict and were wrongly convicted.

When I hear those close to me claim that “God is being pushed out of schools,” love challenges me to hear that they are saying they love their faith and fear it is being taken away and try to comfort them by reminding them that God is far too big and powerful to be pushed out from anywhere.

When these conversations happen to not go well and I am overwhelmed by the relentless doom of social media and the news cycle, I delete all my social media apps, turn off the news and challenge myself to find the joy in the world around me.

I will listen to an inspiring Ted Talk, or one of my favorite history podcasts about folk lore, or take a few minutes to call up an old friend just because.

I will remind myself that I am just one person and I can’t let the overwhelming nature of all that is happening in the world right now cause me to feel like I can’t stop and rest and refresh my soul. For to think that I can’t stop trying to figure out solutions to all these problems is to think that I am the only person capable of doing so, when I am absolutely not! I am not alone in this work at all. Not only is God at work right here and right now, but I get to talk to and work with wonderful people all over the place who are pursuing the good, the true, and the beautiful in our world. People just like you!

When I remember these things, I feel a little less tired and a little more inspired. I remember that we will still be working towards solving problems for years and years to come, they will just be different ones. I remember that as long as I continue taking one day at a time, never take for granted the wonderful people I have in my life, be gentle with myself, and be wise about what problems I choose to take on, trusting that God really is at work, I can watch my exhaustion and frustration very slowly but surely melt away into a firm resolute belief that we really can make a good and loving difference in this world together.

I’m exhausted. I’m frustrated. I know you are too. I hope you know that it is a lot less exhausting and frustrating knowing that we are all in this together. I hope you know that we will make a difference, it's just a matter of time. I hope that makes you feel less exhausted and frustrated too.

Thank you for choosing love even when you are exhausted.