Jesus: Model For How To Be Human In The MAGA World

Since November 5, 2024, and especially since January 20, 2025, I have been physically enervated and spiritually haunted.

This moment is a crisis. The years ahead of us will be a Great Test for our government, our way of life, and especially for the strength and reputation of real Christianity.

I must pray and think harder than ever before.

Here is one cluster of prayerful thoughts.

Jesus shows us divinity and humanity. As divine he saves us. As human he shows us how to live that salvation—how to live according to the Rule of God for the sake of the Rule of Man that is decaying all around us.

To follow Jesus has demanded, and will always demand that we witness and resist within the Rule of Man—as a minority movement.  

Polling has shown that the majority of voters in the United States (many of whom profess to be Christian) chose to vote the way they did, not because they approved of the character of the candidates, but because of two key issues: removal of immigrants and reducing American involvement and leadership in foreign affairs. I cannot help but think that the prime motivation behind preference for both of these positions is simply fear of the other. The promise that a people can only be great, rich, and powerful when they keep others out, and use resources only for making themselves greater, richer, and more powerful than other peoples, is one that is absolutely antithetical to the Spirit of Christ.

Chapter two of Philippians contains one of the earliest and most powerful statements of trust in the New Testament. It says that Christ saves us by not clinging to divinity, but by emptying himself for the sake of others, and we can entrust ourselves to that way of living.

Through the ages Christ’s followers have painfully explored what emptying means in all its fullness. In our own lifetimes great emptying has taken place in some corners of God’s church. Certain Christians have emptied themselves of the sin of ownership and exploitation of slaves. They have forsaken the sin of suppressing the gifts of women. They have forsworn the vilification of homosexuals and chosen to allow people the freedom to work out their own expressions of sexuality. They have emptied themselves of privileges and thoughts that they have a manifest destiny to dominate others and exploit rather than live in harmony with the earth.

Christ’s followers can only do this if they are confident and strong within themselves. They trust. They trust that true worth comes from the grace of God that fills them so much they can empty themselves and still be full. Their worth comes from being with the Rule of man as a witness to the Rule of God—the rule of love and service.

Yet many of those who falsely claim to be following Christ, declare that all of this emptying makes us weak. Our leaders seek to criminalize programs in pursuit of more diversity, equity, and inclusion. They seek to eliminate all efforts to live at peace with nature’s processes.

Personally, I still am numb from November 5 and January 20. I need to pet dogs, watch birds, and lie back on my ATV to look at the stars in the cold night sky.

I am praying for peace, but peace with courage. I am praying for a good night’s sleep, but also to let the fire for God’s justice and compassion to be rekindled and burn bright in every way I can. And I am praying that a host of  leaders, younger than I am, and more vigorous than I feel, will speak out and act out as Christ-like resistance leaders in our hurting world.

I pray for more trust and faithfulness so that I may empty myself.