Once again, I want to take a slight detour from a direct engagement with John 11 to discuss how to best read the Gospels. If you recall, earlier we looked at what we lose when we fail to read each Gospel as its own, self-contained, literary argument. When we take details from all four Gospels and smoosh them together, what scholars call harmonizing the Gospels, we erase the unique perspective and God-inspired argument of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

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0:17 - Mourning Dolly Parton

9:23 - Is Polarization Keeping Gen Z Out of Church?

21:02 - Should the Church Be Political?

31:04 - The Rise of Socialists

50:21 - Can the Middle Hold Together?

1:04:32 - End Credits

Characters with dual natures are a common trope in popular fiction. Some classic stories use this approach to transform ordinary people into frightening monsters. Werewolves come to mind, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. More recently, Marvel’s Incredible Hulk fits this trope when mild-mannered Bruce Banner transforms into a giant green rage monster. Of course, characters with dual natures are not always destructive. Heroes like Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man use secret identities to protect their loved ones and pursue justice.

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I just spent a week hanging out with family visiting from Canada. It was an awesome time! I’m feeling grateful, exhausted, and about five pounds heavier.

What do Canadians do when we get together? We chug maple syrup, feast on poutine, and reminisce about growing up in igloos and tracking polar bears across the frozen tundra. OK, not really. But I’ve found Americans will believe just about anything I say about Canada.

While I’ve never tracked a polar bear, I managed to track down some stories I hope you’ll enjoy. If you don’t, I’m sorry.

A quick recap of what you might have missed this week

Warning: If you skim this post about “Reversing the Damage of Internet Reading” you may die of irony. The author explains how the Internet has conditioned our brains to skim rather than read deeply, and explains how that’s problematic, especially for those of us dedicated to the truths contained in the long read called the Bible. He then shares practices he’s used to counteract the impact of Internet use. “If you want to increase muscle strength in your arms, you have to pick up heavy weights and start pounding out the reps. The same principle applies to serious reading.”

Another warning: this post could ruin a lot of sermons for you. It examines popular sermon illustrations that have dubious (or nonexistent) origins. Pastor and professor Jordan Vale observes, “The preaching tradition has a way of handing down captivating illustrations like they are family heirlooms, without asking where they came from.” You know that one about low gate in the Jerusalem wall called the “Eye of a Needle,” the ones camels had to kneel to get through? Turns out no such gate existed in the first century. Bummer. That was a good one. Vale exposes “seven popular sermon illustrations that dissolve on contact with a footnote.”

There are many causes for the country’s falling birthrate: the high cost of living, better access to contraception, even smartphone use. Now a new contender has entered the ring: political identity. A new study found that conservatives average 1.4 children (that 0.4 child is always a little off) while liberal families clock in at 1.09. This Atlantic article explores the reasons behind the divide. Again, the phenomenon is multifactorial; it includes different priorities, contrasting views of parenting, and geographic influences. The author concludes: “Ideology may nudge people into parenthood or childlessness by subtly shaping what they value, what they fear, whom they surround themselves with, and what they want out of life.”

The latest theological dustup on the world wide web

Right wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza is no stranger to controversy. But this week he took a break from the political beat to start a theological fight on X.com. “If the Calvinist doctrine of pre-destination is right, then atheists are right to reject God, because God has rejected them first.” A flurry of replies followed, with many accusing D’Souza of twisting reformed doctrine. Some Arminians jumped in on D’Souza’s side. In the end, no minds seemed to change. As Daniel Darling commented, “You are probably not going to solve a 2,000-year-old soteriology debate online.”

If you find a 3,000-year-old-trumpet, you might not want to blow it. That’s what happened when archeologists unearthed King Tutankhamun’s ancient trumpet and decided to play it for the first time in millennia on live radio in 1939. The result? The fragile artifact cracked and fueled rumors of the “pharaoh’s curse” just before World War II.

While we’re talking history, check out Thomas Aquinas’ funky handwriting. It’s heavily abbreviated and super sloppy; like a chicken stepped in ink and walked across the page. As one person commented, “No wonder they called him a ‘doctor’ of the church.”

Feel-good stories to lift your mood.

Here’s a back-to-school rite of passage I’m hoping sweeps the nation. At Bishop Kelley High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, freshman students are forced to kiss their mothers goodbye on the first day of school. Senior students surround the freshmen’s cars and refuse to let them exit until they’ve given their mothers a farewell kiss. I have a freshman who’s going to school in a few days. Maybe we’ll make him pucker up.

• On the Holy Post, the team discussed radical hospitality and America’s love of privacy.
  

• On Curiously, Kaitlyn, Kaitlyn addresses the question, “Why did Jesus ascend to heaven instead of staying on earth?”
  

• On the SkyePod, Skye asks whether we’ve accepted a lesser gospel of resuscitation rather than a transformation through Christ’s resurrection.

Fresh updates across the religious landscape

• Christian Sues Employer Over Fossil Fuels in His 401(k)

• Apologist Draws Backlash for Questioning Nicene Creed

• DHS Spied on at Least Five Midwest Churches

Are you new to the area? Looking for a new church with a different worship style? A smaller congregation? Find-A-Church is an online directory where you can sort through thousands of United Methodist churches. Find the perfect church for you with Find-A-Church.

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23:13 - Gary, Indiana

38:33 - Conflict is Good for Relationships?

49:32 - End Credits

Resources:

Isaiah Johnson and the Big Game by Esau McCaulley: https://amzn.to/46lZ8gD

How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Survival in the American South by Esau McCaulley:

https://amzn.to/4ca7Kug

Within pop Christianity, we regularly encounter two different images of Jesus. The first is bathed in soft light, often seen carrying a lamb or surrounded by children, with the gentle approachability of a messianic Mister Rogers. This is the sentimental Jesus found on Sunday School room posters and greeting cards. The other has ripped muscles and fire in his eyes as he violently flips over tables with prophetic indignation. This is the warrior Jesus seen in social media memes and on t-shirts. Typically, those who are drawn to one image are disgusted by the other. For example, one warrior Jesus pastor slammed sentimental Jesus as “a limp-wristed hippie in a dress.” Likewise, a sentimental Jesus advocate mocked the warrior Jesus as “Chuck Norris in sandals.”

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In John’s Gospel, the raising of Lazarus was a spectacular event by design. Jesus ensured it happened in public, with a large crowd, and he prayed and spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. Jesus’ resurrection, by contrast, was subtle by design. He appeared only to his closest followers, and these meetings happened in private or secluded places. Given the cosmic importance of Jesus’ resurrection and its centrality to the Gospel, it’s surprising that Lazarus’ return from the dead would surpass it in publicity and spectacle.

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1:36 - Why Were the Pharisees Angry at Jesus?

3:11- Who were the Pharisees and Sadducees?

8:42 - Human Mixed Motives

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14:40 - Why Was Jesus so Critical?

25:52 - End Credits

We’ve been exploring how Jesus leveraged the spectacle of raising Lazarus to accomplish several things. First, it publicly displayed his power and authority over death. In this way, John 11 fits the pattern of numerous Old Testament duels between the Lord and foreign deities. Second, Jesus knew the spectacle of raising someone from the dead would provoke the outrage of his enemies. He used the event to create the conditions that would lead to his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion.

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I once heard a pastor argue that Sunday morning should be the most exciting hour of the week and more entertaining than anything people see on TV. “I believe a boring church is a sin!” he said. I can confirm that he practiced what he preached.

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In 2003, I was attending a ministry conference at a megachurch. Everything about the event was grandiose, so I wasn’t surprised when the auditorium lights dimmed, the music swelled, and the massive screen came alive with a single sentence: “Perhaps the greatest outreach opportunity in 2,000 years.” Then Mel Gibson appeared to promote the upcoming release of his film, The Passion of the Christ.

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Sure, there are days I want to beat my head against a wall navigating the Medicaid waiver system. Days I lament that if it’s this hard for me — with a graduate degree from Duke — how impossible it must be for a single mother whose first language isn’t English. No social worker walks you through the system; there’s no funding for that. We still have much work to do. But my daughter’s experience of life is dramatically better than most of her peers with disabilities around the world.

A few days before we got the prenatal diagnosis that she had the most severe form of spina bifida, I was talking with a woman at the park who had immigrated from Russia. She told me one of the things that struck her most about America was how much easier life was here for people with disabilities — that being born disabled in Russia was often a life sentence of suffering.

For 50 years, America has built a remarkable, bipartisan legacy of disability rights, thanks to tireless advocacy from disability activists across the political spectrum:

• The Rehabilitation Act under Nixon

• The right to public education for disabled children under Ford

• Section 504’s guarantee of reasonable accommodations under Carter

• The Fair Housing Act Amendments under Reagan

• The Americans with Disabilities Act itself under George H.W. Bush and its later strengthening under George W. Bush

• The Affordable Care Act’s ban on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions under Obama.

It’s the Americans with Disabilities Act that lets my wheelchair-using daughter access our church, her school, our grocery store. As a passionate Christian, I look at this 50-year, bipartisan project and can only call it divine intervention.

Which is why, as a follower of Jesus, I read a new Department of Justice memo — one that threatens the legal protections that give children like my daughter the option to live in their homes rather than in an institution — and call it contrary to all that is good and sacred. I first heard about the memo the same day my daughter took her first steps, and my spirit went from elated to gutted.

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, was reportedly the driving force behind the memo, according to Bloomberg Law. In plain terms, as the journalist Lynn Schmidt has written, it means states could stop funding the therapy, home care and community supports that let people like my daughter (and hers) live among us, “and face no federal accountability for doing so.” America’s bipartisan legacy against institutionalization is focused on keeping families together and protecting the most vulnerable, and is a priority not only for people of faith but also for the vast majority of Americans. How could we reverse direction?

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The politics being sold to the public are about getting mentally ill people off the street. But the legal mechanism being used is broad enough to reach any Medicaid-funded disability service in the country. A Texas-led lawsuit, joined by five other states, is simultaneously working towards this end.

Between the lawsuit, the memo, and last year’s deep Medicaid cuts, the future care of the 5.1 million people who receive Medicaid-funded home care (and the 600,000 people on waiting lists) now depends on a legal fight most Americans have never heard of.

While it is true that there is a serious lack of high-quality institutional options for those whose needs cannot be met within the community (who end up in jails or ERs), it should be Congress that thoughtfully legislates these institutions into being, in consultation with the community. Any forced institutionalization under the Trump administration is likely to resemble corporate-run immigration detention centers.

It’s hard to overstate how horrific institutionalization was before we prioritized in-home andcommunity-based care. When Robert Kennedy — RFK Jr.’s father — visited the Willowbrook State School in 1965, he found thousands of residents “living in filth and dirt, their clothing in rags, in rooms less comfortable than the cages we put animals in at the zoo.”

The public outcry led to a sea change in policy. That history is why no doctor pushed us toward institutionalizing our daughter, as one might have just decades ago. They knew state-funded therapists would come to our home starting in infancy. Termination rates following a prenatal disability diagnosis are already tragically high in America—63% for spina bifida and 74% for Down Syndrome, to name just two conditions. How much higher would they be without the supports we currently have?

My friend Sloan Meek, a musician and disability activist with severe cerebral palsy, put it starkly: “The way I move through the world, the way I communicate, the people who help me do the things I want for my life — it’s all supported by Medicaid. Without it, I’ll be forced into a nursing home to spend the rest of my life in a hospital bed.”

I met Sloan a decade before I had a child with a disability myself, at Reality Ministries, an intentional community in Durham, NC where people with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities share life together. The community upended my worldview. I’d grown up steeped in American meritocracy — the belief that my worth lay in my productivity, my intelligence, my appearance. Five glorious minutes at a Reality Ministries dance party expose those premises as lies.

As theologian Stanley Hauerwas would encourage us, the primary question isn’t how we include people with profound disabilities, but how people with profound disabilities might convert the rest of us to a life free from the bondage of meritocracy and self-sufficiency. If we warehouse people with disabilities out of sight and out of mind, we are all impoverished.

“All flourishing is mutual,” as the writer Robin Wall Kimmerer says. I felt this viscerally in that intentional community, watching my own defenses — years of academic striving built to mask my own neurodivergence — melt like wax in the candle glow of love and openness embodied in that space.

I keep wondering what might have happened if, in 2007, my fellow Duke alumnus Stephen Miller had wandered two blocks from campus to the newly founded Reality Ministries, and felt his own loneliness and academic posturing melt in that same glow.

Lena Van Wyk holds a Master of Divinity from Duke Divinity School and is the founder of New Garden Farm Ministry in Greensboro, North Carolina. She writes here as the mother of a three-year-old with spina bifida.

During the pandemic, I developed a weird habit.

I started spending an embarrassing amount of time on real estate sites like Zillow and Redfin. We didn’t need a new house. Ours was fine. Nothing fancy, but it had enough room for our family. And I was relatively happy with it—until I started perusing other houses online. I soon discovered the myriad of ways our house was deficient. For instance, it had no theater room, no library, no home gym, and of course, no swimming pool.

It was Grace who finally snapped me back to reality. One day she leaned over my shoulder as I gawked at houses hundreds of thousands of dollars beyond our budget. “What are you thinking?” she said. “We’ll never have a house like that.”

Not with that attitude, I thought.

But she was right. The habit was making me discontent—and distracting me from the many blessings I already had. I was reminded of my strange obsession while reading the first story below on “ordinary abundance.” Sometimes, finding contentment requires focusing less on what you lack, and more on what you already possess.

A quick recap of what you might have missed this week

“Come, Muse, and sing the dreaded Washing-Day. Ye who beneath the yoke of wedlock bend, With bowed soul, full well ye ken the day.” This line, written by Anna Laetitia Barbauld in 1797, describes the backbreaking task of washing clothes, which would often take an entire day of each week. Today the washing machine has made such toil unimaginable. That’s the point of this interactive digital essay, it takes readers on an immersive tour of a contemporary home, pairing everyday objects with historical quotes to highlight technological progress. It will leave you with a greater appreciation for the many conveniences of modern life that we take for granted.

Evangelicals are uncritically accepting of AI. So says historian Christopher Jones. He believes that a confluence of political, theological, and psychological factors have made evangelicals uniquely vulnerable to reliance on a “Machine God” that risks replacing the slow, embodied work of faith with the superficial help of algorithmic technologies. Are his conclusions accurate? I’ll ask ChatGPT and let you know.

Exorcisms seem to be on the rise. This article analyzes the surging demand for deliverance ministries and examines what’s driving the trend. The author concludes that “our culture, which has largely rejected God, hasn’t stopped believing in the supernatural, but has simply gone looking for it elsewhere. And when people open doors to darkness, they shouldn’t be surprised if darkness answers.”

The latest theological dustup on the world wide web

The topic of this week’s fight? Dinosaurs. It started when the founder of Answers in Genesis' Ken Ham posted on X.com: “The Bible makes it plain that dinosaurs and people must have lived together.” Many disagreed, including Jennifer Greenberg who urged Ham to “stop making weird issues like this into litmus tests to prove that God is real … Sola Christo, not Sola Dinosauria.”

A Florida evangelist was recently kicked off an Alaska Airlines flight for preaching to her fellow passengers during a delay. With the plane stuck on the tarmac, Whitney Lynn popped into the aisle and started preaching … while filming herself for Instagram. She was shocked when she was asked to deplane. “This wasn’t a harsh message at all,” Lynn posted later online. “In fact, it’s probably one of the softest messages I’ve ever shared. That’s why I was so shocked. But the truth is, demons tremble at the name of Jesus. It doesn’t matter whether the message is soft or bold—when you share the gospel, it offends some people.”

Feel-good stories to lift your mood.

Justin Buzzard, a 47-year-old California pastor, is living his athletic dream as a defensive end for the San Jose City College Jaguars. Buzzard says the younger players have welcomed him. “I think they’ve seen that I hold my own out on the field, and I work just as hard as any of them,” he said. Playing football has another benefit for the middle-aged pastor. The physical game is good, he joked, because “in the church I can’t hit anyone.” Go get ‘em, Justin. All the old dudes are cheering for you.

• On the Holy Post the team discussed whether progressive pastors will close the political “God Gap.”
  

• On the Esau McCaulley podcast, Esau is joined by Charlie Dates to discuss the ideas of justice and righteousness within the Black church context.
  

• On the SkyePod, Skye and I talked about spiritual puberty, AI sermons, and Deconstruction.

Fresh updates across the religious landscape

• Nigeria Rescues More Kidnapping Victims but Struggles to Stop Violence

• Mega Church Pastor Wins Dem Senate Primary

• Televangelist Imprisoned After Declaring He’d Never go to Jail

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0:06 - Advice for Pastors

8:31 - Evangelicalism is too American

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19:14 - Legacy of Chicago

28:30 - How Black Churches Equip Students

47:00 - End Credits

What Hath Justice to Do with Righteousness?: Reclaiming the Intersection of Protest and Prayer by Charlie E. Dates: https://amzn.to/4gjpWTz

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Ross Douthat was a conservative opinion columnist at The New York Times for 17 years. In case you didn’t know, The New York Times is not a conservative newspaper. That meant Douthat often advocated views most of his colleagues opposed, and he knew his ideas would face resistance from most New York Times readers, too. By his own admission, Douthat said these ideological and cultural headwinds made him better at his job. If he ever tried to push sloppy arguments or unpersuasive cliches, his critics would pounce.

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