Maybe We Don't "Do" Anything

"So, what do we do about that?" a friend said to me. We were talking about the clothing designer for Target who got fired because he was openly a Satanist. "Do we support Target for firing someone with beliefs like that? Or do we not support Target because they're firing someone based on their beliefs? Like, what if a Christian got fired because they were a Christian? What do we do?"

"Maybe we don't 'do' anything," I said, having this thought for the very first time. "Maybe we just...live our lives."

And if someone confronts us about our stance, we can say that: we don't know what our opinion is. We're still thinking about it, for XYZ reasons.

This was a brand new thought for me, and one that is very counter to how I've always thought and lived. In the era of social media especially, it feels like we have to take a side, post for or against, share some hot take. But we if we don't have to do that? What if we don't have to "do" anything?* What if the world needs and Jesus wants something more mundane than that?

The Jews were expecting a leader who would rescue them from the evil, corrupt government and restore Truth to the world via war and politics. What they got was the exact opposite of a political leader. Jesus largely ignored the politics of his day, not even taking the "right side." He spoke in riddles to force people to talk to each other, and loved children to highlight the importance of faith, and toyed with religious leaders to prove they didn't have all the answers, and ate with sinners to model doing the contemporarily unthinkable, and overturned temple tables to mourn the house of worship becoming something commercial and gross.

Jesus did do things, but not...not what I see a lot of Christians doing today. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think Jesus would be posting all over his social media—or even boycotting or not boycotting Target. I kind of think he'd be talking one-on-one to the person your Facebook post is mocking, and buying food at Target for the homeless guy.

Jesus never delighted in making fun of people—and in fact, the people he came closest to "making fun of" were actually the religious blowhards who saw the world as black and white and thought they knew everything.

Maybe when we see or hear things that outrage us, our reaction doesn't need to be to DO something, but to BE something? I wonder if Jesus is unimpressed with most of the actions we take, if he feels like we're missing the point. Like, posting Bible verses and labeling sinners is one thing, but have you tried loving your neighbor?

I'm tired of being told I need to be mad about something or DO something in response to every little thing. Maybe it's not that deep. Try your best to live like Jesus, and trust him to sort out the details.

~Stephanie

* This will need to be a longer post at some point, but I'm NOT saying I think Christians should stand by while atrocities and injustices happen. I think Christians are called to advocate for people who are abused or endangered, whether by systems or individuals. There are definitely times when we should "do" something; I just wonder if the something is more personal, less performative than what we've been doing.

How Super 8 Sort of Saved My Life

This post is the epitome of a "first world problems" post. There are people who have actual problems, whose 2020s were actually tragic and terrible, and I am not one of them. You are free to roll your eyes at this, and you are probably right. But this was my experience, and I've been meaning to talk about it for a while.

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Here's an obvious statement: twenty-twenty was hard—and I had it really, really good. I didn't lose my job or get sick, and neither did the people closest to me. I had it really, really good.

But it was still hard.

The difficulty peaked in July of 2020.

Due to gym shutdowns, I hadn't been working out in about five months. I didn't like the way I looked or felt, inside or out.

I have trouble breathing on good days, so masks give me a lot of anxiety and make it extra hard to get a deep breath.

Places that used to be productive or fun to me—like the grocery store or library—were shrouded in an insidious fog of fear and condemnation. Without the ability to smile at each other, we all somehow decided not to make eye contact either. Everywhere felt like a prison. Every person felt like an inmate. There were "sides" everywhere. You either wore your mask properly like a virtue signaling sheep or you wore it below your nose like a white supremacist asshole.

There are more than two sides—everyone agrees to that—but that's still how it felt in 2020. How everything felt.

I was angry, all the time. I was angry at how irrational I thought some people were being, and I was angry at how irrational I assumed they thought I was being. All the things I'm passionate about—freedom, the government, health, fitness, church, holidays, travel, Disney World—were being tainted.

It felt like there was nothing good left.

And I had it really, really good.

Wake up, don't go to the gym, think about how mad you are, eat breakfast, work, don't see friends, think about how mad you are, don't make plans, put on a mask, think about how mad you are, go to the grocery store, see some new shortage, read some sign about the vaccine, think about how mad you are, accidentally make eye contact with someone, don't see friends, cook dinner, watch TV, see something on Facebook, think about how mad you are.

In July of 2020, Gabe and I celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary. He was new at his job, so he didn't have time off for us to take a trip or anything. We went to a friend's wedding in Asheville the weekend after our anniversary and decided to stay the weekend, make it a mini trip.

It rained.

Every store we wanted to go into required masks, which triggered anxiety, anger, and acne the following week.

None of the little local restaurants would let people eat inside, so we couldn't try anything new.

Nothing felt good. Nothing. Felt. Good. Nothing sounded good, present or future.

The world felt bad. It felt like it had been bad for months, and it didn't feel like it was likely to get any better. All the people making decisions were making decisions that made my blood boil. Being alive was exhausting and infuriating and I hated it.

Absolutely nothing that had ever, ever brought me joy was of any interest to me at all. Dancing? Emptiness, apathy, like we'll ever be able to dance without masks again. Reading? Emptiness, apathy, nothing sounds interesting. Writing? Emptiness, apathy, don't feel like saying anything. Eating? Emptiness, apathy, why bother. Working out? Emptiness apathy, can't do it anyway. Seeing friends? Emptiness, apathy, I don't enjoy anyone.

Gabe and I were on our way home from our utterly failed "anniversary trip" when I told him that I didn't feel like living any more.

I know it scared him. I couldn't care at the time. I just let silent tears happen. I just wanted to stop living. There aren't words for how it felt to have a black hole inside me. It wasn't intense, at all. It was like deadness, like nothing, and that's not something I feel often.

I don't remember what Gabe said. Probably things that were very comforting and very rational. I don't think I heard them.

When we got home, we decided to watch Super 8. Neither of us had seen it since it came out, and we both remembered liking it.

We watched it. It was good. And then a line drove a spear straight through my soul.

"I know bad things happen," one character says to another. "But you can still live."

The line hit home.

It didn't promise that things would get better—I wouldn't have been able to hear that anyway—it just said that life was still possible. Life. Living. That was all.

Bad things happen. Fact. But that shouldn't cripple our ability to live. It doesn't.

"I know bad things happen, but you can still live."

In a way I can't describe, I felt Heard by that movie. Or maybe the movie was Heard by me, I'm not sure.

But that was a turning point for me. God used a line from a J.J. Abrams movie to snap his fingers in my face and anchor me back to reality.

"I know bad things happen, but you can still live."

No promises. Just facts.

No anger, just truth.

I don't think I'm saying this right, but I never will if I don't starting trying.

~Stephanie

I am a Republican, Therefore So is Jesus

A couple of months ago, I realized I was falling into a trap that I think Americans struggle with more than any other nationality: prioritizing politics over Christianity.

(Note: I went off on a tangent that I didn't see coming. It is thoughts that have been floating around my head for a long time, needing to be organized. It is relevant to this post, but not necessary. If you want to read that part, it's in a PS at the bottom.)

I get why America has a high degree of national pride. I believe in her founding principles and I really hope that one day they are—and feel—true for everyone equally.

Because I believe in America's founding principles so wholeheartedly and am proud of her potential as a country, belief and pride in her have become values of mine. Because they have become values of mine, I believe that they are right and true, as is the case for values that anyone holds. If you didn't believe a value was right and true, you wouldn't hold it as a value, would you?

However, as you are aware, we also have a lovely thing called "political parties." I would like to think that both parties have the interests of America and her citizens at heart. So, assuming that we all have the American value of loving our country, we all pick a political party that we think best upholds that value.

Love of freedom, one's country, and one's neighbors feel easily compatible with Christianity. Jesus is all about freedom, I imagine that he would rather a healthy country, and we know he prioritizes loving our neighbors.

With that in mind, we tend to assume that if we are Christians, our politics will align with Christianity automatically. If we hold X values related to our country and we also hold X values related to Christianity, they're probably going to coexist fine because they're held by the same person. It wouldn't make any sense for the same person to hold values that were at odds with each other. Because of this, we usually choose one of the Lovely Political Parties that aligns with our political beliefs and assume that it aligns with our Christian beliefs.

In theory, that should work. But we have two major problems:

1) Only one of them can be the top priority.
You can have Christian values and you can have political values (and theoretically they can coexist). However, one of them is going to be the deciding vote at some point. If you can't serve both God and money (Matthew 6:24), you can't serve both God and your political party either.

2) Politics is in our line of sight more often.
This may not always be the case (it certainly should not be the case), but thanks to social media, we are drowning in politics 24/7. Everything is political. EV. ER. RY. THING. EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!! You literally cannot swing a dead cat* without hitting an opinion that finds itself rooted in politics.

Because politics is what's in front of us most often, we allow the positions of our parties to dictate our opinions on politics, which is—as we established—actually our opinions on EVERYTHING. We don't stop to think, "How is this aligning with my beliefs as a Christian?" because we assume it must.

We continue on our merry ways, drinking the Kool-Aid of our given political party and assuming that whatever it thinks is what Jesus would do.

Well, folks, there are Christians of both parties, so clearly that's not true. Clearly politics is NOT synonymous with our Christian values, at least not all of the time or by default.

So what do we do, as Christians?

We need to stop voting by political party.

We need to check in with Jesus and the Bible for our values and political opinions. We need to pray. We need to prioritize loving our neighbors and living the fruits of the spirit and fighting for justice. We need to put Jesus in our line of sight more often than politics. We need to saturate ourselves in the Word. We need to dwell with Jesus, letting him transform our hearts and minds to be more like his.

THEN, with our minds informed by Jesus, we should form our opinions on current issues and find a candidate/bill that aligns with our value as a Christian. Sometimes that may be one political party, sometimes it may be another.

And you know what? As Christians, that shouldn't bother us. Our loyalty is not to a political party or our country. Our hope is not in a political party or our country. Our loyalty is to JESUS. Our hope is in JESUS. The end.

It's embarrassing that it took me this long to untangle my patriotism from my hope in Jesus. It's embarrassing that I would form a political opinion and then ascribe it to Jesus. It's embarrassing that I was letting the opinions of my political party transform my mind rather than the Holy Spirit.

I want to be done with that. I want you to be too.

~Stephanie

P.S. In general, I think Americans have more national pride than most other countries. In general, I think this makes sense. America was founded very much "on purpose." She didn't evolve as much as she shouted, "NOT TODAY" at England and then sat down with the journal prompt "If I could start a new country, what would it be like?"

When America closed her journal with a contented sigh and nod, she had decided on several specific principles that I happen to agree with wholeheartedly:

- Everyone has the right to political and religious freedom.
- No one has the right to rule without the people's consent.
- Governments are naturally power-hungry and should always be kept in check, hard.

Has America lived up to these ideals? Not so much. However, that doesn't make her ideals any less beautiful or noble or worth fighting for. The Founding Fathers were onto something, and the fact that we've executed it imperfectly is not cause to disparage them or their ideals, but an inspiration, an obligation to do better.

It makes sense to me that a nation founded with this degree of intentionality is generally proud of itself. If you move into a house that's a few generations old, you will redecorate it and make it your own and you'll like it. You may move later, or your children may decide to sell it after you die, but for now you like your house and—sure—you're "proud" of it.

However, if you buy a couple of acres of land, design a house, and build it from the ground up? Whole 'nother level. That is YOUR house. You will be PROUD of it. You will think long and hard before moving. Your children will know that you built that house and they'll be a little bit proud of it too. This house belongs to the family.

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* Like, actually imagine swinging a dead cat and how you would get caught and BLASTED with an admonishment that quickly turns political (even though, like, it really wouldn't need to because swinging a dead cat would be wrong for reasons in many other spheres first).