Category Archives: A life in the Spirit

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

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It is hard to know “what to do” with anyone, of course. But we are going to do something, regardless. So we should get it as right as we can.

When it comes to what we’re going to do with corrupt leaders, and I can name a few, there are many wrong ways to go. But every way makes a difference. You matter. And if this is how you think about that: unfortunately, you matter.

I think the last sixteen months have been a whirlwind of wrongness. So I am writing to add to the opprobrium which is daily launched in the direction of wrongdoers. We all might be a little wrong; but don’t worry, the Bible will help you.

Prophesying to the drivers in Ardmore

The first answer to “What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?” should probably come from Jeremiah: TELL THE TRUTH, as in PROPHESY!

This is a part of the Bible that especially inspired me last week:

The wise shall be put to shame;
    they shall be dismayed and taken;
since they have rejected the word of the Lord,
    what wisdom is in them?
Therefore I will give their wives to others
    and their fields to conquerors,
because from the least to the greatest
    everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
from prophet to priest,
    everyone deals falsely.
They have treated the wound of the daughter of my people carelessly,
    saying, “Peace, peace,”
    when there is no peace.
They acted shamefully; they committed abomination,
    yet they were not at all ashamed;
    they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;
    at the time when I punish them, they shall be overthrown,
            says the Lord. — Jeremiah 8:9-12

The first answer to the question presumes people who follow Jesus would not take corruption lightly any more than Jesus did. He was especially direct with the Pharisees, who thought they were “conservative.”

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and of the plate, so that the outside also may become clean.”

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of uncleanness. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” — Matthew 23:25-8

But we can’t presume most of the Christians in the U.S. will take corruption seriously, can we? They seem to think they are serious about the Bible but they are taking Trump’s corruption very lightly, even encouraging it as a means to return the country to “greatness.”

So when we ask “What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?” we have to start with:

They regularly follow them

They sing “It is well with my soul” – the corrupt leader is restoring order in the name of Jesus. And if that order makes me richer and corrals people I secretly hate, all the better.

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

They pretend they do not exist

I think this is more prevalent. American Christians, by and large, retreated into having a private faith a long time ago. They are not Jeremiahs!

They sing: “It is well with my soul” —  My faith is a soul matter, not a public matter. I don’t get involved with politics.

To be clear, as American Christians are pretending, by and large, they are swallowing a boatload or corruption. Pretending is not inaction, it takes quite an effort to quash reality!

  • The most damning Epstein files are still hidden.
  • J.D. Vance is fronting a push to combat fraud in public services by illegally withholding $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments from California.
  • Trump has fired or demoted twenty inspectors general during his terms—the people who are key to oversight. In 2024 alone the people he has since fired or sidelined identified more than $50 billion in waste and abuse.
  • Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 70 donors or allies who were convicted of fraud. One, Philip Esformes, was convicted of stealing $1.3 billion from Medicare.
  • The Trump family has pocketed over $600 million through cryptocurrency enterprises this year.
  • Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr. have invested in a drone manufacturer that is trying to sell weapons to Persian Gulf countries currently at risk from the war their father started in Iran.
  • The Pentagon recently awarded a $24 million contract to a robotics startup for which Eric is the “chief strategy advisor.”
  • Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has acted as a chief negotiator for the U.S. in the Middle East. at the same time he has been trying to raise $5 billion from investors there for his investment firm.
  • Corporations and billionaires have dropped millions of dollars in donations for Trump’s ballroom where the East Wing used to be and his proposed presidential library in Miami.
  • Trump had raked in more than $2 billion for his projects or causes, more than half a billion of it from 346 people who each gave at least $250,000. Some of those people have received presidential pardons, others have been given jobs, and all have received access to the president.
  • Trump is using the planned Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event to be held on his birthday on the White House lawn as a new way for donors to funnel money to him. Ringside seats have been selling for $1 million or more. Neither the White House nor the UFC will comment on where the money is going.
  • Trump took seventeen CEOs with him to China, along with his son Eric, who runs the family business. Paul Krugman said, “He might as well have been walking around Beijing with a sign that says—in block capitals, of course, this is Trump—BRIBE ME.”
  • Miami residents are suing Trump and others to stop the construction of Trump’s presidential library, charging that state officials violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause when they transferred almost three acres of prime waterfront land, worth between $67 million and $300 million, to Trump’s library foundation for $10. Trump has already said he wants to build a hotel on the site rather than a traditional library.
  • The Department of Justice was working with Trump to settle his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) after a contractor during Trump’s first term leaked tax returns from thousands of wealthy individuals to the media. They want to settle before it goes to court, where he will probably lose
  • Trump offered to drop the lawsuit in exchange for the government’s establishing a $1.7 billion fund to compensate his allies who claim they were harmed by the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the DOJ —  this includes nearly 1,600 people convicted of committing crimes related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, people Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of shortly after he took office in January 2025.

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

They manage them

They take a lot of responsibility for the world. So Christians work very hard to make sure Jesus is not shown up to be powerless and make sure they don’t get in trouble for doing a bad job. People with a narcissistic wound control or manipulate others to protect their fragile egos and avoid their shame — they manage them, all the time. There is an epidemic of such woundedness in the church.

They sing: “It is well with my soul” – I can make others well like I should be.  I need to keep things under control. Everyone needs to stay safe.

This grandiosity regularly falls apart. Since there are too many plates to keep spinning and they are the only ones they trust to spin. Besides, the corrupt people often have no conscience, so managing them is more like feeding them your power.

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

They undermine them

They sing “It is well with my soul” – I am on the frontline of justice

I don’t think justice is the solution to all the earth’s problems. But without that first step, it is hard to get anywhere else. Our efforts need to be as endless as God’s.

But we need to be honest, people wrestling for power, even in the name of justice, never have rest for their souls. Feeling unwell about something can be addctive. Just witness the work of Climate Defiance, one of my favorites activist groups. This is from last week’s newsletter:

We absolutely NAILED Xavier Becerra. We ruined his whole event. It was so beautiful and so brutal all at once. It was so necessary. You must watch. You can see it here.

Our protest was not just an act of public humiliation. It was an act of JUSTICE.

If you’re just tuning in, Big Oil Becerra is the front-runner for Governor of California. He wants the prestige. He wants the power. We must stop him. Here’s why:

He took $39,000 from Chevron – the maximum contribution. It’s their first time getting involved in the governor’s race there in a decade. Then he defended the legalized bribe, proclaiming, verbatim “they’re not the bad guy.”

Are you serious?

Is it giving kids asthma that he’s ok with? Or spreading climate misinformation? Or searching for new oil reserves when current ones contain enough carbon to make earth unlivable? Which of these things specifically is he ok with? I would like to know.

He then doubled down. He said: “Does everybody here drive an electric vehicle? You need Chevron, I need Chevron, my people of the state of California need Chevron.”

Jesus. Electric vehicles were invented in the 1800s. Companies like Chevron are the main REASON we are not driving them. They have poisoned our political system and blocked the transition.

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

They overthrow them

It started with the Roman Empire and kept going in response to every empire-builder since. Yes, so-called Christians have often been on the wrong side. We get sucked into power struggles, too. But wherever there is prayer and community, Jesus-followers are a burr under the saddle of corrupt rulers.

They sing: “It is well with my soul” – I am well and I feel it. You can’t keep me from the love of Jesus no matter what you do. Being well with Jesus allows me to turn my cheek and so turn the world upside down.

Tennessee Democrats locked arms on the House floor in protest of a the redistricting vote that split the state’s only majority-Black Democrat Congressional district on May 7, 2026, in Nashville, Tennessee.

I suspect most of the Tennessee reps protesting the racial gerrymander of Tennessee voting districts are church people. Their two outspoken young leaders, Justin Pearson and Justin Jones were immediately juxtaposed with pictures of Martin Luther King on social media when they got carted off the statehouse floor . They were just saying, “Since the Confederates rule in Washington right now and they say there is no racial discrimination under the law, regardless of the Voting Rights laws that have ruled since the 1960’s, we cannot be silent.” In the picture, Jones’ sign says it all.

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

They are a resistant alternative to them

They sing: “It is well with my soul” – Life is worth living and Jesus says I am worthy of living it. We are made to make something which is fit for Jesus and which can withstand the tribulations of the present. I’m referencing Ephesians 4 and 5:

Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be associated with them, for once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness; rather, expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly,  but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,

“Sleeper, awake!
Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

Be careful, then, how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil — Ephesians 5:6-16

I am astounded that Canticle: A Novel by Janet Rich Edwards has actually been a NY Times editors choice. I enjoyed reading it for another look at one of my favorite centuries: the 13th and one of my favorites places: Bruges. What’s more it centers on some of my favorite Christians; the Beguines.

I was encouraged by the book, but even more encouraged that people were talking about  it and what it means to know God and live life as a member of his people. The grassroots devotion of the Beguines and their male counterparts, the Beghards upended their society and the corrupt church ruling it. Over and over again, the Holy Spirit has stubbornly inspired Jesus followers to risk losing their place in the corrupt system which corrupt men  made for them and risk following Jesus with all they’ve got. We create an alternative society to the passing away world.

This coming Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, the most radical Sunday of the year. It should launch us into planting seeds of hope whether the soil is rocky or not because one of those seeds is very likely to take root anyway. Pentecost should cause us to look at our lives and our church and reimagine them in the light God sees us, full of love and potential, poised for creation. Pentecost, at the very least, should wake us up from the stupor-inducing rule of the present oligarchs.

Planting hope: Even facing the impossibility of family

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We planted a dogwood tree in our little back yard. It is how we respond to Trump and his flailing fascism project.  We likely won’t see it come into its full glory. But, as we say, we will stay in the game of hope, realized or not, until the last buzzer.

In 1893 the U.S. Marines overthrew the government of Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii; later that year the Panic of 1893 kicked off a economic depression. About that time, Lucy Larcom wrote a poem:

He who plants a tree
Plants a hope.
Rootlets up through fibres blindly grope;
Leaves unfold into horizons free.
So man’s life must climb
From the clods of time
Unto heavens sublime.
Canst thou prophesy, thou little tree,
What the glory of thy boughs shall be? — from Plant a Tree 

1n 1973 AIM activists occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded knee surrendered to federal authorities after 71 days; later that year Alexander Butterfield informed the Senate Watergate Committee that President Nixon had secret recordings of incriminating conversations. Wendell Berry wrote a poem:

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. — from Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Spend a minute with me and let’s nurture some seeds of hope with the poets.

We have a shortage of hope

One of our old friends was visiting last week so we invited the family over for dinner. I was impressed by her being impressed by their sense of security. They give me hope.

But they are inheriting a world full of insecurity. We’ll see if they become tree planters, or if they have grandchildren of their own.

You are probably aware that the birthrate is going down all over the world — especially in places where women have the right to choose their own destiny rather than being subject to a man. Their choice seems to be a strange thing to need to point out, but equality in the U.S. is not a done deal AT ALL. In 1973 the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade and we can see how fragile that was.

There are many reasons women are not giving birth at rates that sustain their nation’s population. In the New York Times this week, Anna Louie Sussman said the main reason is hopelessness. Married couples cannot justify launching their child into uncertainty. Sussman is the author of the forthcoming book Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty.

Prospective parents may be hopeless because they are godless people who think they are stuck with gaining enough power to rule their private world — and they can’t control it well enough. Or they may be hopeless because the rulers of the world in the last 30 years (here is your list of billionaires)  have infested the ground with weeds of disaster that overwhelm their every positive step.

Sussman provides an example of this new instinct among potential procreators:

Raleigh Rivera and her husband had spent five years fine-tuning their parenthood plan: In 2025, they would move from Los Angeles, where they have been living since 2023, back to Ms. Rivera’s hometown, Minneapolis, where they could afford to buy a home and start a family. “We both have been baby- and kid-crazy for our entire lives,” she said.

They had planned to start trying when Ms. Rivera turned 30, a birthday she celebrated last summer. But that same year, everything that had felt stable to them started to crumble. It began with the Palisades and Eaton fires decimating parts of the city they called home. The prospect of a first-time home buyer credit, something Kamala Harris had campaigned on, had disappeared. By summer, Ms. Rivera’s parents in Minnesota were choking on smoke drifting over the border from Canadian wildfires. Her husband is a citizen, but since he is Mexican American, she worried that racial profiling policies put a target on his back. Ms. Rivera, who has a master’s degree in public health, worried about sending a future child to school with unvaccinated classmates. “We felt like we had worked hard on ourselves, making sure that our finances and our health and everything was in order,” she told me when we spoke in August. “And those plans are on pause right now because everything is — it’s just impossible to know.”

An age of uncertainty

Researchers run into this sense of impossibility wherever they go. I run into it in my therapy office almost every day. If you are trying to make useful policies for the future or you are predicting what future demographics will be so you can get ready, you need to factor in that young people bring an inescapable and crushing sense to the discussion — that the future is too uncertain for the lifelong commitment of parenthood. Sussman says, “Call it the vibes theory of demographic decline.”

The future has never been assured, but it feels as though we are living in a time of spectacular uncertainty. Here are the reverbs concocting a vibe:

  • In the United States, workers spend less years at a job and experience less stable income.
  • Life expectancy, once inevitably increasing, has fallen for less-educated women and men.
  • Many of the forces our economy is built on — A.I., immigration, global trade — feel distressingly volatile.
  • “Disruption,” once a byword for a disturbance or a problem, is the governing ethos of a terrifyingly powerful sector of our economy.
  • The rise of prediction markets has turned the world into one large casino.
  • The climate crisis is spiraling.
  • The costs of everything that could enable parenthood, whether that’s a roof over one’s head or child care, are unaffordable.
  • The past half-century has brought us breathtaking inequality, accompanied by a sharp decline in social mobility.
  • Even declining fertility rates feed the vibe: How will society function if each generation is smaller than the last?

The two generations currently of childbearing age bear the psychological and financial scars of coming of age during world-scale catastrophes. Their trauma amplifies the vibe:

  • Older millennials entered the labor market during the Great Recession; many watched their parents lose their jobs or homes.
  • Members of Gen Z, whose lives were upended by the Covid-19 pandemic, now find themselves competing against A.I. for entry-level jobs and even prospective partners.

Now the man running America seems single-mindedly devoted to chaos at home and abroad.

You can probably feel the anxiety rise in you as you read all this stuff, right? If not, turn on a screen. The Great Recession’s outsize impact may also be due to its status as the first economic crisis in the era of a nonstop digital information deluge, which rendered it, and the sense of dread it engendered, all but inescapable, even for people not financially affected. The same kind of impact is now generated by natural disasters, political upheaval and war from anywhere in the globe; no one is insulated.  We don’t just bear our own uncertainty, we bear the amplified uncertainty all around us as well. It is hard to disentangle from what concerns mostly others to concentrate on what concerns mostly you.

Faith boosts fertility

In some studies, researchers have found an element that boosts fertility: faith. And I don’t think they were just collecting J.D. Vance sermons. For many believers, faith provides deeper certainty.

The famous Romans 5:1-5 is basically a poem about hope in the hands of the paraphraser, J.B. Phillips:

Since then it is by faith that we are justified,
let us grasp the fact that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Through him we have confidently entered into this new relationship of grace,
and here we take our stand,
in happy certainty of the glorious things he has for us in the future.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that we have only a hope of future joys—
we can be full of joy here and now even in our trials and troubles.
Taken in the right spirit these very things will give us patient endurance;
this in turn will develop a mature character,
and a character of this sort produces a steady hope,
a hope that will never disappoint us.
Already we have some experience of the love of God
flooding through our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us.

To read these lines in the manner Paul wrote them, we need to exercise our spiritual awareness deepening into Holy Spirit awareness. We can all get there.

But it might be hard to get out of the gnawing fear we feel to do so. The ordinary awareness of this present age is rifled with uncertainty. That has always been the normal state of humanity separated from God. But today it is even worse, as humanity is wrapped up in a virtual oneness under the thumb of the purveyors and manipulators of an artificial intelligence.

My family experienced a large dose of uncertainty last month due to death and illness in the clan. I’ve watched us reach for the resilience to cope with loss and change. Some have turned to faith, and love. And I think there is some shaky hope that some did not live by until they needed to. It is sad to find yourself old and in need of hope in the most uncertain of times – your old age in the age of Trump.

Phillips gets at what Paul has to say to to encourage us — young and old alike, very well, I think:

  • Grasp the fact that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
  • Here we take our stand, in happy certainty of the glorious things he has for us in the future.
  • We can be full of joy here and now even in our trials and troubles.
  • Character of this sort produces a steady hope, a hope that will never disappoint us.

I don’t know about you, of course, but when I read those lines a few times, I felt better. I made myself read them again just now because I want to feel better.

When the Tennessee legislature bends the knee to Trump and turns back the clock that  briefly marked an attempt to undo the racism of the U.S. society, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ and we take our stand in that.

When I drove over the line from gentrification to devastation in North Philly last night, I knew we could be full of joy here and now even in our trials and tribulations, not because we don’t care that the world is an uncertain, cruel place, but because the love of God is being poured into it.

So we plant trees. We have children in hope. Not because we are certain the world is worthy of our love and trust. But because we trust the love being poured into it.

We grasp the peace and take our stand in the certainty that God has hope for US! Jesus is joy, itself, no matter what the passing-away powers do. If anything can change the world and change us to see the goodness built into it, it is people who hope like that.

Jungian archetypes for men: We need the wisdom and balance

A life in the Spirit, Psychological growth, Spiritual direction

I have four sons and six grandsons; most of my clients are men. So I have a ringside seat, so to speak, to see what men are being taught to be by today’s society. They’ve been overwhelmed, since 2016, by the example of Donald Trump and his sons, the most brazen, corrupt robbers the country has ever known. And lately they must have noticed the toxic example of Pete Hegseth, the former Fox news analyst who is now Secretary of Defense, who said in March:

We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement.

Imagine your sons applying that immorality to their daily relationships! Just imagine being a member of Congress who had to deal with the defensiveness of the Sec. of Defense last week at the hearings about the Iran War. I think he answered a few questions with respect but in response to the ones he did not like he went straight to DARVO and puffed out his bullying chest [SNL].  Drunk with power.

The quest for power

The present drift of male mental health and spirituality focuses on power. You can see it in the huge adoption of first-person shooter video games. It is hard to think that anything has developed young male attitudes more than games like these:

  • Counter-Strike 2  (2023):  A “competitive, tactical shooter game with precise gunplay” game from Valve Corporation, founded in 1996. Valve also operates Steam, the world’s largest PC digital distribution platform. In 2025 the game generated $2 billion in revenue.
  • Apex Legends (2019): A “fast-paced, hero-based battle royale with unique movement mechanics.” It made over $3 billion for Electronic Arts from 2023-5.
  • Doom Eternal (2020): A “high-octane, fast-paced ‘boomer shooter'” game “focusing on aggressive combat.” It made $450 million for id in its first nine months of release. It is difficult to estimate the billions in revenue the Doom franchise has produced since 1993.
  • Delta Force (2025): A “modern, large-scale military shooter” game from Team Jade. In Q4 2025 revenue exceeded $138 million and reached $7 million in a single day on April 17, 2026.

There are many more FPS games on the market, occupying the imagination and time of young men.

Last summer, at the Drone Innovation Cell in Vilseck near the Hohenfels, Germany Training Area, Capt. Ronan Sefton, an intelligence officer in the Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment, explained to Business Insider that piloting drones effectively and playing video games were correlated. “The people who are learning the fastest, able to fly the most controlled, fly the fastest, and very accurately” are gamers.

Naturally, the White House released a video that characterized the “Epic Fury” assault on Iran as a video game [link].

The first six days of Epic Fury cost the U.S. 11.3 billion dollars! Professor Linda Bilmes, a public policy expert at the Harvard Kennedy School, expects the cost to reach a trillion. She identified several reasons why this military operation could have catastrophic consequences for the U.S. national debt well into the future.

She estimates the short-term, upfront costs as totaling around $2 billion per day during the 40 days of live conflict. This includes the price of munitions, troops, and damage to military assets — such as the shooting down of three F-15 fighter jets due to friendly fire from Kuwait. Sorry to be crass, but it was a giant, masturbatory power orgasm. It is power porn in action.

The resurgent power model for masculinity has a virtual home in podcasts, games and porn now tagged as the “manosphere.” Our grandson told us about the Netflix documentary exploring it.

Our men are surrounded by these examples. And they are bullied by them. What will become of our sons? We live in a world of rapid technological change and shifting social norms. We all feel confused, if not dissociated or depressed! Many men find themselves adrift—uncertain of their role, their purpose, or what healthy masculinity even looks like. The traditional models of manhood often seem outdated or problematic, yet the alternatives can feel vague or unattainable or untrustworthy.

Positive male development

I was thinking about producing a men’s retreat based on much of the good material I have used in the past. But I wondered if there would even be an audience of anyone under fifty for working on what it means to be a healthy man. I honestly wondered if would-be participants might feel they could get into trouble with women for centering themselves or in trouble with bullies for being soft if they ventured out.

That’s too bad, because the ancient wisdom about archetypical patterns of human behavior and psychology provides a framework for understanding and expressing masculinity in ways that are both transformative and balanced. [The Enneagram is a form of the thinking that tries to apply archetypal wisdom regardless of male or female].

The famous book about male mental health and spirituality feels dated these days, but when it first arrived in the 90’s, alongside the FPS video games, it already seemed ancient, because it is.  Psychologists Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette put it together in King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering Masculinity Through the Lens of Archetypal Psychology – A Journey into the Male Psyche and Its Four Essential Aspects

Women have archetypal energies, too, of course Queen, huntress, sage, mother, etc. But it is all one Spirit, Paul says. Men have to deal with their expressions, some innate, some socialized in their own ways.

Categorizing ourselves and adopting strict definitions won’t help us develop healthy, adult consciousness. All Jungian archetype work, deals in metaphor, and delves into unconscious forces and universal connections more than scientific categories. But as difficult or mysterious as it may seem, it is important to stay aware of these energies because they are being perverted and broken by the men in charge as we speak. [Andrew Tate teaching]

Beyond Stereotypes

The Jungian archetypes transcend limiting stereotypes about masculinity. They offer a vision of manhood that includes strength and tenderness, action and reflection, independence and connection.

When men understand the main archetypes calling and moving them, they no longer feel forced into a single expression of masculinity. They can draw on different energies for different situations—embodying Warrior focus when completing a challenging task, King leadership when making family decisions, Lover presence when connecting with loved ones, and Sage discernment when facing difficult or transcendent choices.

In Missouri

If you were at any of the “No Kings” marches this year, you probably saw signs that rebelled  the unhealthy expressions of male archetypes. Each one can manifest in unhealthy ways when overdeveloped or underdeveloped:

  • The King becomes either a tyrant (overdeveloped) or a weakling (underdeveloped).
  • The Warrior becomes either a sadist or a masochist.
  • The Lover becomes either an addict or impotent.
  • The Sage becomes either a detached intellectual or a fool.

Understanding these imbalances helps men recognize patterns in their own behavior and make conscious choices toward healthier expression.

 Practical Applications

How do these ancient concepts apply to daily life? Consider these general examples:

  • Parenting: A father draws on King energy when setting consistent boundaries, Warrior energy when protecting his children from harm, Lover energy when showing affection and encouragement, and Sage energy when teaching life lessons.
  • Workplace: A colleague uses King energy to organize a project, Warrior energy to overcome obstacles, Lover energy to collaborate effectively with others, and Sage energy to reflect on and learn from mistakes.
  • Relationships: A partner embodies King energy by taking responsibility, Warrior energy by committing fully, Lover energy by expressing care and appreciation, and Sage energy by listening deeply.
  • Personal Development: A man develops King energy through leadership roles, Warrior energy through discipline and physical challenges, Lover energy through creative pursuits, and Sage energy through study and reflection.

The archetypes are not the sum of all knowledge, of course. But I have been surprised to know many people who don’t have an inner map of any kind to follow. These basic pathways help us develop as they give us ways to think and feel about ourselves and our behavior.

The archetypes are not the last word on gender identity, either. Transgender and non-binary thinkers also deal with them in positive ways, though, on the face of it, the uninitiated might see them are the epitome of binary. This discussion on Reddit might get you started [link].

The goal isn’t to perfect each archetype separately, but to integrate them into a cohesive whole. This integration is a lifelong journey, not a destination.

Many American men are socialized to be tough all the time, even if they know they are not—that is their version of the Warrior. When they understand they can be a Warrior and a Lover, a King and a Sage, they feel more complete and happier. By reconnecting with these timeless patterns, men don’t find a rigid prescription for behavior, but a flexible framework that allows for authentic expression of their full humanity.

In a world that often seems to have lost its bearings around masculinity, these ancient archetypes provide a map—not dictating a single path, but offering landmarks to navigate by as each man finds his own way forward. For the sake of my family, I pray they find a way into their lives before the oligarchs’ disciples poison our souls completely.

We need furious peacemakers: And they appear to be out there.

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Ben Rhodes, who was Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting (whew!) from 2009 to 2017, was a close confidant to President Obama and a key foreign policy advisor. In his NY Times opinion piece last week, he regretted a lot of what he did.

He looked at Trump’s latest expenditure of bombs and laid part of the blame for it on the tepid and toothless response of Democrats. He imagines some Congressional logic for why they were generally feckless:

[W]hat if Mr. Trump bombs Iran, and the regime collapses and is replaced by something better? You could feel this calculation within the Democratic Party as the war began — a hedging that only dissipated when the war’s brutality and insanity became clear. Behind it is a perverse logic: Both Iranian strength and Iranian weakness can justify war.

To be fair, the blame for this dynamic extends far beyond elected officials, to commentators who are at turns jingoistic, credulous of fearmongering and inclined to cover any harm done to Americans or our interests around the world as a political crisis; to think tanks that cast events particularly in the Middle East as problems that can be solved by U.S. intervention; to an entertainment industry that often valorizes American military and intelligence operations; and to people like me who have filled the ranks of Democratic administrations.

We’ve all been in a world of “what if” since Covid, so we can probably relate to the skittish Dems. Anxiety rules.

But “what if” is not the only rule that leads the opponents of Trump to be less than furious — like I wish they would be. You can see those rules in Rhodes’ writing: “calculation…hedging…perverse logic…our interests…problems that can be solved…entertainment industry…intelligence operation.” When we host the 250th anniversary of the Declaration this year, those words could be the key words to describe the new American experiment – put them on a banner over a background of a Minuteman, perhaps, to achieve the appropriate irony. I suppose we could include “brutality” and “insanity,” too. That’s what the country has perfected and who knows what it might do next?

Where are the peacemakers?

I know there are a lot of Christians who are out on the front lines boldly harassing ICE and telling the truth about the world and Jesus.  The aging clergy in Philly (and I can still be included in that group) have been out and getting arrested for their actions. At the end of March, twelve of them got in good trouble for blocking the ICE driveway at 8th and Cherry [Inquirer].

They are so loving, the officers smile at them when they help them get up off the street. Love will win if anything good wins.

But we could use some more furious love. Over 225 million people in the U.S. identify as Christians. That percentage used to be declining but apparently isn’t anymore. You’d think at least 100 million or so would actually be like Jesus. What if they were? That would be potent.

Paul says Jesus in our peace. That peacemaking got him killed. But a lot of people just make his peace an inner sense of peace with God and only as outer as getting along with others in whatever church they can manage to stay in.

Jesus is quite a bit more furious than that. Just read Matthew 23, where he tags people who preserve their own power with a perverted reading of the scripture as a “brood of vipers.” A bit later, he contrasts himself as a mother hen longing to brood over Jerusalem, to protect her children. There is nothing more furious than a mother separated from her children.

Or go back a few pages in Matthew to chapter 18, where Jesus says, 

If any of you cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of things that cause sin! Such things are bound to come, but woe to the one through whom they come!

That is furious stuff. He must be especially inflamed right now. How in the world could any Christian support the brutality and insanity of the Iran War and defend the sociopath president undermining the whole world with it?  Jesus knows that sins are going to come, but his followers should do their best not to cause or cooperate with  them! They certainly won’t be praying for them to occur with Pete Hegseth and his nationalist pastor/mentor!

Furious peacemakers are out there

I hope the Christians are catching up. Maybe they will be out in force for May Day Strong. In the meantime, other prophets are doing their duty. Here are two of my favorites, in case you don’t know them, yet.

Briefly, start with Matthew Cooke. Cooke is not a Christian; he’s more of a Star Trek, Jesus-adjacent humanist. But he still gives some of the best sermons I have heard about what needs to happen in the world today. He is a furious, filmmaking, philosophizing peacemaker. I don’t sign up for a lot, but I don’t want to miss what he comes up with [Survivor’s guide]. Take a minute to listen as he preaches about taking back the future.

An even better example of what a furious Christian peacemaker should probably sound like is the politician Ben Rhodes was writing about in the Times: Graham Platner of Maine. He’s lightly Jewish if anything more than atheist. But his morality is spot on.

As a 20 year old, Platner had his first epiphany when he was constructing a patrol base near Falluja. A mortar round fired by Iraqi opponents killed the families of the troop’s local co-workers. He said, “There’s this thing I often think about. Those kids were killed because we were spending money to build this base that probably doesn’t exist anymore. [I thought] ‘How horrifically wasteful this is.’”

I agree. Since Sep. 11, 2001 the U.S. has spent more than $6 trillion fighting wars that killed over 7,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of civilians, inflicting trauma on innumerable people. The country is responsible for destruction which has displaced tens of millions of people. The refugees who sought safety in the Eurocentric countries fueled a right-wing backlash to democracy. And what was built in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and now Iran? What could have  been built at home with those trillions of dollars? Just writing that burns me up.

Platner is with me. Visceral outrage infuses his opposition to the war in Iran: “Nobody is going to be able to convince me that what I did in Iraq and Afghanistan did anything for the people of Sullivan, Maine.”…“I don’t want other young Americans to go through what I’ve been through. And I don’t want to send other young Americans to inflict the horror that I had to inflict on people.”…“I don’t know a single guy I served with who thinks this thing in Iran is a good idea.”…[The reason] they were big Trump supporters — he was the antiwar or ‘America first’ candidate.”

Credit…Mark Peterson for The New York Times

“Here in the real world, most people get it,” Platner says of his campaign events. “Do you think this country should spend more on schools and hospitals and less on bombs? A lot of people are like, yeah, that’s pretty obvious.”

And yet the wars keep happening. The money keeps flowing to defense contractors. Traders, even in Congress, keep profiting from bets on the rise and fall of oil prices while the working class can’t afford to pay for a tank of gas [more here]. Insiders make ghoulish bets about the war on prediction markets while children are killed by American weapons in Iran and Lebanon.

Platner says, “We are so broken emotionally when it comes to our politics that we’ve literally created this story that it’s inherent in being a competent political leader to kill civilians. If you’re not willing to do some hard things and drop some bombs, then you’re not up to the task of power. I think it’s the opposite. You’re not up to the task of being in power if you do not think about the cost of violence. If that’s not at the front of your mind, then I don’t think you are morally in the right place to be in positions of power.”

Most of us know the forever war started by Bush has been destroying America from within, like an organism that must keep growing to survive. It fills the citizens with fear of outsiders and contempt for one another. War does the worst to societies. Once you normalize obliterating people abroad, people don’t value others at home, or even themselves.

They sound like Jesus

Cooke and Platner sound an awful lot like Jesus to me. They are rightly furious. Go back to Matthew 23. Isn’t the  blindness and delusion of American leaders just what Jesus is talking about?

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and of the plate, so that the outside also may become clean.”

Just remember, Trump took the slavery placards off of Washington’s House on Philadelphia’s Independence Mall.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of uncleanness. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

I would not say Jesus sounded like Graham Platner when he was facing off with the radical Pharisees who dominated the Sanhedrin. But I’m pretty sure Jesus would have called him out of the crowd to be a disciple. He’s kind of there already.

Who are you at work?: Which way of Jesus are you missing?

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If you are just keeping your nose above water, trying to be a Christian at work somehow, this post might help. It is about how we learn to relate to God in real time, not sometime or some-other-time-when-I-have-time, but all the time.

At the center of the classic dialogue Jesus followers have been having about prayer is the duality of physical and spiritual, the same duality Jesus masters for us. I think the old words “cataphatic” and “apophatic” have been well-used to describe the more physical/right brain/positive practices and the more spiritual/left brain/negative practices that help us connect with God. The two words also describe two ways of thinking (and doing theology) that might be affecting how you do your job – or survive it.

Oversimply put, a cataphatic approach to God (and life) looks at what can happen in a given time and place. I see it as “doing my best with what I’ve got.“ Maybe it is what “the glass is half full” kind of people do. People often use the word “positive” to explain this way, or moving along the via affirmativa. So when we describe God from this view we see what God is (e.g., “God is love,” “God is omnipresent”).

Likewise, oversimply put, an apophatic approach to God (and life) looks at what is NOT happening in time and place at all, because things about God are beyond us. I see it as looking for what is best because I am not there yet. God is pouring out whatever can be in a glass and I want to be a vessel which can be filled. People often use the word “negative” to explain this way, or moving along the via subtractiva. So when we describe God from this view, we see what God is not, recognizing how God transcends human comprehension (e.g. “God is not evil,” “God is not limited by human notions of what is good”).

Very few people who deliberately seek God practice exclusively along a positive or negative way. But you may lean one way or another. If this discussion helps you see yourself more clearly or open a door to living a richer life, I’ve hit the mark.

Cataphatic ways

Cataphatic thinking focuses on positive attributes, using words, images, and concepts to describe God. It emphasizes that we can know God through revelation and creation.

So my hero, Francis of Assisi, is well known for wandering through the Umbrian countryside seeing the depths of God in a leaf and communing with Brother Sun and Sister Moon. Walk into most Catholic or Orthodox church buildings and it is a cataphatic explosion: statues, bells, incense and a focus on the Eucharist. I think Pentecostal churches take it a step further, emphasizing the power of God in the here and now.

So if your job is a pain or you’re bored with it, you might try on some cataphatic thinking when you arrive. In every person and every task there is some kind of beauty to be found; Jesus is present in the people and in the moment. That’s why we can do all things to the glory of God! Plus, you are there at work with Jesus by your side. Your aliveness is a gift to give and God-with-you is ready to love and serve.

Apophatic ways

Apophatic thinking focuses on denying any limited human concept of God. It argues that because God is infinite, positive statements are inherently inadequate, leading people to “strip away” any images or thoughts in order to experience God’s transcendence.

Many of us have been taught to meditate by emptying ourselves to make space for God’s Spirit. I agree that God is deeply met in silence. When you walk into many Protestant church buildings, they are stripped of ornamentation that might distract from God’s transcendence. They are empty spaces where God and his people represent the Spirit and not spaces full of imagery which traps God in time. The emphasis is on the word coming from the outside, not inside. Like Martin Luther says: “This life is not godliness but the process of becoming godly, not health but getting well, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise.” (I tried to talk about the excesses of this last week).

So if your job is a pain or you are bored with it, you might try on some apophatic thinking while you are there. At times it makes sense to take a break and return to silence somewhere, even if it is in a bathroom stall. After finishing a task you could rest in God’s presence, if even for ten seconds, letting everything go before you pick something up again. You could put a post it somewhere with a quote that reminds of you who you really are. How about, “Nothing in all creation will be able to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus”? All the monks centered their day on this process: work and prayer.

This discussion is also common sense

Some people might say I’m describing the different ways extraverts and introverts approach life. And that may be true. Extraverts lean into relationships and the present moment to feel alive, and introverts need alone time to rejuvenate. Nobody is just one thing or another, I don’t think (or I could positively say “I think,” right?). If you are an extravert, you might need to make a few friends at work and not get isolated. If you are an introvert, you might need to find a park nearby to have lunch alone.

Health experts talk about positive and negative approaches without God in them at all. For instance, think about dieting. Positive approaches to dieting talk adding nutrient-dense foods (vegetables, fruits, whole grains) to crowd out less-healthy options. They call for mindful eating — paying attention to hunger and fullness cues rather than following rigid, external rules. They encourage forming sustainable habits, making small, consistent changes, and having self-compassion — viewing setbacks as part of the process rather than a failure. They’re behind the Health at Every Size (HAES) discussion.

My pastor is a “health at every size” kind of Christian. He especially likes to help us see God in every person. Sometimes even I think he could be less about what we feel and more about what we think.

Negative approaches to dieting are all about limiting food or eliminating entire food groups. They organize schedules for eating, like “intermittent fasting.”  They talk about “good” or “bad” eating, demonstrated by all the eating plans you can buy even geared to your body type. They often motivate with an eye on perfection, like a perfectly fit Pelaton coach cheering you on from the screen.

I’ve had more pastors like Martin Luther, who see life as a struggle against sin and a constant effort to know God. Those folks sometimes create church members accustomed to being motivated by criticism.

So the ancient Christian practices of prayer either come from common sense or created it. You decide. Regardless, which way do you lean? It is probably making a difference at work.

Who are you at work?

I got to thinking about all this because I spoke with someone who treated their job in an apophatic way. When they went home and had their “real life” they were one person, but at work they were “on the job” and felt constrained to act like a job person. They were on an unconscious via negative:

  • At work I am what I am not.
  • Work is what I am not.
  • God is not in the work but I need the money.

One of my older acquaintances was talking about the challenge they felt when training new, younger workers to replace those who were on the way out. At one point they were looking for one of these new employees because their team was trying to solve a client’s problem before the day ended, as they had promised to do. They asked someone where she was and they told him, “Oh. She left. She goes home at 4:30.” The boss was finding some meaning and life in the job, the team, and their success. The new hire saw the job as limited, unfulfilling, only worth so much time. One was more cataphatic and one more apophatic.

I think most of us are apophatic when it comes to the job. We see it as what it is not. And we generally see it as a place where God is not. As a result, we end up not something, ourselves. Maybe we are a good employee. But we are an employee and not ourselves. We’ve got to be “on” at work but our hearts are often “off” and that hurts.

Last Friday, on Howard Thurman day, he gave us a good way to balance out the negative and positive way. He said:

There is a quiet courage that comes from an inward spring of confidence in the meaning and significance of life. Such courage is an underground river, flowing far beneath the shifting events of one’s experience, keeping alive a thousand little springs of action.

When I go to work, I need to operate out of an “inward spring of confidence” that flows from my experience of God with me. That experience is going to take some apophatic practice through which I have created a space where I can meet God no matter what is happening, because I met God when nothing was happening.

That spring of living water welling up in me keeps “alive a thousand springs of action.” Every day is full of the sights, sounds and loves of God. The “shifting events” of the workplace are full of cataphatic opportunities to love, tell the truth, and be exemplary. If Jesus were wandering around your workplace in the guise of a boss or a new hire, he would certainly find someone to love. And he would see the beauty all around him – you’d be there, after all.

I told my beautiful, challenged acquaintance their workplace in their giant company was a vast territory where they could meet God in hundreds of ways every day. Even their suffering at the hands of godless capitalists could have meaning if they were not just NOT at work. You might have different advice. I recently fixed my comments function, so now you can let us all know what you feel and think, if you like.

 

Being outside of God: Thoughts on being in

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I attended a psychology conference recently with a large contingent of Evangelicals among the presenters and participants. All day long, as people explored the meaning of faith, there was an intrusive theme I kept hearing, “I am on the outside getting in.” God may be welcoming us in. Or we may be struggling to get in. But the existential reality with which most seemed to agree is that we are all on the outs with God.

I felt outside of their “outsideness.” My “other” existential reality never dawned on me so acutely. I have not stopped thinking about it ever since. I really do feel I am in with God, in Christ, right now. Undeservedly but absolutely inside.

All weekend long I kept taking issue, in my own thoughts, at least, with the extreme sense of autonomy some people were stuck with. It is a dilemma. For psychologists, autonomy is a fundamental truth to be protected. For Christians, it is a good thing but not THE thing.

Autonomy

You can get a definition of “autonomy” by watching The Pitt. The doctors on that TV show are protecting it all the time; it is a main element of their ethics. They painstakingly hold back their opinions and even advice so the patient can exercise their freedom to choose. On one episode the ER gave a dying woman a long time in a scarce bed to make up her mind about how she was going to die.

As a result of all this painstaking, the doctors end up very much like God, I suppose, letting us unfold without bossing us around. Of course, the opposite is true, too. The doctors are often portrayed as having no choice at all, constrained by science, protocol, profits and time. They are constantly complaining about being trapped by the needs of the emergency room, enslaved to their paperwork, and subject to their foibles and their relationships. They seem to feel they have no autonomy at all.

The definition of autonomy is, simply, the capacity to think your own thoughts and take action on them, not be dominated by someone else and enslaved to their will. We’re all committed to it, all feel we don’t have enough, and all feel subject to something or someone that thwarts it all day.

As a psychotherapist, much of my work is to help people exercise their autonomy to think and feel as they desire and make new choices accordingly.  Mostly, my clients want to be free of what ties them up so they can love and be loved, and so they can contribute to society and receive from others.

The Evangelical clients tend to have a further dilemma, because they believe if they think anything but God’s thoughts it is a sin, and if they feel their feelings (most of which are immoral or prone to be), it is likely a sin. They seem to be determined to take orders from Jesus the King, which releases them from the need to listen to themselves and change. It is a theological nightmare. They are strangely condemned to be in charge of their future, very autonomous and alone, but they are totally subject to someone else’s will, which is quite beyond their ability to accomplish but which is a life and death matter to accomplish, nonetheless.

For instance, the last verse of the version of O Sacred Head Sore Wounded we sang on Good Friday had this final verse:

My days are few, O fail not, with thine eternal power,
to hold me that I quail not in death’s most fearful hour;
that I may fight befriended, and see in my last strife
to me thine arms extended upon the cross of life.

Did I hear the theology right? This seems to be the gist of it: “I need God’s power to hold me (I pictured a tractor beam) because I am on the other side of death; I’m outside of the place Jesus lives. I have to fight to stay on my quest to be inside, where Jesus, one day, will greet me with open arms.

My friend protested on Facebook on Good Friday: God doesn’t love us because Jesus died. Jesus died because God loves us. Even though this is common New Testament, many of the Christians at my conference were still working out a transaction. Jesus died for me, so I have to die for him to seal the deal and get into eternity. Jesus died for me so I could gain the power to do my assignment and so be good enough to get into heaven.

To sum it up: Evangelical Christians often feel “outside” God’s presence due to a performance-based spirituality that equates grace with legalistic obedience rather than a free gift. This mentality stems from a “sin-fixation,” whereby believers constantly scrutinize their actions to measure their spiritual standing. This approach often leads to a cycle of shame, where failing to meet high behavioral standards feels like losing God’s favor, creating a perpetual need to get back in.

Let’s unpack the elements of that a bit.

Performance

A twenty-something friend told me she could not attend Jr. High summer camp as child because she had not yet spoken in tongues. She faked it. I still marvel at this. How could someone make the ecstatic experience of tongues, totally uncontrollable by definition, into a criteria for getting into camp? I understand the delight of having the Holy Spirit “come upon me.” And I think tongues were, in the Bible and continue to be, a sign of God’s presence. But make the experience a general rubric for goodness or acceptance? Teach the junior highers the need to perform the trappings of faith well? 1 Corinthians is an argument against people who would do such a thing. But if we are all outside, we will likely invent a criteria for getting in —  and, unfortunately, for keeping people out.

Measurement

Many evangelicals define their standing with God by how well they obey set rules—such as church attendance, tithing, and avoiding specific sins. When they “stumble,” they feel as though they have fallen out of grace, confusing sanctification (the process of becoming like Christ) with justification (being declared righteous). People measure their sanctification to prove their justification as if they were in charge of their salvation!

I went to a conference session by a Christian Psychologist (who I love) and he was using research models to measure love, since why should God be outside the religion science has made for itself? It was a nice attempt to put measurement back where it belongs.

Self-control

An intense focus on personal sins can lead to “creeping legalism,” where believers spend more time obsessing over controlling sin than experiencing the freedom of grace. This “sin-fixation” results in a constant need to apologize for being human, leading to a feeling of being “outside.” It often results in the need to control oneself, others and the world which never goes well.

Self-control is one of the fruit of the spirit. There is a long history of people using the word to keep themselves undefiled, especially by sexual impurity – because they want to get in. But a more accurate meaning of the fruit is: the healthy empowerment one feels when they experience autonomy, the gift of being one’s true self. In Greek philosophy, self-mastery was basically the best one could do, it was the best to which one could aspire in a cosmos full of impersonal, often irrational gods. But Christians live in a world given by a Creator who loves them and leads them, day by day. Self-control is the calm capacity to give as grace has been given to each of us.

Permission

Some evangelical teachings can create a mindset where grace is viewed as permission to sin, but simultaneously, “unmerited favor” feels fragile and easily lost. People are in a balancing act between feeling good about where they are and waiting for the other sin shoe to drop. This dichotomy leads to anxiety about one’s standing with God. The idea is, “Once I’ve given in to sin I am tainted.” This leads some people to fake being in, even when they feel tainted. It leads others into self-exile, since they know they will never be fully in.

One serious teen I knew became a Christian and showed up exhausted to talk to me one day. When I asked him why he looked so tired, he finally revealed. “I have to stay awake because I have a lot of sins to confess. I especially don’t want the sun to go down on my anger.” He really loved the idea of not getting away with anything, but he could not permit God be in charge of the forgiving. He was perpetually in charge of making the right choice to get permission to come in.

Promises

The gap between the promise of a transformed life and the reality of human brokenness creates a sense of disillusionment. The idea is, “If all the promises are not being fulfilled in me, I must be out.” Validating their own authenticity according to God’s performance can make it difficult for believers to accept they are already “inside” God’s grace. Especially when we are sick in body or mind, we assess our well-being according to what we think ought to be true. For many believers, any sin or suffering mars their perfection in Christ.

Assessing ourselves according to how well the promises of God are realized in our life is a recipe for being perpetually out of the exquisite feeling of swimming in the ocean of grace into which we were launched at birth. If the test tube truths the religion of science teaches dominate us (which are often disappointing in their own limited universe), God is regularly disappointing and we are usually disappointed or disappointing, depending on how we respond. We can end up loaded with a false guilt about how bad I must be for God not to fulfill in me what he fulfills in others!

Obedience

Dallas Willard explains how many Christians mistakenly see Christ’s teachings as laws to obey to gain grace, rather than as reflections of the life that comes to them through the new birth. This fundamental misunderstanding keeps believers striving to “get in” to a kingdom they are already part of.

This misunderstanding is so universally assumed that the TV show The Good Place could have it as a central premise. Kristen Bell does not believe she should be in the (what comes to be revealed as an ersatz) “good place” because she is selfish. It seems almost everyone is convinced that salvation requires being good enough to deserve it and obedience to arbitrary rules is key to achieving it.

In Christ

I guess I should not blame the Evangelicals for falling into heresy, since it seems like from the Middle Ages onward, Europe was a long road to re-centering humans. Christianity was reduced to a penance system long before they got there.

DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man put’s the idea of the dangerous kind of autonomy into a picture. The circle represents divine or spiritual perfection (cosmos), while the square represents the material, earthly world. By bridging both, the figure highlights the human body as a microcosm of the universe. Humans are central, especially men.

According to DaVinci’s chart, I am autonomous. I am innately free to choose. In relation to God, I am exiled or welcomed in. I relation to others I can make relationships or end them.

But how did I get out of relationship if I were never in? From the beginning to the end of the Bible (the Evangelicals purportedly love), our sense of being out is a matter of being removed from where we were. Being in with God is our natural human state.

Paul is always referring to being “in Christ.” The phrase is a spatial metaphor which signifies the believer’s renewed sense of being safe at home as opposed to their previous uncertainty before faith and baptism. Being our true selves in Christ or our false self in our autonomy is Paul’s version of being  in our out. The way Paul sees it, Jesus was at the creation of the world and we all bear his image. And according to Jesus, we are all are touched and called into abundance by God’s love. We are all in the love of God whether we think we can choose that or not. God sees us according to who we are in Christ. We have the freedom to turn away. But that is not natural or inevitable.

Being outside where nothing but the power to do “righteousness” proves our worth and where our successes give God the glory he craves results in the psychopathic Pete Hegseth and the infamous prayer he prayed at a meeting last week:

“Almighty God, who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle, you who stirred the nations from the north against Babylon of old, making her land a desolation where none dwell, behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous.”

I think it takes little convincing to admit “the peace of the righteous,” as Hegseth describes, has nothing to do with Jesus and nothing to do with peace. The U.S. has NOT been at war, undeclared or declared, for about 15-20  years since 1776. If you can’t get into heaven, you make yourself a god on the earth, right? At least that is what a lot of people who would like to follow Jesus are struggling with in the United States.

Ozzy Osborne brings it to the War Pigs: The prophecy lives on

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During the Grammy memorial for notable members of the music industry lost in 2025, a group of all-stars paid tribute to Ozzy Osborne, maybe the most notable of them all. The song they chose to play is notable, too: War Pigs.

A long-gone YouTube creator connected a video to War Pigs that is the most-viewed version of the song, now at 108 million since 2014! — that’s the year Russia seized Crimea and “insurgents” blew up buildings in Donbass, the Taliban insurgency continued, and the Syrian civil war raged — the fingers of the U.S. and Russia in all of them. I think her video is quite moving [link].

The film the YouTuber repurposed is a 2009 work from a German film school named Motherland — it shows what music can do to bring your film to life. The original soundtrack is kind of limp [link]. She did not bother crediting the filmmaker when she substituted War Pigs, but likely received the income from the 30 million more views it got lately. But I’m not sure how YouTube works.

The other day, my grandson, the rock and roll drummer student, was part of the Black Sabbath tribute at his concert. They played War Pigs. I admit, Christian that I am, “black sabbath” has never been my favorite name for a band. But I can forgive them for trying to distinguish themselves with the name in 1969. If you want to see the originals play their hit, here they are in 1970.

At the concert, I was predisposed to grinning and bearing the song. But the lead student singer was actually rather good and I caught wind of the words into which I had never tuned.

Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerers of death’s construction

In the fields the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh Lord! Yeah!

Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor

Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait ’til their judgment day comes
Yeah!

Now in darkness world stops turning
Ashes where the bodies burning
No more war pigs at the power
Hand of God has struck the hour

Wow! Just like Amos!

Day of judgment, God is calling
On their knees the war pigs crawling
Begging mercy for their sins
Satan laughing spreads his wings
Oh Lord! Yeah!

Oh Lord! Yeah! The rock students reminded me of the Old Testament prophet, Amos, laying out the war pigs that surrounded the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel. And he did not spare the homeland either! Amos’ list is a recitation of what the war pigs have always done. And it is what they are doing right now, only now with the most destructive weapons ever, directed by A.I.!

  • they have threshed Gilead
        with threshing sledges of iron. (1:2 – Israel in Lebanon)
  • they carried into exile entire communities (1:6 – ICE)
  • he (Edom) pursued his brother with the sword
        and cast off all pity;
    he maintained his anger perpetually
        and kept his wrath forever. (1:11 – sounds like all sides in Iran)
  • they have ripped open pregnant women in Gilead
        in order to enlarge their territory. (1:13 – Russia in Ukraine)
  • he (Moab) burned to lime
        the bones of the king of Edom. (2:1 – U.S. and Israel kill Iran’s leaders)
  • they (Judah) have rejected the instruction of the Lord
        and have not kept his statutes,
    they have been led astray by the same lies
        after which their ancestors walked. (2:4 – all, especially the U.S.)
  • they (Israel) sell the righteous for silver
        and the needy for a pair of sandals—
    they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth
        and push the afflicted out of the way (2:6-7 – the 1% and minions)
  • you (Israel) made the nazirites drink wine
        and commanded the prophets,
        saying, “You shall not prophesy.” (2:12 – look in the mirror)

I am not blaming the wars of humankind on you with that last parenthesis, but I know I have colluded with people who want to still the voices of prophets. I didn’t even listen to Black Sabbath until 2026!

We should all be out on the streets shouting with Amos and Ozzy Osbourn every chance we get. But let’s be honest; when the news channels treat a No Kings Day like it is just a brief traffic tie up or a long line at the airport and we put up with that, we’ve already colluded with the war pigs by fitting our prophecy into the oligarchs’ business plan. When we politely argue about the Iran debacle on Facebook like there are two sides to a war pig, we are just acclimating to the same old slavery.

Jesus before Pilate — Jean Fouquet, 1470

Jesus is prophecy in action

What does Jesus say to a war pig? We have scant evidence because he spent most of his time with marginalized people (take note, Empire-trained American Christians!). But my favorite example is when he has a moment with Pilate — the Roman representing the biggest herd at the trough in the Lord’s time, who is apparently slightly nervous about his imminent murder of the Son of God.

Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”  Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” — John 18:33-36

He’s saying, “It is the people I came to save who keep fighting for the kingdoms of this world.” Oh Lord. Yeah! Thank you Jesus! Your kingdom is not from here!

In a few days after talking to Pilate, Jesus rises from the dead (April 5 this year, if you’re just getting to know him). By the end of the New Testament John has his amazing vision and there is Jesus, the wounded lamb, sitting on the throne! There is a prophecy for you!

Let’s keep talking, doing our art and marching. Even if we feel like lonely Amos (even when we’re in step with millions, around the world), let’s force ourselves to keep telling the truth about the war pigs. They are eating people alive! Don’t just do what you can do because justice should be done. Do it because we want God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, an endless will to bring life from death and love to hate.

***********

Today is Joachim of Fiore Day! Speaking of prophets! This one is more influential than you know. Visit him at The Transhistorical Body.

Inner health prevents the death of resistance: Four goals for the persistent

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Last week, I suggested to several clients that their anxiety and short-tempered reactions were partly about living under the “Trump Cloud.” We are all there.

I, for one, am convinced the president presides over a sociopathic corruption scheme — so you can see what my cloud looks like! Others may be less interested or engaged than I am, or even in favor of a Trump autocracy — but even the 41% who approve of him live under the endless disruption barging into every day. The last few weeks have been dominated by a huge, instant war and further revelations from the Epstein files about Trump’s sexual relations with young girls. It is overwhelming for us all.

As a result, we seem more unhinged. For instance, the most interesting thing that happened to me yesterday was coming to a complete, inexplicable halt on the onramp to 76 from 676 in downtown Philly. This is where the two-lanes of freeway condense into one. It is always a jam up and frustrated people often do less-than-sane things there. But this was unusual. We must have been stuck for ten minutes (or so it seemed), so some people got out of their cars to see what was the matter, so I did too. It appeared to me that the sportscar had tried to squeeze in and the SUV bumped it to protect its right to the lane. The two drivers were out of their cars and arguing, letting the rest of us sit. Word was, the SUV would not give up his info. They were waiting for the police. The sportscar was convinced to pull over and let us pass, so I got by and did not see what finally happened.  But I still wonder, “What are we coming to? Were these guys so angry and distrustful, now so sociopathically tutored, that they, too, were claiming territory and didn’t care what happened to the rest of us?”

Stranger things are likely to happen under the cloud

What do we do to survive this era and help make a change? Here is how this post answers that question: We need to heed the many reminders about how spiritual and psychological health leads to good social change.

Yes, there are loads of strategies for how to resist effectively and how to build the future. But all of them are founded on our inner truth and love. Daniel Hunter says: “Authoritarian power is derived from fear of repression, isolation from each other and exhaustion at the utter chaos. We’re already feeling it. Thus, for us to be of any use in a Trump world, we have to pay grave attention to our inner states, so we don’t perpetuate the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion or constant disorientation.”

Trump’s second term arrived at a time of great social distrust — much of it amplified by him to gain power and wealth. But he did not generate our distrust. Across the board, society already had a reduced trust in traditional institutions. We distrust the media, medical professionals, experts and politicians – for good reasons, since they are cooperate stooges. But our distrust is deeper than that. We also distrust most local and neighborhood associations and membership groups, like churches, the PTA and all those new protest orgs. Whether from COVID or political polarization, a lot of us have even experienced reduced trust in friends and family. We can’t even trust predictable weather anymore.

You can track the development of our mistrust by noting the popularity of Stranger Things (Netflix 2016) which is about the power of human connection and courage in the face of the unknown and unexplained, and Game of Thrones (2011-19) which is about the struggle for the iron throne and how people who want power will do anything to get it, even in the face of the Great Other. Both juxtapose the normal and the paranormal as key parts of the show’s narrative and thematic structure. And both distill how nothing is what it seems to be — and so can’t be trusted.

The distrust spawned by the billionaire/hedge fund extraction project to break American democracy fueled the engine of autocracy because it makes us much easier to divide.  Trump’s tweets/rhetoric encourages it — telling people to distrust  immigrants,  Democrats, socialists, people from Chicago, women marchers, Mexicans, the press, Iranians, transpeople and so on. It becomes a social disease when people decide if a person is trustworthy on the basis of who they tell us not to trust! I spent a lot of my career as a pastor trying to create systems that provided an alternative to this distrust, but a lot of people did not trust me or the system I led, either. However, I persist.

Here are four basic suggestions for how to develop more inner resistance under the Trump cloud, which is not disappearing any time soon, beginning with regaining some trust for yourself.

Trust yourself

We have been gaslighted so thoroughly, it is very difficult to trust our own decisions, even our own thoughts. A lot of us are perfecting dissociation in a vain attempt to weather the trauma we live in.

Trust-building starts within each of us. We need to trust our own truth and love. If you are following Jesus you can trust His truth and love making you whole. Regardless, this development includes trusting your own eyes and conscience, as well as guarding your heart from the crazy-making. Like Elon Musk determined to break the government with DOGE, breaking your inner resistance to unreality is also part of the domination scheme. (Bernie Sanders recently had a chat with Claude about this). Always remember: YOU MATTER.

Trust building is trusting yourself and also being trustworthy.  We should be reliable friends, but all the parts of our inner selves should also be friends. We need to trust that the “I AM” of each of us is going to show up to help us flourish no matter what. We need an inner trust that acknowledges fear and lets that feeling pass through. We need trust that can endure the uncertainty that nags us. We need to let the “cloud” be real so we know a lot of the troubling things we feel are about the cloud, not us.

This trust building will take some time and effort, of course. We’ll need to take care of ourselves if we want the world to change. If you’re tired, take some rest. If you’re scared, make some peace. (Here is a nice list of suggestions for how to stay grounded [link]). A good starting point, for now, is to listen to the voice in you that seems the most trustworthy. Don’t keep checking your phone for validation, check yourself. Don’t keep reading this if you need to take a walk or go find a tree to feel.

Find others who you trust

We have been atomized and isolated so effectively a lot of us don’t even think about trusting people. We are on our own — and that emotional landscape we inhabit, inside and out, makes a big difference.

In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt explored how destructive ideologies like fascism and autocracy need loneliness to grow. She used the word verlassenheit — often translated as loneliness — as a central ingredient. As she meant it, loneliness isn’t a feeling but a kind of social isolation of the mind. One’s thinking becomes closed off to the world and becomes dominated by a sense of being abandoned.

Arendt was talking about Hitler and Stalin, but she is describing the societal breakdown we’re all experiencing, too. Trump is working on the breakdown every day. The constant attacks on social systems: teachers, health care, civil servants, courts, etc. — make us turn away from leaning on each other and towards ideologically simple answers that increase isolation (e.g. “distrust government,” “MAGA is nuts,” “anyone who votes that way doesn’t care about me”).

We have to consciously bridge that distance. People are finding ways to do that. For instance, in my church, a couple of women started an action group. People who made pods during Covid are still travelling together. Indivisible and Singing Resistance are creating new groups all the time. Most of these little groups, like the one in our church, are lamenting how little we are doing. But our very existence is resistance.

Finding just a few people who you trust to regularly act with and touch base with is central to defeating autocracy. We need to use our mutual trust to explore our own thinking and support each other to stay sharp and grounded.

Grieve

No matter what we try to do, there is going to be loss. So we will need to grieve well to live well. We will need to save our capacity to compartmentalize, rationalize, intellectualize and ignore for things like working in a large corporate structure or sorting out the basement. If we use those capacities to defend against our feelings, grief can damage us body and soul like a Kona storm sitting over Hilo.

If you aren’t a “feelings person,” let me say it this way: The inability to grieve is a strategic error. After Donald Trump won in 2016, we all saw people who never grieved; they just worked harder or avoided harder. They didn’t look into their feelings and the future — and as a result they remained in shock. They are still saying, “I can’t believe he’s doing that.” Believe it. Grieve it.

The alternative to perpetual shock is grieving — quite deliberatively, if necessary. Start by naming and allowing the feelings which arise when you confront the “stranger things:”

  • Trump left the Paris Climate Agreement and California has a March heatwave.
  • I daydream about Trump. We all wake up to bat-shit crazy headlines each morning.
  • Trump builds giant detention center for Markwayne Mullin to oversee. The Pitt has ICE coming into the ER.
  • Now it is Iran, tomorrow it is Epstein, then maybe the elections will be invalidated.

Making such a list, especially with someone you trust is health-generating. We begin to identify the sadness, anger, numbness, shock, confusion and fear. We grieve. We come out of our daze and experience acceptance. [A Spell for Grief or Letting Go]

Release what you cannot change

We are so trained to believe our individual power is the most important thing in the world all we think we can do is control something or someone. And if you are as realistic as I think you are, you already admitted control is not working well.

During the rise of the Nazis, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote the Serenity Prayer, which AA loves so much:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Trump’s presidency is deliberately making activists, especially, and all of us, feel overwhelmed. There is so much we feel we need to do and it is hard to accept we cannot do it all – at least I feel that way.  For instance, this week my interest in plastics was revived in my overall despair about climate change in the middle of an oil war. So I took the hour it took to commit to a way to do my little part. But I also saw how few hours I had. Chaos is a friend of the autocrat. One way we can unwittingly increase that chaos is by jumping into the abyss of needing to do it all.

I cannot say I am completely successful at this, but I use my journal to help me sort out what is the best I can do instead of what is the most I can do — what am I given to do as opposed to what needs to be done. I suggest we all take ourselves seriously enough to get some clarity on what is important these days. If we are just coasting through, we might get run over. If we think we are a semi when we are a Civic, we may burn up the engine. If you are in a small group trying to do something meaningful, like in church, be sure to press for a focus, not just be a committee-full of people-pleasers attempting to be inclusive and just ending up an ineffective potpourri.

It is spiritual and psychological health that will lead to good social change. That means trusting ourselves, sticking with others we trust, grieving well and releasing what we cannot change. It requires at least that much of us. We all know people who think they can sit out this challenging time. I feel with them. But I am still patiently impatient for the goodness of God to be seen and respected and put into action in our warming, war-torn world. Nurture that inner life you’ve been given, the best you — it’s the key to making a difference when we really need something new.

Patrick’s journey through the wilderness, and ours

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I feel like I escaped 2025 only to run into Trump’s War with Iran in 2026, just as the crocus began to bloom. Will these days be full of the moments we remember the rest of our lives? If so, may my grandchildren remember how terrible it was when they look back on their youth from their secure, reimagined future.

When we were walking our neighborhood in the wind yesterday, we ran into about 200 of St. Joseph’s finest having a moment. They were getting drunk in honor of St. Patrick at an elaborately planned backyard party. We heard them from a couple of blocks away. I wonder how they will look back on that day  I hope they will be amazed at how God touched them in their ignorance and at least a couple of them might say, “I was numbed that year in response to the war and everything, but God called me out.”

If that happened, it would be much more in the spirit of St. Patrick than getting drunk in his honor and tormenting the rather protective neighbors of Wynnefield who have such pride in their old neighborhood.

Patrick’s confession

There are so many good reasons to honor Patrick, even if you are not Irish. In his shockingly vulnerable autobiography Confession, St. Patrick has some encouragement for everyone who is seeing themselves for who they really are.

12 So I am first of all a simple country person, a refugee, and unlearned. I do not know how to provide for the future. But this I know for certain, that before I was brought low, I was like a stone lying deep in the mud. Then he who is powerful came and in his mercy pulled me out, and lifted me up and placed me on the very top of the wall. That is why I must shout aloud in return to the Lord for such great good deeds of his, here and now and forever, which the human mind cannot measure.

Patrick came from an aristocratic family in Britain before he was kidnapped and enslaved in Ireland. Even before he was that slave he says he was a “stone in the mud.” As it turns out, becoming an ignorant country person, a refugee, was the best thing that ever happened to him. Because it was in that condition, he met God. All over the war-torn world right now, refugee teenagers are becoming brilliant in faith or terror.

He is writing his Confession after he successfully fulfilled his calling to share the Good News of Jesus with the Irish people — he has become the bishop of a burgeoning network of churches! He tells a story about how rivals tried to bring him down by making known a story about some unknown sin he committed when he was a pre-Christian teen. Slander creates permanent wounds. But nothing can undo the joy he finds in being called and empowered to do what he is given to do.

13 So be amazed, all you people great and small who fear God! You well-educated people in authority, listen and examine this carefully. Who was it who called one as foolish as I am from the middle of those who are seen to be wise and experienced in law and powerful in speech and in everything? If I am most looked down upon, yet he inspired me, before others, so that I would faithfully serve the nations with awe and reverence and without blame: the nations to whom the love of Christ brought me. His gift was that I would spend my life, if I were worthy of it, to serving them in truth and with humility to the end.

Nobody writes such things unless they have a moment by moment experience of God’s presence. Patrick honed his relationship out in the hills with the sheep, day and night. I was out honing and being honed on retreat last week, forcing myself to get into the season of Lent. More than ever, we need the self-imposed wilderness of Lent needs to do its work as the bombs go off in Tehran

In the wilderness

As Patrick tells his story I’m encouraged to hear another tale of God calling a person from out of nowhere and providing for them in the worst conditions. Patrick tells of how God spoke to him out in the field about the ship that would carry him from Ireland and his captivity. He manages to get on it after travelling to the other side of the island. Once on shore again, the whole crew ends up in an unpopulated wilderness for 28 days without food until Patrick prays up some pigs. Like Jesus in the wilderness, he feels tested and cared for.

If he were a client of mine, the following story would be an interesting description the anxiety he carried born of all the trauma he had experienced — stolen from his parents, enslaved, and now lost in the wilderness with people he barely knows in a place he has never been. How many college students feel like that? How many people reading right now?

20 That same night while I was sleeping, Satan strongly put me to the test – I will remember it as long as I live! It was as if an enormous rock fell on me, and I lost all power in my limbs. Although I knew little about the life of the spirit at the time, how was it that I knew to call upon Helias? While these things were happening, I saw the sun rise in the sky, and while I was calling “Helias! Helias!” with all my strength, the splendour of the sun fell on me; and immediately, all that weight was lifted from me. I believe that I was helped by Christ the Lord, and that his spirit cried out for me. I trust that it will be like this whenever I am under stress, as the gospel says: “In that day, the Lord testifies, it will not be you will speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.”

It seems to me that paragraph sums up his life very well. You may have had a similar dream sometime. A doctor says, “A dream featuring heavy pressure on the chest, often accompanied by an inability to move, is typically a symptom of sleep paralysis. This occurs when the brain wakes from REM sleep while the body remains sleep-paralyzed, often creating hallucinations of a suffocating presence or ‘weight’ on the chest. It is generally harmless but terrifying.” Anxiety and stress can trigger these episodes as well as sleep deprivation. The researchers will give you ways to prevent it. Your spiritual director might help you listen to it.

How Patrick responds to his dream , for some reason he does not know — except to attribute it to grace, is to call on the sun. If you were Greek, you might name your son “Helias,” which is like a personal name for the helios. He called out, “Helias, come help me.” And the sun brightened and warmed his paralyzed body and terrified soul. Maybe that experience is one of the reasons, Patrick installed a sun at the center of the cross, so the Irish could feel the light like he did.

The circle represents the sun

In honor of Patrick, in defiance of the fascists, it might feel like sunrise in your soul to take his story seriously, as if you still mean something, too. It would be refreshing to follow Patrick’s example, even bearing the wounds of your past, even carrying the memories of your youthful sins and your feelings of anxiety — or the exhaustion of resisting feeling any anxiety in these terrible times, and not just get drunk. March 17 is the day we remember him.

You might read the Confessions. My son and I made a post at our site where you can learn all about Patrick.

You could listen to a dream. Here is a means to do that if you need one.

You could remember your youth, examine your wounds and let yourself be warmed in the sunlight of God’s forgiveness and endless love for you.

You could consider what it is you are given to do in this challenging era. Stones in the mud are undoubtedly being plucked out right now and installed atop some wall, large or small. Patrick never forgot the absurdity of being the unlettered slave boy called to free his captors and those enslaved to their God-free ways. We just don’t know what God is going to do with us in our wilderness, either, do we?

Pray for Christians to stop falling for fascism

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Pieter Brueghel the Younger — The Request of the Mother of the Sons of Zebedee c.1620

Fascism is modern word for the oldest con in the book. Even the mother of the Sons of Thunder fell for it.

Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favor of him.  And he said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.” …

When the ten heard it, they were angry with the two brothers. But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you, but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave, just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” — Matthew 20:20ff

The only imagination she had was that her promising sons would be at the top of Jesus’ pyramid with him. Jesus immediately turned her pyramid upside down and asked her sons if they knew what they were talking about.

Misguided Christians have been turning the Lord’s pyramid upside down ever since. Even back in early times, most of the church was actually delighted to have the Roman emperor, Constantine, take leadership! Millions have submitted to an irrefutable King Pope (or Mormon Prophet), or they have set up their big-box church pastor as Lord. It is no surprise, but it is a crying shame so many so-called Christians embrace strong-man Trump. He’s one of the greatest con artists in history, even though his lies are transparent. Nevertheless, they fall for the fascism.

Trump and many like-impaired leaders around the world: Putin, Erdogan, Orban, Xi and most of the members of Trump’s Board of Peace, are just the latest versions operating the old con. It is as old as those very first Priest-Kings, who claimed ownership over all the land and people, conscripting soldiers for enforcement, engaging a merchant class for management, and carving a deity in their image to justify it.

Basic fascism

Matthew Cooke says: “Fascists are not some fringe, backwoods cult. Let’s just go over their character traits again:

  1. military-worshiping separatists
  2. inflated by a glorious imaginary history
  3. humiliated by a persecution complex
  4. slammed by trillions of dollars of propaganda promising we can only reclaim our standing in the world if we devote our lives to maintaining a pyramid scheme run by an Epstein-class.

That does not describe just one half of congress.” It describes our entire political and economic framework. It is the framework in which we are all living.

The Parable of the Rich Fool by Rembrandt, 1627.

Jesus so clearly says goals based on greed and a lust for control over the future are for fools:

And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”    — Luke 12:15-21

Why do even our Christian reformers think they can change the system by redecorating the control room? America needs to repent in a lot of ways, but that does not merely mean electing a Democrat! “Repent” means “change your mind,” but it also means change your direction; it means respond to your new understanding by changing your allegiance. Most Americans are working to feed a machine that produces only one fruit. We eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and it’s not just rotten to the core, it’s poison. The fruit of the bad tree is so evident, it is hard to know where to start pointing that out.

But just think about what it means to level Gaza and bomb Iran while calling yourselves the people of God! Even more, think about who secretly profits off the carnage and the carnage-making capabilities these wars foist on the world. And think about this tax season: 20-25% of working folks’ gross income will go to Trump sending $20 billion to Argentina!! The estimated cost of the Iran build-up and first attack on Iran was $630 million, by Wednesday the cost was $1 billion, and now they are over a week into it at a billion dollars a day!

The antidote to the poison

The political antidote to this poison is basic human rights for all. Or, as Jesus said when one of the scribes asked him,

“Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one;  you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” — Mark 12:28-31

Love is the antidote. Again, Matthew Cooke says: “If we allow anyone, any political structure, to pretend one group of people are better than another, and condition rights for any reason: political beliefs, religion, ethnicity, citizenship, we reduce rights to permits that are revocable by the state at the discretion of whoever happens to be in office.”

The revocation machinery is in place and it is being used right now. It might not be you it’s being used on, but it will get to you. And you may already be afraid of it getting to you, which means they might not even have to directly threaten you to control you. “This is how fascism operates. It doesn’t necessarily abolish universal dignities right away. It conditions them — on obedience to the machine.” That’s how the Nazis did it and that’s how the Trump regime and the 1% and their corporations are doing it.

Fascism has been called the final form of capitalism.

Fascism is the logical culmination of the American economic system, if capitalism means giving those with the traits required to amass the most wealth and power the keys to every market and the strings to every political puppet. Benito Mussolini of Italy built an entire political system on this fusion of business and state power in the 1930’s, and gave it the modern name “fascism.” This model for a society exists in total opposition to every great teaching since the dawn of time, from Plato to Confucius, from indigenous wisdom on every continent to all three religious branches that harken back to Abraham.

One last time for Cooke: Fascism “can only occur because law enforcement has been allowed to hunt people, kidnap them, and force them into labor and concentration camps ever since our founding fathers invented a myth-of-a-pure-people just for us 250 years ago. Human rights have always been conditional here, revocable by the state.

The antidote to the poison of fascism, of ethno-nationalism, of this violence and priest-king worshipping cult – also melts the pyramid to the ground — and the billionaires, and the Epstein class along with it” (looking at you Peter Thiel). It starts with this first principle: there must be universal human rights for all the citizens of planet Earth.  Regardless of which part of what continent they were born on or what word they use for the One unfathomable reality that must precede all beginnings and endings, the One closer than the innermost and further outside all that can be seen and not seen.

Basic resistance

At some point, we’ve got to stop paying for and then just redecorating our staterooms on the Titanic.  We’ve got to change our minds about where we live and adopt an alternative story about how life is to be lived. We need to following basic, Sermon on the Mount teaching, now that it really matters:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If, then, the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

No one can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. — Matthew 6:19-24

Following means shining the light strategically, assertively and persistently and forming an alternative.

The Epstein class does not maintain power because it is stronger. It has always been vastly outnumbered. It maintains power because it has mastered how to coordinate us and we haven’t. The surveillance state, the corporate control over all our markets, a false church under a false idol, and its armies of secret police are all coordination technologies. They allow a small group to act as one, while keeping the majority of us divided, fearful, and fighting each other instead of the fascist system. That is the system which is going to get back 20-25% of the wages it deigned to give us in order to provide “greatness” and “freedom.”  For one thing, are you getting what you supposedly paid for? Is greatness Trump demolishing the White House illegally and putting up a cheap-looking but not cheap ballroom? More importantly, would Jesus “buy in” to the system? Can you imagine him lining up to pay for ICE?

Fascism rewards obedience. It punishes community cooperation. It uses racism, nationalism, colors like red vs. blue — when it’s never been left vs. right, it’s always been up vs. down. But as long as the neighbor, the foreigner, the other is the enemy, the system is safe.

Every coordination trap has a breaking point.

Repentance matters. The moment enough people defect from the dominant strategy, the calculus shifts for everybody. Suddenly, obedience is no longer the safe move, and cooperation is. We’re already seeing it happening. A narrative shift is taking root. Minneapolis helped it form a lot more. A new story is one weapon nobody can defeat. A new story can bring an empire to its knees in months. That’s why the Ellisons bought Paramount Global in 2025 — CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, and Paramount Pictures, and that’s why they are closing a deal Warner Bros. Discovery right now – including HBO and CNN. They want story control, better coordination. Fortunately, we have new names for these plutocrats: the Epstein class, the Trump crime family, the billionaires/oligarchs. We are on to something new.

 We can pull down the strongholds with a new-for-some-but-old-for-Jesus-followers story and three organizing tools. There are successful ways people have used to undermine authoritarian regimes.

  1. Labor withdraws cooperation. That includes mass strikes. (probably led by organized labor).
  2. Civil disobedience makes the cost of enforcement unsustainable. (probably led by the church, which should be innately disobedient to sociopaths, anyway).
  3. We starve the system of the capital it needs. That means boycotts of some kind (people are making lists for us).

Fortunately, we don’t necessarily need a majority of the country to cause the change we all need. A Harvard study found that when 3.5% of a population engages in sustained disruptive action, toppling of fascist regimes is possible (Chenoweth and Stephan, 2011). So when we get engaged, we are not just being idealistic, we are doing math. History suggests that the breaking-point moment is always much closer than the latest Epstein-like crime syndicate wants us to believe.

What is the cost if we do not take action?

If we do not take action we lose everything we need and want from our society: our rights, our dignity, our water, our glaciers, our food, our safety, our taxes, our connection to our whole human family, our capacity to freely care for others, our freedom to use our gifts to create and serve as God leads us. The cost of not taking action now is the loss of the future for our children. Given the technologies we depend on, we cannot survive without cooperation — not the cooperation of the ruling classes, but cooperation between the people of the world, our hub cities linked in a mutually-benefiting web. Our children are counting on us.

Truly, if we do not take action, we endanger our souls. If Christians are in the forefront in these efforts by the example of their way of life and their courageous truth-telling and resistance, they will answer the Lord’s prayer as he prepared for the cross:

I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution, but take courage: I have conquered the world!”

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him….

All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them.  And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.  — John 16:33, 17:1-2, 10-11.