*Disclaimer: I am angry. If you are easily offended, quickly defensive, have difficulty with self differentiation, have not done any work acknowledging and understanding your own privilege and fragility, and tend to get emotionally hijacked, read at your own risk.
Jesus was a Jew—not a Christian—a person of color—not white—born in Bethlehem and was an immigrant in Egypt because an ignorant, insecure, power-hungry national leader was afraid of losing his power and control and wanted to kill Love and Light and Justice, the Prince of Peace.
Is it fine for one to ask God to watch over and bless one’s country? Sure. Should one act as if their country somehow deserves more blessing than all the other countries? Um, feels like flirting with some messed up Manifest Destiny (“it was a way of clothing imperial ambitions in a higher purpose ostensibly decreed by Providence—Heidler, J. January 16, 2026”) and American exceptionalism right there.
I am a person who professes Jesus Christ as Lord, but there is a lot of tension for me surrounding the word “Christian.” I follow Christ, but I am not a Christian Nationalist. Christ says to care for the widow and the poor and the immigrant, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. I cringe when I see “Christian” being skewered and skewed to try and justify oppression and exclusion and violence and people determining we are better than someone else because of what? Where we were born? The color of our skin? The thickness of our pocket books?
It is not appropriate or acceptable to to strategically manipulate God’s sacred love-infused word in attempt to justify self-serving behavior. Do not tell me you are following Jesus yet supporting our current administration’s actions. There is nothing in Jesus’ actions or words that should lead anyone to believe that we should revere, condone, idolize, and be complicit to people who use fear-based language and actions.
I have two teenagers and one preteen in my household. Their prefrontal cortexes are of course not yet fully developed, but if any of my children acted the way the leader of our country acts—posting ridiculous rants on social media all through the night, flipping off and shouting “F you!” to people that say things that hurt his feelings, (and then having White House communications staff flip the script and attempt to normalize and justify the consistently egregious behavior), and whining and pouting and whining some more because they didn’t win their favorite prize (that they absolutely do not deserve in any way, shape, or form, and we don’t get to just say things like, “I ended eight wars,” and truly, it is concerning if members of our country do not find this absolutely embarrassing)—then they would be grounded.
I do not care if someone identifies as a Republican, Democrat, a Cubs fan, or a checker at Walmart, but do not condone behavior that we would ground our children for.
We do not get to act and speak/post like petulant children and do things like threaten to invade countries (“We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be frankly unstoppable . . .” —DT (seriously, who talks like that?)) with whom we have been allies since World War freaking 2 because we want to be friends with dictators who love fascism. (If you haven’t already, please take some time to review the definition and history of fascism. While you’re at it, read and review the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, and pay attention to the First Amendment; and stop saying the United States is/should be a country built on Christianity.)
Do not tell me this behavior is acceptable. Use your critical thinking skills. Read (read and don’t just watch) from as many sources as you can find, including and especially sources where independent journalists and not money-seeking empires are boots on the ground. Study our country’s history. We just observed—well, most of us did—Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Read those stories. Make connections. Do not be ignorant, naive, complacent, egocentric. Do not be complicit in allowing our country to backslide so d@mn much, complicit in staying silent when people are being murdered in cold blood on our streets by federal agents.
“There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” ― MLK Jr.
“[I]n long intervals I have expressed an opinion on public issues whenever they appeared to me so bad and unfortunate that silence would have made me feel guilty of complicity.” —Einstein
We have to think. For ourselves. Get out of our privileged bubble and consider other people’s perspectives. Do not be so ignorant to believe even though history has repeated itself always—like the fall of so many empires—that for whatever reason it magically will not repeat itself this time. Why? What makes us think we are so special? What the h#ll sense does it make that we are somehow more important than all the civilizations, ever? (“These patterns [of unchecked decadence and internal decay] highlight the necessity for vigilance, adaptability, and responsible governance to sustain a nation’s longevity.” —Darren, November 15, 2025.)
Have we asked our Indigenous brothers and sisters what they think of that?
Acknowledge our fragility. Acknowledge our ego, our shadow sides.
Wonder about what work we might need to engage in, to learn about why we are so d@mn fragile and defensive and offended. If you find yourself tempted to assume a victim position or posture, be brave enough to acknowledge that, and know that is your responsibility to explore; that is your work to do.
Let’s try to be the grown a$$ adults our kids (hopefully) think we are.
In church today, the incredible pastor at my church—who I know for a fact spends hours and hours each week praying and praying and praying as he considers what to preach each Sunday, based on Scripture assigned to that week and what is going on in our world—preached (34:05) on the generally well-known verse John 3:16.
He told the story from Numbers 21:4-9, where the people are whining about not having enough water and not liking the food (which was arguably literal manna from heaven, so basically an actual miracle), and then God sends venomous snakes among them. The people quickly learn that these snakes bite and kill, so they ask Moses to pray for the Lord to take those snakes away from them.
The connection our pastor made here is that, even after hundreds and thousands of years, we simple humans still whine and complain and point fingers at everybody else, but usually not at ourselves. He posed the question, “What is really biting at the heels of the people?”
He went on to explore how we humans tend to complain, to be dissatisfied, to have a lack of trust in and awareness of God’s constant presence. That, at our core—in some way, shape, or form— the thing that is “biting at our heels” is that we all seek power, control, and security.
He wondered if:
“What the cross represents in its most poisonous [form, as a torture tool] is that we as people will use violence and oppression in order to hold onto power, control, and security. . . so I wonder that how it is that we—and our children—continue to be plagued, poisoned, and killed, and then confoundedly, we look to these “snakes” as the thing that are going to save us. Let me share the bad news for you first: they are not; the snakes are not going to save us. We will not be saved by violence. We won’t be saved for our own desire to hold onto power and control and security. This has been true for our entire existence. . . What is real and what is lasting and what is the Light, is the fact that God so loved the WORLD . . .”
We can do better.
