I'm Not Sure How to Write About the Gospel Anymore

You can't take a shot glass of life straight, and still believe things turn out for good without the love of God. - Dr. Cleo LaRue, Princeton Theological Seminary, retired

*Editing note: I originally stated that two black men were found hanged in Mississippi, but I realized I was mistaken. It was a young black man and a homeless white man. I edited this to reflect that, and also to share their names, which I should have done in the first place.

You are all the most patient, lovely readers. You’ve been so patient as my publishing has gotten erratic in burnout lately. You are so generous and kind every time I am honest about my struggles.

So here I am again, telling you, I am lost.

“You write about the gospel,” is the advice the priest I typically go to for guidance told me at the beginning of this year, when it first felt to me like the world was spinning off its axis in new and frightening ways. And I’ve tried to remember that. I’ve tried to think about everything in terms of how it fits with the gospel, how the gospel changes my reactions and decisions.

But I’ve been a little lost lately. Lost on how to write about the Gospel when it feels harder and harder to see. Lost when it feels like the world has lost its mind; when one half of my social media is calling the other half of my social media (and me, whether they realize it or not) “satanic” and the people who first taught me about Jesus are calling people who look an awful like the folks I attend church with “demonic”; when there is far more public distress for the murder of a man who, while I did not think he deserved to be shot (no one does) also devoted his life to stirring up discord and enmity between individuals - than there has been for the numerous school shootings this year; the murders and assaults on Minnesota lawmakers just two months ago; and for the tens of thousands who continue to die of starvation and violence in Gaza. In Mississippi, Demartravion “Trey” Reed, a student at Delta University; and Cory Zukatis, a homeless white man - were found hanging from trees this week and Billie Holiday is playing in my head…

Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root / Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze / Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. - “Strange Fruit” by Abel Meeropol - most famously performed by Billie Holiday

How can we keep calling ourselves Christians, I have asked myself, again and again. I’ve asked my husband, my friends, my social media, strangers on Substack… what does the word even mean when Christian pastors are calling for women to lose the right to vote, when the Russian Orthodox Church continues to baptize war crimes, when clergy hands out the same tone deaf, harmful advice to women who are doing their best, and ortho-bros tell artists sharing the gospel that they are in fact working for Satan? When even I - raised in church, steeped in Christianity of a variety of flavors, with respect for multiple traditions - feel wary at anyone who uses the title of Christian and have to restrain myself from asking, “yeah but what kind?”

So in this maelstrom of doubt, I keep thinking of a Campmeeting sermon I heard over 25 years ago. I had to message a friend to get the pastor’s name - Dr. Cleo LaRue, a former homiletics professor at Princeton Seminary, and the first black pastor to preach at Smyrna Campmeeting, in Conyers GA.

“No one can take a shot glass of life straight,” he said, “and still believe everything works for the good without the love of God.”

NOW - I am not saying not to worry because everything is going to be okay. I WOULD NEVER.

I am saying… this paused my despair spiral.

I was witnessing the despair of a fallen world, and not remembering the love of God.

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I found some comfort this week in two places, both surprising in their own way.

One was from an online friend on social media… She reminded me that “corrupt religious authorities combined with state sanctioned violence LITERALLY killed God.” She reminded me that nothing good happens when we divide people up into “good” and “bad”, and that, while the individuals that do terrible things will one day stand before Christ, we can’t determine who knows God or not.

The other, was the book Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen & Girlbosses Against Liberation by Sophie Lewis. I’ve been listening off-and-on for months (it’s dense, and the narrator isn’t my favorite) to this meticulous look at feminism's two hundred year history, and the unsavory connections many of our favorite historical feminists have had with racism, fascism, imperialism, classism, violence, the carceral police state, and so-on.

Notably, Lewis’ point isn’t that these women weren’t “real” feminists. She doesn’t denigrate their contributions to feminist thought. She pushes through their work, to examine their whole history, and how they often used their admirable belief in the equality of women to also justify the violence, greed and racism of empire, capital and class. She shows where their reasoning went off the rails, and how the policies and beliefs they proposed and fought for - actually hurt the women they claim to defend. She doesn’t argue for purity tests or erasing history - it’s knowledge she wants, and shares with her readers. It’s caution, and stepping back to see all sides of an issue before deciding what’s “best” for women.

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I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t call out bad behavior or harmful language when we see it. I’m not suggesting we stay in churches with harmful rhetoric. By all means, if your priest or pastor is giving air time to dangerous voices, speak up. Go to the parish council, or board of elders, or bishop or district superintendent - whatever your ecclesial structure is. Leave if you need to.

Stop listening to bad advice from clergy (yes you can just ignore them if they’re wrong) and tell ortho-bros (or theo-bros, I know this is a problem in many traditions) to shut up and leave you alone. Block freely, mute always. Grieve the changes and new things you learn about people you love and decide if you can live in relationship with them or not. Sign petitions, raise awareness, give money where you can. Get in the way of bad behavior, wherever you see it. Help the person in front of you.

We live in a broken and fallen world. It may feel especially off-kilter now, but it’s actually just the same amount of broken and fallen it’s always been. Some of us are just more aware of it now than we were in the past.

Like Lewis’ feminists, some of our Christian brothers and sisters are going to be swayed by greed, or fear, or self-righteousness and throw their lot in with some harmful movements. Some of US are going to be swayed by greed, or fear, or self-righteousness, and throw our lot in with some harmful movements - and we will need our brothers and sisters in Christ to call us back in, to pull us out, and help drag us back to the Kingdom of God.

… I also remembered all the parables where Christ talks about the good and the bad being all mixed up, and it’s not going to get sorted to the end. The wheat and the tares… and especially the one about the Kingdom of God being like a net that pulls up all the fish, both clean and unclean, and then the fisherman sorts it. In addition to the unclean fish I picture old boots, a bunch of rusty junk - a bunch of trash. But it’s all in the net together. When I see someone doing something appalling in the name of Christianity I remember that parable. We’re all in the net together. I just hope I’m not the rusty old fridge motor.

• Wise internet friend

Look… I don’t know what’s going to happen.

I don’t know what’s going to happen in the US, or Gaza or Ukraine. I don’t know what’s going to happen to the Orthodox Church, or the American evangelical church, or any of the traditions and denominations watching their members stumble and fall and struggle and give up. I don’t know if I’ll be able to hang on, or if you will, or if we will all just give up and fall away. I hope not.

I hope we keep falling and getting up. I hope we despair and come back to hope. I hope that when we inevitably find ourselves stumbling in the dark again, a wise internet friend turns on the light for us.

What I do know, is that none of it will go right without the love of God.

I know that God is a God of love, and His followers are sometimes corrupt and mistaken, and blinded by fear or hate or anger. I know that good and evil rest in my own heart, and I cannot follow God if I only gaze on what is evil.

And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.

• C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

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One week, after I had worked through my despair and into a particularly hopeful-sounding newsletter, I asked my husband which person he thought I really was - the hopeless, despairing pessimist who started the week; or the tentative, hopeful writer who put out a newsletter days later.

“Maybe you’re both,” he said. “Maybe you just need to work your way through your despair to get to the hope.”