• Musings from my hospital bed

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Thanksgiving

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Advent

• Dispatch from the home healing front: A thorn in the flesh

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Every good and perfect gift

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Profound loss

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Weary and burdened

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Christmastide and new beginnings

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Resetting expectations

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Gearing up for 2026

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Hard pressed on every side

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Laments allowed

• Dispatch from the home healing front: But now I see

• Dispatch from the home healing front: The vine and the branches

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Small steps

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Seeing the end from the beginning

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Anoint your head and wash your face

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Working together for my good

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Taking stock

67 years old. 67 trips around the sun.

On a day that is supposed to be celebratory, I’m reminded of the words of the apostle James, the straight-talking bishop of Jerusalem:

I imagine he wasn’t on a lot of birthday party invitation lists!

However, to be fair, James was admonishing believers who pursued their moneymaking plans with a level of supreme confidence that failed to acknowledge God’s sovereignty over their lives. “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money’” (James 4:12). He goes on to say that boasting is “evil” and warns them that they must keep God and His purposes at the forefront of their minds and hearts: “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them” (James 4:17).

As a mature believer, I have always thought I had a healthy perspective on God’s will versus my own. These were my observations on my birthday last year.

I didn’t know at the time what lay ahead for me in the year ahead.

In August 2025, I was just beginning to notice something was a little off about my mobility. When stepping up onto the stage or the raised seating area at our church, I felt unsteady and needed to hold on to something to make the step. I was literally using my arms to lift my legs into and out of my car, and navigating stairs was more difficult than it should have been for someone who had dropped 65 pounds in the previous year. I chalked it up to arthritic knees and pressed ahead.

In August 2025, my younger brother, Kevin, was battling lung cancer, and I was managing his care from a distance. He was still receiving chemotherapy, and when he called me to wish me a happy birthday, he said, “I want to get to where you are, man.” He was 63.

In August 2025, my mother was in Colorado Springs, where my sister and niece were caring for her in their home as she suffered from dementia. However, when I engaged with her via video chats, she always recognized me and would praise me, telling me how handsome I was and how much she loved me.

What a difference a year makes.

Most of you know the rest of the story. A little more than a month after Kevin expressed his desire to reach 66, he was gone. By December, my mother was catatonic, and I don’t know if she even recognized me. I will never forget December 29th, when my sister called me, sobbing, and showed me my Mom lying lifeless in her bed.

In October, I landed in the hospital after my loss of hip and thigh strength was accompanied by a loss of strength in my shoulders and chest, and weakness when swallowing, sneezing, or coughing. I was eventually diagnosed with a chronic, incurable autoimmune disease called statin-induced necrotizing autoimmune myopathy. It wasn’t predictable or preventable — statins triggered an autoimmune reaction in me because I happen to carry a common immune-system gene variant that makes that reaction possible in a small fraction of people who carry it.

I have a disease that is so rare that the best available data is from a 2025 UK/Australia retrospective cohort. Picture me as one of the merchants in the epistle of James, making plans to travel and make money, only to be stricken by a disease that affects 1 in 345,000 people per year and about 1 in 45,000–50,000 statin users per year.

I was on prednisone for over eight months to suppress an immune system that was destroying my proximal muscles, and the treatment, while effective, had its own adverse health effects. I am receiving monthly intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) infusions to replace my broken immune system, and I will likely be receiving them for the rest of my life. I’m finishing my birthday week with two days of IVIG infusions.

It was a year I didn’t foresee on August 11, 2025, when I wrote, “the best is still ahead.”

There’s an old aphorism derived from a Yiddish proverb that goes, “Man plans, God laughs.” Now, I don’t believe God laughs at our plight. He may find our presumptuousness amusing, but I believe He hurts when we hurt. Psalm 34:18 says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Paul speaks of an empathetic God who cares for us and wants us to care for others as He cares for us.

My days are not what I expected them to be. Every morning is accompanied by groaning and pleading to God to help me overcome the fatigue and body aches that cover me like a blanket and make me want to stay in my recliner and go back to sleep. Every day is a competition between my mind and spirit, which want to engage with the world and get things done, and my body, which prefers doing as little as possible. While I tell myself, optimistically, that I am in the early stages of a disease management plan and things are bound to get better, that doesn’t make my current situation better.

And yet, every sunrise is a blessing.

This year has brought home for me the lesson that James wrote 1,960 to 1,980 years ago. Life is a mist, a vapor, and it could be gone tomorrow, or even later today. My perspective on my own mortality is sharpened, and my empathy for those who have lost loved ones, even beloved pets, is deepened. “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).

Yes, I look forward to the day when I see Jesus face to face, and I have a glorified body that doesn’t fight against me every day. I know that I have more years behind me than ahead of me. Still, life is a beautiful gift, and I’m grateful to see daylight today and, God willing, for many more days to come.

So, what is a conservative? That is a question that will get you more than one answer, and the definition that prevails depends on who has the most power or influence at any particular time. I’ve indicated that what President Trump and the MAGA movement describe as “conservative” is not what I grew to embrace as my political identity for most of my adult life. However, my personal reexamination of American history and the history of conservatism, and a provocative article about why liberals don’t understand conservatives and, therefore, don’t know how to oppose them, came together and, in my own words, “blew my mind.”

You see, conservatism, as a political ideology, offers sound ideas for governance worthy of debate and discussion, and it rests on a moral foundation. However, conservatism as a cultural phenomenon resists change of any kind out of a desire to retain power and influence, and can become irrational and immoral if carried to its extreme.

I’ve come to the realization that the debate over who is truly conservative is meaningless, because conservatism has always had two camps that have, at times, aligned but for the most part have kept each other at arm’s length.

Trumpism, the MAGA movement, America First - whatever you want to call the political movement that has captured all three branches of government to some extent, although the lower courts are still holding out - is cultural conservatism, with its emphasis on a singular heritage, religious identity, and race, gender, and cultural norms that constitute the “real” America. It also embraces the use of federal power to attain this singular national identity. In its most extreme forms, it can be racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic as it attempts to recreate the nativist utopia envisioned.

The conservatism it supplanted, political conservatism, is about a limited central government, with most power residing in local and state governments and the people; a free-market economy with the minimum necessary regulation; free global trade and commerce; the rule of law, which applies to everyone, regardless of station; and a strong national defense to preserve national and global liberty so the world, and by extension the United States, may flourish. Political conservatism has no qualifications based on lineage, race, gender, or ethnicity, so it is a potentially multi-ethnic, multicultural movement that allows for diversity because it adds to the richness of our nation.

Let me give you an example. Political conservatism takes a much more nuanced view of immigration and sees it as a net benefit to our nation. While they may speak out against illegal immigration, their motivation for doing so is primarily the rule of law and the desire for a measured and orderly approach to immigration. Consider the words of President Ronald Reagan on immigration from his “farewell address” on January 19, 1989.

While in office, President Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 to grant a pathway to legal status for nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants who had entered the U.S. before January 1, 1982, provided they paid fines and back taxes and demonstrated good moral character. The last Republican president before Donald Trump, George W. Bush, took a similar position on immigration reform:

President Bush pushed back against the hostility many showed to immigrants, saying, “We cannot build a unified country by inciting people to anger, or playing on anyone's fears, or exploiting the issue of immigration for political gain. We must always remember that real lives will be affected by our debates and decisions, and that every human being has dignity and value no matter what their citizenship papers say.”

In recent years, President Bush has continued to speak out in favor of a prudent, compassionate approach to immigration, proclaiming, “America’s a nation of immigrants, immigrants have helped build the country that we’ve become. Not only do immigrants help build the economy, they invigorate our souls.”

He believes, as Reagan and his father, George H.W. Bush, did, that “America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time.”

Let’s contrast that with the views of the current administration, which I’ve written about in the past:

Moreover, they are targeting not just undocumented immigrants, but legal residents, naturalized citizens, and those with birthright citizenship, although primarily those of a certain race. The most insidious aspect of the cultural conservatism embraced by this presidency and its supporters is the presumption that only white people are worthy of being Americans:

As of today, the only refugees allowed into the United States are “white South Africans seeking to escape alleged and disproven ‘white genocide,’” while our Department of Homeland Security puts out propaganda declaring that “America after 100 million deportations” will know “The peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world.” As I wrote previously, the most generous estimates of the number of undocumented immigrants are 14% of 100 million, so where are the other 86% coming from?

Given their stated enmity for “the third world,” and their expressed desires and policy decisions favoring white immigrants, I declared, “it’s not a stretch to presume which foreign-born people aren’t welcome and would be expelled.”

This is cultural conservatism at its worst, and it reflects the spirit and composition of today’s Republican Party. However, this wasn’t the issue that eventually caused the scales to fall from my eyes, allowing me to see what was happening to the GOP and giving me the clarity to walk away.

I mentioned before that I was an active participant in the Tea Party movement. At the time, I believed it was motivated by policy differences with the Obama administration on the role of government in society, and I thought it was nothing more than everyday Americans who had grown tired of excessive government spending and a multi-trillion-dollar federal deficit. I was critical of people who referred to it as a “racist” movement, and accused the press of looking for the most controversial Tea Party participants to create a false narrative. I devoted an entire chapter of my book to the Tea Party movement, and much of it addressed the purported racial motivations of the protesters.

You see, I was not so naive that I didn’t realize there was a racist cohort that found more traction in the GOP than the Democratic Party, and that most Republicans did their best to distance themselves from them. As I wrote previously:

While William F. Buckley, founder of the National Review and the public intellectual who acted as the definer and gatekeeper of the conservative movement, was taking steps to keep groups like the John Birch Society at bay, Lee Atwater was introducing the “Southern Strategy” to GOP politics to attract disaffected Southern Democrats who objected to the national party’s embrace of civil rights. In an infamous 1981 off-the-record interview that wasn’t released until 2012, Atwater explained in offensive terms how the Southern Strategy was employed:

In many respects, Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, is Lee Atwater’s more intellectually savvy and refined successor, taking on an obscure legal concept called critical race theory (CRT) and distorting it into “a catch-all term for any topic concerning race, including discussions about race/racism; diversity, equity and inclusion efforts; race-related historical studies, books and educational materials; and anti-racism initiatives.” Rufo has managed to make his campaign of racial resentment a key component of the “America First” movement, and he dismisses efforts to rectify the racial evil of centuries as “reverse discrimination.” Rufo’s influence extends from the Florida governor’s mansion to the White House, and his purportedly scholarly approach to the issue offers cover and comfort to racists across America.

Now, if you read the words of my book, you wouldn’t believe that the same person who wrote it also wrote what you just read. I took the position that racism wasn’t powerful enough to prevent Black people from succeeding, and that if they followed the playbook of finishing school, finding work, marrying, and having children, in that order, their chances of success would increase greatly. I spoke of casting off the mantle of “victimhood” and embracing entrepreneurship and free enterprise, and of no longer giving airtime in their heads to people who simply wanted to perpetuate the sin of racism for their personal and professional benefit.

So what caused me to change my view so dramatically? I told the story in a previous article:

I went on to say:

I started reading the American history they didn’t teach us in school, and how Black people were stymied, often violently, every time they tried to rise up, and how those setbacks built, one on top of the other, to bring us to today, when these so-called “race-neutral” advocates like Rufo and his ilk want to lock in the status quo, which still leaves them dramatically ahead of their fellow Americans of color in practically every economic and educational category, and unaccountable for the evil done to Black people for hundreds of years.

Until I did my own research on American history, the history that this administration is trying to squelch by any means necessary, I didn’t realize that while white people were aided by the government to establish homes and begin building generational wealth with the Homestead Act of 1862, the freed Black slaves were at first promised “40 acres and a mule” through General William Sherman’s Special Field Order Number 15, which sought to redistribute the slaveholder’s land to the ones who worked it and made it profitable. However, after President Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson, a Southern sympathizer, rescinded the order. That decision and the events that followed in American history have had dramatic consequences in the present day. Consider that, “Just after emancipation in 1865, African Americans owned 0.5% of national wealth. By 2019, that percentage had not risen above 2%.” That is astonishing.

I didn’t realize that the federal government cut a deal with the Southern states, under which they would certify the 1876 election of Rutherford B. Hayes as president in exchange for the withdrawal of U.S. Army troops from the South. Once those troops departed, the South unleashed a reign of terror on the freed Blacks who were beginning to build businesses, hold public office, and exercise their constitutional rights as U.S. citizens.

This Southern autocracy, which served as a model for the Nuremberg Race Laws, enacted by Nazi Germany on September 15, 1935, and which eventually led to the Holocaust, suppressed Black people to the point that about six million of them migrated north and west, one of the largest voluntary mass movements of humanity in history. Those who remained couldn’t vote, were segregated into subpar schools, commercial establishments, and communities, and had to show deference to white people whenever their paths crossed, lest they risk inciting white rage.

And that rage seemed to rise whenever Black people sought to build better lives for themselves or seek the rights our laws said they were due. Tulsa’s Greenwood District, nicknamed “Black Wall Street” by Booker T. Washington for its economic and cultural flourishing, was devastated by a white mob in 1921, set ablaze and literally bombed by aircraft, ostensibly to defend white female honor over a trumped-up charge of rape by a Black man. Professor Kimberly Fain wrote, “Thirty-five city blocks went up in flames, 300 people died, and 800 were injured…Nine thousand people became homeless, Josie Pickens writes in Ebony.” Dozens of Black communities were targeted with violence, especially during the Red Summer of 1919, and, in subsequent years, Rosewood, Florida, and Elaine, Arkansas, were among the Black communities that were wiped off the map.

Black soldiers who came home from World Wars I and II after fighting for freedom and democracy abroad were denied the same at home, and many were lynched or murdered, some for wearing their uniforms in public, which was deemed a sign of arrogance and potential resistance to white supremacy.

Near where I live, the practice of “redlining” Black neighborhoods, thereby denying them mortgages and the chance to build generational wealth, has resulted in those very neighborhoods being among the poorest in the City of Lynchburg today. If anyone needs proof of past events having consequences that live on in the present, this is a textbook example.

The more I learned, the more ashamed I was of how naive and ignorant I’d been. Moreover, it was selfish of me to assume that my life circumstances were some kind of gold standard that could apply to anyone:

I would say I’d led a charmed life until the 21st century, when a series of professional and personal setbacks, including political betrayals, job losses, unemployment, and numerous health issues, humbled me and opened my heart to things I’d never considered before. As I recounted my misfortunes, I learned many valuable lessons that changed me. For example:

I now pose this question to those who want to dismiss the impact of the past on the Black community: “We have no problem understanding how childhood trauma, unless eventually confronted and the cycle broken, can damage a family from generation to generation, so why do we struggle so much with the idea that collective trauma inflicted against a people can have a similar impact on an entire culture?”

There is one other thing I’ve come to realize. Justices Alito and Roberts had been steering the Supreme Court toward race neutrality for years before this administration took power, on the premise that things were not as bad now as they had been before. Setting aside for the moment the question of restitution for past wrongs - a biblical concept, by the way - while things have gotten better, it is only because the federal government imposed the rule of law on those who were violating it. Think back to what happened in the South as soon as the U.S. Army departed in 1877, marking the end of Reconstruction. Fast forward to this year, when the Supreme Court ruled in Louisiana v. Callais that gerrymandering to eliminate a majority-black district is permissible as long as race isn’t the stated reason for the decision. The speed with which states in the South raced to dismantle these congressional districts tells me they are unrepentant in their beliefs about who should rule, despite their denials, which are drowned out by the nature and immediacy of their actions. I have concluded that there are people in America who can never be trusted to act equitably without an external force to hold them accountable.

Needless to say, there is no room in today’s GOP for this kind of thinking. The cultural conservatism that controls the American government today has more in common with the “blood and soil” far-right movements in Europe than with the liberal democracy of our founding documents. Their embrace of the recently defeated Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz in Hungary and the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany, among other European far-right political parties, coupled with their constant lecturing of European nations for their relative permissiveness toward immigrants, confirms this.

What’s more, they are returning to one of their old classics to try and put fear into the hearts of Americans with their claims of communists lurking behind every ballot box. Whenever cultural conservatives feel that their narrative and their hold on power are threatened, they always create bogeymen: that is why every move toward greater equality and inclusiveness has been accompanied by accusations of communism or some other threat. As early as 1918, Black soldiers returning from World War I and demanding their rights were accused by the government of having been manipulated by “foreign Bolshevik agents,” and an edition of the New York Times blared, “Reds Try to Stir Negroes to Revolt”.

While some black activists were attracted to leftist causes because they explicitly condemned American racism, the communist threat was greatly exaggerated to justify the suppression of civil rights. Of course, many people know that the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover accused Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of being a communist, and that charge was echoed by segregationist politicians and white supremacist groups, even though King himself wrote that “Communism and Christianity are fundamentally incompatible” and declared that, because of its “cold atheism wrapped in the garments of materialism, communism provides no place for God or Christ.”

Fellow Substack writer Heather Delaney Reese calls out these scare tactics for what they are:

Communists are just the 20th- and 21st-century version of the “outside agitator,” the faceless entity that stirs up trouble where there was none, and came to light in the years before the Civil War, when the South blamed the unrest over their slaveholding on “outside agitators” disrupting the peaceful, benevolent relationship between slaves and slaveowners.

At the height of the civil rights movement, Alabama governor George Wallace, one of the nation’s most prominent segregationists, declared, “As a matter of fact, we have never had a problem here in the South except in a very few isolated instances and these have been the result of outside agitators.” In his 1964 letter, Wallace goes on to say:

Wallace concludes his letter with a postscript promising his correspondent that he will forward her a couple of his speeches, including one, not coincidentally, on communism.

Cultural conservatives have demonized every movement toward equality, diversity, and human dignity in America, labeling them threats from “outside agitators,” “communists,” or “leftists who hate our country.” Cultural conservatism is an exclusive club, and every attempt to expand its membership, restore equity, and offer liberty and opportunity to all will be met with ferocious resistance.

So why did Ben Wheeler’s article blow my mind? It’s quite simple: I didn’t understand why so many of my conservative friends and colleagues were willing to abandon the principles and positions I thought we shared until I realized we were pursuing completely different outcomes all along, which gave me amazing clarity. We used a lot of the same language and sometimes supported the same policies, but those were alignments of convenience that disappeared when the cultural norms they upheld were threatened.

They favored limited government and state and local autonomy, as Wallace did, “to preserve Constitutional Government and States’ Sovereignty,” because it allowed them to suppress the rights of Black people without interference. Conversely, once they realized that the federal government could be used to purge the nation of people they didn’t want and to attack states, cities, organizations, and individuals who opposed them, they abandoned the 10th Amendment and limited government altogether.

They favored free enterprise until corporations didn’t align with their agenda, so they threatened boycotts and used their government power to levy fines and erect regulatory roadblocks to force compliance.

They believed in balancing the budget and reducing deficit spending, unless the expense was tied to a legislative proposal that rewarded their friends or punished their enemies; thus, the availability of $1.8 billion for an “anti-weaponization fund” to pay taxpayer dollars to pardoned insurrectionists and seditionists, or approximately $113 billion in direct, multi-year funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to terrorize, deport, and sometimes murder immigrants, and to intimidate and sometimes murder U.S. citizens who “get in their way.”

The principles of political conservatism are only valid to cultural conservatives as long as they serve the outcome. Once they don’t, they are discarded, even though they continue to pay lip service to them. It is surreal to hear words like “freedom” and “liberty” from the lips of the leaders and supporters of arguably the most authoritarian presidency in history.

The “fusionist” conservatism of William F. Buckley, Frank Meyer, and Ronald Reagan, the cohort of political conservatives that I was a part of, no longer exists, and the cultural conservatives have prevailed.

As I learned the truth about American history, endured life experiences that deepened my humility and empathy, and became more active in my local church and community, I began to see that even the faith I had embraced since childhood had been handed over to a cultural conservative agenda that prioritized power and influence to achieve what they believed to be divine objectives.

As I connected with other churches in my community, I began to understand how the city’s outsized cultural conservatism was at odds with their beliefs about the church’s purpose and character. While there are communities within the conservative Christian “bubble” that are humble, empathetic, and compassionate, and that place the Beatitudes ahead of the Republican Party platform, it became clear to me that the primary purpose of faith-based cultural conservatives was to fight and win the culture wars by any means necessary.

That aligned them with the rising breed of “heritage Americans” who, despite their lofty statements about self-government, liberty, and equality before the law, in practice seem to promote a white European, heterosexual, male-dominated Christian regime. Can there be liberty and equality under the law for those who don’t believe that America belongs to those who were powerful enough to possess the land? Is it truly a Christian regime when its public hallmarks toward immigrants, women, and non-dominionist believers is contempt and unrelenting cruelty?

I have a very simple view of the authentic Christian life. I am to be like Jesus in that I am fully devoted to God, and I love others as myself. However, I am not to assume Jesus’ mantle of authority: when He declares that “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” he doesn’t delegate that to us. In Romans 12, He makes it clear what is our responsibility, and what is His:

Jesus rejected Satan’s temptation of dominion over earthly kingdoms (Matthew 4:8-11; Luke 4:5-8), refused to allow Himself to be drawn into political matters (Matthew 22:16-22; Mark 12:14-17; Luke 20:21-26), and said His Kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36).

Many in Israel refused to accept Him as the Messiah because they expected a political leader who would free them from their earthly oppressors (Luke 24:21). Even His disciples, after His resurrection, believed He was there to free Israel (Acts 1:6). It wasn’t until they were imbued with the Holy Spirit that they fully understood His Kingdom.

How is it that we have the benefit of the New Testament and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit Himself within us as believers, to understand the nature of Jesus’ Kingdom and His ultimate purpose, yet we are making the very same mistake the ancient Israelites made?

So Ben Wheeler is right. To understand cultural conservatism, including the Christians who embrace that agenda, you must abandon the notion that they believe in a creedal America as we do. They do not believe that the cultural diversity brought by immigration is an asset; that the power of government shouldn’t be used to impose one version of morality over another; that a full accounting of American history leads to understanding, repentance, and reconciliation; or that we are at our best when we set an example of liberty for the world to see and align ourselves with like-minded nations to secure freedom around the globe.

There is a universality to creedal Americanism that cultural conservatives reject. Likewise, the Lord’s Kingdom is universal, and “ a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language” (Revelation 7:9) will come together in “a new heaven and a new earth” (Isaiah 65:17; Isaiah 66:22; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1). As Christians, everything we do should be with that goal in mind.

Now that is an outcome that will blow your mind.

Since then, Trump has engineered the commandeering of an entire major political party and remade it in his image, an astonishing political feat. What puzzled me about his success is how quickly and easily so many of his opponents from the various traditional conservative factions migrated to his side. As someone who was not only a student of politics, but someone who sought to let principles rather than the popular positions of the day determine my political beliefs, I didn’t understand how so many people could surrender their principles so cavalierly, and I didn’t buy their explanations, i.e., “He isn’t who I thought he was,” or “We’re not electing a pastor-in-chief, we’re electing a commander-in-chief.”

I thought, “Where was this malleable perspective on the character of our elected leaders during the Clinton administration?” Conservative politicians, thought leaders, and people of faith all cried out with one voice, “Character matters!” Let me take you back in time:

As regarding the argument that once you get to know Trump, your view of him will change, I’ll only say this: Trump has been a nationally known public figure for about 40 years. I’ve been aware of him since the early 1980s: as a football fan, I followed the United States Football League, one of the earlier attempts to establish a pro football league in the spring, and Trump owned the New Jersey Generals. It was quite clear, at least to me, what kind of man he was, and the only thing about him that’s changed in 40 years is that he’s become older, larger, and possibly in cognitive decline. As for those who genuinely like him because he’s been good to them, that will last only as long as he considers you loyal or useful. If you give him reason to question either, you will be vilified as you’ve never been before.

Suffice it to say, I am incredulous at anyone who claims their negative view of him changed after getting to know him. He is and has always been a malignant narcissist, and anyone who doesn’t see that is naive, opportunistic, or approving of his behavior, either because they see him as a flawed means to a positive end or because they share the same personality traits.

For a decade now, I’ve been pondering why my chosen tribe, specifically conservative evangelical Christians, were so committed to Donald Trump. It baffles and frustrates me that these people, who proclaim Christ as Lord, have been the most loyal and fervent supporters of this man who thinks, speaks, and acts in ways that Christ condemns in no uncertain terms:

I don’t have the insight to know every individual reason that a believer would support Donald Trump. I just know that there is no Christlikeness in his behavior or his policies, and that alone makes me question, “Why?”

Recently, while scrolling through my Substack feed, I came across an article by Ben Wheeler, a Substack writer who calls himself “America’s Mayor.” The article, titled “Liberals Don’t Understand Conservatives & It’s Why They Can’t Fight Back,” had an intriguing title, and I was curious to see what his “understanding” of conservatives might be. After all, as a longtime conservative, I felt qualified to evaluate his article on its merits.

After I finished the article, I posted this note on Substack:

Now, I’m certain that many people who consider themselves conservative will read this article and condemn it for being defamatory, partisan, or flat-out misinformed, but I’ve been reevaluating American history for over a decade, learning things that weren’t taught to me in school, and those lessons, coupled with other things I’ve read and observed from the time I declared myself a conservative, made this article resonate with me. I’m going to try to explain this as succinctly as I can, but at this point, I don’t know whether that’s possible, which is why I think this is at least a two-part series. We’ll see where this goes.

Growing up, I noticed that my family tended to favor Democrats in presidential elections, and so I presumed I would be a Democrat, too. I didn’t have any knowledge of platforms or ideologies, but my perception was that Democrats, at least at the national level, cared about everyday people, especially Black people, while the Republicans cared about the rich. It was a simplistic way to look at the world, but I was just beginning my political journey, so I followed my family’s example.

I worked on my first political campaign in 1978 as a paid researcher and speechwriter for a Democratic congressional candidate in Abilene, Texas. It was then that I began learning some of the nuances of retail politics. For example, I learned that some Democrats were conservative and some Republicans were liberal, based on the definition of those terms at the time. I learned how history and geography shaped where politicians stood on the ideological spectrum and which political party they aligned with.

I also learned that my family, while politically liberal, was culturally and theologically conservative, holding beliefs that most people would associate with moderate-to-conservative Republicans on a variety of issues. When I also considered my associations with or knowledge of Republicans who took principled stances on diversity and human equality, such as the Bush family and Jack Kemp, I declared at age 20 that I was a Republican. My family didn’t understand or accept my “defection,” but when they asked me why, I used to say, referencing my conservative upbringing, “You raised me that way.”

My political activism had four phases. The first one I described previously was a pretty heady experience: working as a paid staffer for a political campaign at the age of 18. However, it was just the beginning of my political education.

In college, I volunteered for George W. Bush, then a newlywed running for Congress in the district where my school, Texas Tech University in Lubbock, was located. For the record, he didn’t win that 1978 contest and stayed out of politics until 1994, when he ran for and won election as governor of Texas. In 1980, I was the co-chairman of the Texas Tech chapter of George Bush for President, supporting the younger Bush’s father in his 1980 campaign for the White House. That same year, I was elected executive vice-chairman of the College Republicans of Texas, and I fully intended to pursue a political career after I graduated and completed my four-year active-duty Air Force commitment.

I should add that my political experiences as a college student had a dark side, and that was when I first learned that a segment of the Republican Party held views dramatically different from those of the GOP cohort I associated with. Frankly, they were dour, suspicious, and unkind, and they considered a 20-year-old college student a sufficient threat to bar me from serving as a representative at the state Republican convention in 1980, even though “their” candidate - Ronald Reagan - and mine were now on the same ticket. Looking back on that experience helped me see some things in today’s GOP that were apparently always there but hidden from view until now.

That was Phase Two. I had a brief interlude while on active duty—call it phase 2.1—where I wrote a bipartisan position paper with a former colleague from my Air Force days and sent it to multiple elected officials in Washington to gauge their responses. We called it “An Experiment in Democracy,” and we hoped to prove that a Republican and a Democrat could come together and propose solutions to America’s problems because we both wanted what was best for our country, even if we had different ideas on how to get there. Another purpose was to see how many elected officials actually responded to what we sent them. The answer was ‘very few,’ and most responses were canned or perfunctory, likely written by staff and signed with an autopen.

We caught the attention of nationally syndicated columnist David Broder, who wrote a Washington Post column decrying negative campaign advertising. He said he was told by pundits that they resorted to such ads because “‘they work,’ that it’s the only level on which they can engage the voters’ attention.”

While on active duty, I had to take great care to remain nonpartisan in our statement and in the press interviews that followed, but my “15 minutes of fame” whetted my appetite for politics once again. I had stayed in the Air Force longer than I’d intended because I was now a husband and a father, but I resigned my commission in July 1992 with the intention of returning to politics. However, by the time the 21st century began, I had given up on the prospect of ever working in politics or running for office. I had other skills and experiences that the marketplace valued more, and I resigned myself to being a dependable employee and a good provider for my family.

Phase Three began with an email from another former Air Force colleague of mine, who worked for then-Governor Bush in the Texas Attorney General’s office. Years ago, while on active duty, I used to regale this colleague with stories of my college political exploits. When he called me out of the blue one day to let me know he was working for the man whose congressional campaign I volunteered for as a 19-year old and who had become the governor of Texas, I remember telling my wife that he was living the dream I thought would be mine.

In the email he sent me in the fall of 2000, he said he would go to Washington with Bush if he won the 2000 presidential election, and asked whether I was interested in joining him in the Bush administration. For someone who had long since abandoned the idea of ever getting into politics again, it was like I’d been struck by lightning. After much prayer and consultation with my family, I agreed to apply for a political appointment, and I was eventually appointed as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) chief information officer.

The years I spent in the Bush administration were incredible because I was in the room as history was being made. 9/11 occurred just over three months after I started at FEMA, and as the agency took on a major role in the burgeoning mission of homeland security, my life was changed forever. I’ve shared about it on many occasions, but my frustrations with the inner workings of the Washington bureaucracy led me to cut short my time with the Bush administration after only three years.

Phase Three was political in the sense that I was a political appointee in a Republican administration, but most of my work was professional, oriented toward the marketable skills I referenced earlier. However, when it came time to make a difference in how government served the people, I was frustrated with the process and how people reacted when they felt that their power or influence was going to be diminished. I decided that if I ever got into politics again, it would be to promote an agenda I believed in and not someone else’s.

That opportunity, which was Phase Four, came in 2006, when I launched my first political campaign, originally running for the congressional seat in Maryland held by Steny Hoyer (D-MD), but switching mid-campaign at the request of then-Governor Bob Ehrlich to take on his nemesis in the Maryland Senate, Thomas V. “Mike” Miller. Structurally, the campaign was a disaster, and in retrospect, it was surprising that we did as well as we did, garnering more votes than any Republican who had challenged him to date. That’s not saying much; he won quite comfortably.

It is hard enough to run as a challenger with consistent and professional campaign management and a focus on one political office, and neither of those conditions applied to my effort. I wanted to give it another shot with the wisdom gained from my failures, but my pastor at the time talked me out of it because of the impact it was having on my family, and I’m glad he did.

I look back on that experience and wonder whether the Lord intended it or whether I simply followed my own will. I remember, as I pondered whether to run, believing with all my heart that I heard Him say: “If not now, when?” The next day, my best friend told me that his wife had been thinking about my decision and had said the exact same words to him. That’s what led me to jump in.

I also remember when I was in my basement on election night, sobbing because of the humiliation I had suffered and the pain I’d brought on my family, crying out to God, “Why did you let me do this if I was going to lose?” and hearing Him say, “Do you trust me?” It wasn’t audible in a physical sense, but it was as clear as if someone were whispering it into my ear.

Now that I was “out” politically, I remained publicly engaged, serving in the local Republican Party, giving speaking engagements, attending and even serving as the master of ceremonies for Tea Party rallies, working for other GOP candidates, and even writing a book about my experiences and beliefs as a Black conservative. It was that book that called attention to me and helped me get a job at Liberty University as an associate dean and assistant professor of government, an answer to prayer after being unemployed for over a year.

However, the book, which I thought would help me out of a financial hole I dug because of unpaid campaign debts and being laid off three times in three years, sold poorly, which is all well and good because I’ve changed a lot since I wrote it, and people who see what I write today would not recognize me in it.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the Lord was putting me on a path that would lead me to question everything I believed politically, and the answers profoundly changed me.

• Musings from my hospital bed

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Thanksgiving

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Advent

• Dispatch from the home healing front: A thorn in the flesh

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Every good and perfect gift

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Profound loss

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Weary and burdened

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Christmastide and new beginnings

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Resetting expectations

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Gearing up for 2026

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Hard pressed on every side

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Laments allowed

• Dispatch from the home healing front: But now I see

• Dispatch from the home healing front: The vine and the branches

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Small steps

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Seeing the end from the beginning

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Anoint your head and wash your face

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Working together for my good

Yesterday was the first day in 254 days, or 8 1/2 months, that I haven’t taken a dose of prednisone. I’ve been on this powerful steroid since late October of last year, and my body has absorbed over 11,400 milligrams of prednisone or prednisone-equivalent medication, which includes oral and intravenous intake.

I am glad the medication is done. It was necessary in the beginning to suppress my malfunctioning immune system and keep it from further destroying my muscles, and it helped to pull me back from being unable to walk, lift my arms, or even swallow. However, the prednisone treatment regimen was aggressive, and not just toward the immune system attack I was undergoing.

Now that I’m off the prednisone and three other medications I was taking to counteract some of its side effects — pantoprazole to prevent excessive stomach acid, oyster shell calcium to prevent bone weakness, and ramelteon to offset steroid-induced insomnia — I figured it’s a good time to take stock of where my health is today.

For over eight months, I flooded my body with prednisone, which is a synthetic version of cortisol, a hormone created naturally in the human body to help it handle stress. While the body produces cortisol in spikes depending on what is happening, such as an injury or a scare that heightens the fight-or-flight response, the total amount produced by the adrenal glands is only a few milligrams a day. I was essentially taking several times the stress hormone my body would ever make on its own, and, unlike the adrenal glands, which switch on and off as needed, there was no off switch.

The prednisone was meant to prevent my immune system from attacking my muscles, because that was the major source of stress in my body, but it didn’t limit itself to muscle. Every tissue in the body has receptors for cortisol, so while prednisone worked on the disease, it also affected parts of my body where it wasn’t needed.

Moreover, the flood of synthetic cortisol from prednisone caused my adrenal glands to go dormant. The fact that prednisone put my own “stress glands” to sleep is why they’ve been tapering me slowly off of it. It would be deadly to stop it without giving the adrenal glands time to recognize that the levels of synthetic cortisol in my body were gradually diminishing so they could start up again to provide what I needed. Because they are still waking up, metaphorically speaking, I have been going through adrenal insufficiency, which is partially responsible for my chronic fatigue, muscle weakness, and dark patches of skin, especially on my arms.

My list of maladies caused by prednisone is pretty extensive:

• Chronic fatigue and body aches.

• Accelerated growth of cataracts, requiring surgery to correct.

• 55 pounds of weight gain.

• Recurring urinary tract infections that led to extensive treatments of ciprofloxacin, a powerful antibiotic that also causes tendon ruptures, a consequence that is amplified while on prednisone and lasts for months after ceasing the medication.

• An elevated A1C reading, at the upper end of the prediabetic range.

• Thin skin that bruises and bleeds easily.

• Stressed kidney function, aggravating my Stage 3a kidney disease.

I want to be clear that prednisone is not a villain in this story. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to function even at the minimal level I do now. It did the work it was intended to do.

That said, I won’t miss it, and I hope to reverse most, if not all, the damage it has caused to my body.

I shared before how I do my best to maintain a cheerful disposition and present myself as well-groomed and positive in public, no matter how I actually feel. I also shared that it bothered me when people assume, based on my appearance, that I’m “better.”

I’ve tried to figure out why I feel this way, and at first I concluded it was a “me” issue: after all, my respondents mean well, and their expressions of pleasure that I’m getting “better” are genuine. I resist the urge to respond with a list of reasons why I am not “better,” because I don’t want to sound ungrateful for their kindness.

Perhaps my reaction is due to the fact that the truth is difficult for me to contemplate. Maybe it’s because I know how I really feel on a daily basis, and how long it’s going to be before I’m anywhere close to how I felt before the onset of this incurable autoimmune disorder. Maybe it’s because I know I will never be “myself” as I remember, and I have to adapt to a new vision of what constitutes wellness going forward.

I suppose we’re operating off two different scripts. The narrative that most people have about illness is simple: you get sick, you fight, you win, and the smile says it all.

My script is different; there is no conclusion, because it’s only my monthly treatments keeping me stable. My smile coexists with my autoimmune disease; it doesn’t announce its defeat. I’ve been working hard to build a framework in which I live with the permanence of my condition as best I can, and I don’t want that work to go unnoticed. However, I don’t expect people to know that instinctively. I am learning to understand and accept kindness in whatever form it takes, even if its conclusions are not correct. It’s probably something I should work on with my therapist.

So, how do I feel each day? Right now, no matter how I look, my body aches, my legs are swollen with fluid, and no matter how much sleep I get at night, I am chronically fatigued, and I have to push through it all to accomplish the tasks in front of me each day. I am fine with short bursts of activity, like walking to the bathroom or doing quick chores like loading the dishwasher, but a short walk to the mailbox and back leaves me out of breath, my heart racing, and my legs feeling leaden. If I’m going out and expect to do a lot of walking, I bring my rollator, so I’m not the one holding up the party. I am still using a temporary handicapped placard until the end of the year because of my limited abilities. The treatment plan I’ve been on has certainly helped me regain my strength, but my endurance is still subpar.

I hope and pray that these are just side effects of all the medication I’ve been taking, because it would be a lot for me to take if it turns out to be my new threshold of wellness. I’m also hoping to shed the extra weight I gained, because that certainly can’t be good for my aching joints or my general well-being.

Basically, I feel like an old car that looks well-kept on the outside but has trouble starting and, once running, slowly chugs along, parts creaking and groaning as it moves. The only time it looks and feels road-worthy is when it’s not moving!

Nevertheless, I have the mind and spirit of a much more capable person, even if I am trapped in a decrepit body! I focus fully on the day and the week I’m in, not letting myself fret about the future. Most importantly, I try to put into practice Paul’s advice to the believers at Philippi:

I have a lot of goodness in my life. I have the privilege of working from home, which has been an immense blessing in this season of illness, and I absolutely love my work and the people I work with. My family, especially my wife and daughter, are here to make life a little easier for me, sometimes at their own expense.

I’m still able to be active as a pastor-elder in my church, even though I can’t always be physically present. I have so many caring friends, including my longtime online acquaintances, whom I regard as friends. I live in a large, comfortable home, and I’ve made one of the lower floors my “happy place” where I can work, live, entertain myself, and rest. I’m particularly proud of my workspace, which I’ve designed almost obsessively! I’ve continued to tweak it since my last report, so I’m probably due for another nerd session with you!

My car is nothing special, but I know people whose lives are considerably more difficult because they don’t have regular, reliable transportation that they own. Now that my strength has returned and my intraocular lenses are working, I can drive myself to my numerous medical appointments without inconveniencing others.

I have an amazing medical team looking out for me, and they have been accessible and gracious as I pepper them with questions. I will add that modern technology has been indispensable to me in learning about and managing my illness, and while I know some people find it problematic for a number of reasons, for this purpose alone, I’m grateful that I’m alive in an era where it’s available and accessible to me. My neurologist says she appreciates how informed I am as a patient, which makes her job easier. I’m all for that, and knowledge about the illnesses or injuries I’ve had has always given me purpose and hope, even if the resolution was not fully known or far off. When I know what’s happening to me and why, I feel empowered in a small but significant way.

In the same chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Philippians, he says something that complements his previous advice to them. In fact, this is the capstone that makes the Christian life worthwhile in a world broken by strife, illness, poverty, oppression, and death:

This is a prime example of what it means to read the words of the Bible in context. Most of you have probably seen Philippians 4:13 on a T-shirt, bumper sticker, or social media post, and it is usually from the New King James Version: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Taken on its own, you might be led to believe that you can do anything as long as Christ is with you. However, practically speaking, we know that’s not true. There are limits to what we can do individually, and those limits can’t be overcome simply because we are believers and Christ is in us.

The mistake people make when reading this verse out of context is believing it’s about achievement (“I can do all things…”) when, taken in context and correctly translated as in the New International Version (“I can do all this through him who gives me strength”), it’s about finding contentment regardless of the circumstances. It means relying on Christ to get you through tough times.

As seminary professor Dr. Israel Steinmetz puts it, “Whatever God has called me to in life, I can face this, and I can do this, and I can do it with joy and gratitude because I’m trusting that God is powerful enough to carry me through.”

If you replace the word “do” with “endure,” you will capture the true meaning of the verse: “I can endure all this (or all things) through him (Christ) who gives me strength.”

So, Paul’s words have given me comfort and peace. I think about all the good things in my life, and that no matter what happens, Christ is there for me to hold me up and move me forward, and I realize how blessed I am in spite of my illness. That’s all the reason I need to smile.

Romans 12:17-21 tells us how we are supposed to deal with evil in the world:

However, when I read of evil things being done and innocent people being harmed, I can’t suppress the anger within me, and I wonder when God is going to intervene and exact his promised vengeance on the evildoers so that no one else will be hurt. I am reminded of the words of The Weeping Prophet, Jeremiah:

That is how I felt when I read that the Supreme Court will allow the Trump administration to end legal protections for non-white people from Haiti and Syria, for whom the U.S. provided sanctuary from the violence and natural disasters that plague their homelands to this day. The U.S. Department of State has a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for both countries. If they are not safe for travel, then how in the world can they be declared safe for these refugees to return?

350,000 Haitians face deportation to a nation ruled by gang violence. We already know what will happen to them when they return, because it’s happened already:

Yet, six of these men and women, sober and discerning in their black robes as we look to them for justice, made a decision that will certainly lead to the deaths of many of these people. They have no concern about the blood that will be on their hands. Moreover, they completely ignored the obvious racial animus behind Trump’s desire to deport these people, as one dissenting justice pointed out:

Just because Trump administration officials denied that prejudice played a role doesn’t mean that they’re telling the truth. While they gleefully prepare to send 356,000 Haitians and Syrians to an uncertain and probably deadly fate, they are welcoming white South Africans whose only grievance is living under majority black rule, while the administration repeats the frequently debunked lie that they are the “victims of white genocide.” Not only are these white South Africans the only “refugees” worldwide to whom Trump is extending the welcome mat, but they are also receiving gift bags from the U.S. government:

One would have to have taken leave of one’s senses not to discern the racial components of Trump’s immigration policies, or one realizes them and simply doesn’t care. Since I am giving the six justices who ruled in the majority the benefit of still being lucid and capable of rational thought, I can only conclude that they couldn’t care less about what happens to these people absent our protection.

Pulling these people out of the places where they have lived, worked, and made significant contributions to the community’s well-being will hit hard. Carl Ruby, the pastor of the Central Christian Church in Springfield, Ohio, put it in stark terms:

There is no upside to this decision from a human perspective, and in a time when every day brings outrageous or incomprehensible news, this brings me to despair.

Don’t we care about people anymore, or are we now just “every man for himself”? Where has our heart gone for the oppressed, the poor, the stranger, the people that Jesus cared for so deeply? Do we even care how Jesus loved such people? If we proclaim to be believers, yet we find decisions like the one today to be perfectly acceptable, then we are taking His name in vain, just as if we were cursing Him.

That’s just how strongly I feel about this, and I may have to seek forgiveness for expressing myself in this way, but please, “Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20) and prevent the wicked from hurting more people. Please. We need true justice, Your justice, in the worst way.

What I saw on my TV screen shocked and sickened me, and as I watched the riot at the U.S. Capitol by inflamed Trump supporters unfold, the thought that kept going through my head was, “When I was stationed abroad with the U.S. Air Force, we Americans used to say with pride that the peaceful transition of power from one presidency to the next was a hallmark of our Republic. That distinction is gone forever.”

Right after the violent mob attacked the joint session of Congress in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden as President-elect of the United States, there was almost unanimous condemnation of their actions and President Trump’s role in provoking them and then delaying for hours before half-heartedly asking them to cease and desist, telling them “we love you, you’re very special,” and continuing to lie about the outcome of the 2020 election.

At that time, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) strongly denounced the mob violence and directly blamed Trump. His 2nd impeachment was a lock, and had he been convicted by the U.S. Senate, they would have then been able to vote to disqualify him from ever holding federal office again.

In my opinion, historians will look on the actions of McCarthy and McConnell with disdain. McCarthy, a mere two weeks after denouncing Trump on the floor of the House of Representatives, was at Mar-a-Lago seeking to reingratiate himself with him. Meanwhile, McConnell, whose vote for conviction could have emboldened other Republicans to follow his lead, chose not to do so and, despite continuing to place the blame for January 6th squarely on Trump, came to the conclusion that the Senate could not convict a former president - by that time, Trump had left office - and that the legal system would ensure that justice was served.

Of course, we all know that justice wasn’t even seated, much less served. An overabundance of caution on the part of President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland, aimed at preventing the appearance of partisanship and the “weaponizing” of the justice system against Trump, resulted in indictments that came well after Trump had declared his intention to run again for the presidency. He played the system like a drum while continuing to promote the lie that the 2020 election was somehow stolen from him, despite 60-62 court rulings and volumes of evidence to the contrary. Moreover, their caution didn’t, and still doesn’t, prevent Trump and his apologists from accusing the Biden administration of “lawfare” against Trump and others anyway.

He complains that he was unjustly targeted by the legal establishment, but, in my observation, few people benefited from the pace and process of the American justice system as he did. His lawyers stalled, deflected, and diverted, in one case to an inexperienced Trump-appointed judge who seemed determined to rule for him at every turn. Their job wasn’t to win any of the cases brought against him; I presume even they were smart enough to know that the charges were serious and would most likely lead to conviction. Their job was to delay the proceedings long enough for him to win re-election, and, in deference to longstanding policy—rooted in the executive branch’s interpretation of the Constitution—barring the prosecution of sitting presidents, he couldn’t be touched upon inauguration. He can now strut around, lying about the “false” indictments and calling the charges against him “lawfare,” and nothing can be done about it.

No, the criminal justice system was not unfair to Donald Trump. If anything, it gave him enough leeway to render the attempts to hold him accountable to the law invalid, while other Americans with fewer resources and less egregious charges are behind bars, where he should be.

Many of us are familiar with this famous passage from George Orwell’s 1984:

As a former intelligence officer, I’ve studied history and witnessed this in authoritarian regimes, but I never thought it would happen here. I’ve written before about how naive that belief was, given that we allowed an authoritarian regime to exist within the confines of our federal republic, and that many of the ideas that animated Nazi Germany and eventually led to the Holocaust had their genesis on American soil. Even so, in today’s society, where cameras are everywhere, and practically nothing public is hidden, and as extensively and publicly as this attempt at insurrection was investigated and reported on, I am still gobsmacked by how many Americans are buying into this.

PBS reported that “More than 140 police officers were injured during the fighting on Jan. 6, which turned increasingly brutal as the hours wore on.” The trauma of the attack led four officers to take their own lives in the days and months following the attack. Direct property damage to the Capitol building and grounds reached nearly $3 million. Most of those convicted pled guilty to their crimes, and the others were found guilty by judges or juries, not elected politicians.

For heaven’s sake, the Oath Keepers stockpiled AR-15 rifles, handguns, large quantities of ammunition, and enough supplies for 30 days at a Comfort Inn in Arlington, Virginia, ready to exploit the violence at the Capitol.

What’s more weaselly is that several members of Congress who were running for their lives and hiding under desks as the Capitol was being assaulted now blithely downplay or flat-out distort the events of that day during which they visibly feared for their own safety.

Despite all the evidence, the president and his sycophants have pardoned the insurrectionists who stormed and damaged the Capitol, injured a hundred-plus police officers, and drove four others to suicide; erased information related to the events of that day from the public Department of Justice website, declaring it to be “partisan propaganda”; created a partisan congressional committee to revise or reverse the exhaustive findings of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol; and established a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization fund” that conceivably would reimburse January 6th rioters for the “harm” done to them by a supposedly biased government and justice system.

Moreover, the president perverts the meaning of the words when he describes the convicted January 6th criminals as “hostages,” “political prisoners,” and “patriots,” and the insurrection attempt as “a day of love” or a “lovefest” where there was “nothing done wrong at all.”

Trump even has the audacity to respond indignantly and insultingly to reporters or anyone who challenges his lies with the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever to support either his allegations about the 2020 election or his claim that nothing bad happened on January 6th, and that those who were arrested and convicted were innocent people targeted by a “hateful” government.

Even so, anywhere from 36% to 45% of Americans believe the 2020 election was fraudulent, and among Republicans, the number is as high as 68%.

How can this bald-faced attempt to rewrite history be working? How can so many people be persuaded that anything other than what actually happened is true?

Perhaps most disturbing of all, how have they managed to mislead so many professed Christians, disciples of the risen Christ, “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6), who was born and came into the world “to testify to the truth,” and who said that His followers are so devoted to the truth that “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me” (John 18:37)?

The Bible tells Christians repeatedly not to be anxious or afraid, although not 365 times, once for each day, as a popular myth suggests. God knows that fear is the gateway to all manner of sin in our lives, the most prominent of which is a lack of faith in God and His promises. It also causes us to fear people who are not like us, as former pastor Keith Giles points out, even though God encourages us to choose love over fear:

Fear makes us vulnerable to liars and grifters who present themselves as the solution to what or whom we’re afraid of — “I alone can fix it” — and they seize on it to override our discernment and wisdom. They constantly and loudly beat the drum of lies and exaggerate our fears to the point where they crowd out God and place themselves in the position of authority in the lives of the fearful. Waiting patiently on the Lord while showing love to everyone starts to look and sound like surrender, especially when corrupt forces play on your fears and turn everyone who isn’t like you into your enemy, even people who were once friends and members of your own family, including other Christians.

Jesus telling us to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven” becomes not a command from our Lord and Savior, but a progressive political talking point. When longtime Southern Baptist pastor Russell Moore, who was effectively excommunicated from his denomination for standing against clergy sexual abuse, racism, and uncritical support from evangelicals for Trump, was asked why he believes Christianity in America is in crisis, he responded:

If you scoff at Russell Moore’s account, perhaps the words of Donald Trump, Jr. will persuade you that the movement his father birthed and leads is pulling you away from the way of Jesus:

Let me say that Donald Trump, Jr. is correct if the goal of Christianity is to take ground and give no quarter to your enemies. Christianity is a horrible prescription for victory in the culture wars and the imposition of your authority on those whom you perceive as a threat to your way of life. RELEVANT magazine’s senior editor, Tyler Huckabee, applauds Trump’s son for saying openly what his father and their followers believe:

As fear intensifies and the fearmongers “flood the zone” with disinformation, leaving no time for introspection, examination, or verification, we begin to accept their version of events without question. This is where our need for identity kicks in.

Once we identify with a particular group or movement and find solidarity and trust within it, we come to trust only the narrative emanating from them, and any contradiction to that narrative triggers the same neural threat response as a physical attack. Add to that the erosion of public confidence in our institutions, hastened by those who seek to eliminate all potential sources of accountability—academia, the press, the law, the arts—and a lie becomes central to our identity, and practically impossible to dislodge without great cost. Presenting the facts won’t move people whose resistance is essentially to protect who they believe they are.

It’s worth noting that the mechanisms used by authoritarian regimes throughout history are universal. As I argued earlier, authoritarianism has always run in our bloodstream, despite our immune system’s attempts to suppress it.

What has given this movement its current foothold in America is the scale and speed of disinformation enabled by social media—and the inescapable fact that a major political party has institutionalized it. It’s not a fringe movement; it’s one wing of the two-party system that controls American politics. Their active engagement in disinformation and the discrediting of legitimate sources of information make combating the lies a daunting exercise.

So what is the solution? The most obvious one is to persist in speaking the truth to power, no matter how loud or aggressive they get in response. When they lie in public, correct them. When they throw a tantrum rather than defend their position with evidence, capture it for everyone to see. Remain calm and composed over the raised voices and attempts to talk over you and interrupt you; as the poet Rudyard Kipling wrote, “keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.”

What about close friends and family members? That’s harder, especially if you want to keep or restore good relations with them. I would do more listening than talking, try to get to the heart of what they fear, and then, slowly but surely, try to show them that their fears have no basis in fact and that they are free from fear, especially if they are Christians. If you make them the subject rather than their fears, you risk triggering their sense of identity with their cause and their tribe.

If you can’t get through, there is nothing that says you have to keep trying; Jesus Himself said, “ If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet” (Matthew 10:14). The epistles are rich with advice about avoiding divisive and quarrelsome people who are also your brothers and sisters in Christ (Titus 3:10; Romans 16:17; 2 Thessalonians 3:6; 2 Timothy 3:5). Jemar Tisby wrote an excellent piece on this very subject:

Don’t let the truth be buried. I commend NPR for its January 6th database and visual archive, vividly and unflinchingly telling the full story not only of what happened on January 6th, but also of the statements and events leading up to it.

Praise the two January 6th defendants who rejected Trump’s pardon, one of whom declared that “Accepting a pardon would only insult the Capitol Police officers, rule of law, and, of course, our nation. We were wrong that day. We broke the law. There should be no pardons.” It only takes a few people willing to confess, repent, and accept responsibility and accountability for their actions to crack the armor of lies.

Perhaps most importantly, as Christians, remember what happened to you when you accepted Christ as Lord and Savior. If your conversion was genuine, you have an organic and spiritual union with Christ. It isn’t just a teacher/student or master/discipline relationship; Christ literally lives within you, and your identity, rather than relying on external performance for acceptance or praise, is based on a Savior who has freed you from that burden.

He has already restored you to a full relationship with Him, and your identity in Him is based on love, grace, and truth. You can see the world with clarity and purpose, and the demagogues who try to persuade you that your eyes and ears are deceiving you cannot dissuade you, because the One who is truth personified and came to our broken planet to testify to the truth is with you and in you, and you simply need to draw your strength, confidence, and calling from Him.

It would be a much different world if every professed Christian allowed Christ within them to take hold of them and banish anxiety, fear, and the desire for retribution against people who are also precious in His sight, no matter who they are or what they have done, and from whom we have nothing to fear. The day when Christians truly believe that Christ is in us and our identity in Him is sufficient for all things will actually be a “day of love.”

My initial reaction was one of incredulity. After all, I pay $4 every four weeks for a digital subscription to the Wall Street Journal, and my $30 every-four-week subscription to the New York Times covers five family members and me, so we each have our own Times accounts. A little over $14 a month gets me and three other family members digital access to the Washington Post. I could go on, but you get my point.

However, I have to take into account that their claim to be “the unmatched No. 1 source for local news” is pretty accurate. If I want brief reports, our local TV station has a website with local news. However, I’m a little irritated with them because their national news section is tainted by their parent company, Sinclair Broadcasting Corporation. I despise their selective reporting of immigrant crime, which is clearly designed to promote the false narrative that immigration results in increased crime rates. As I’ve said before, they’d run out of space if they reported on the proportionate amount of crime committed by natural-born Americans. Now and again, that bias creeps into their local news coverage, and it’s not that hard to spot.

However, if I want detailed reporting with some assurance of objectivity, the local paper is really the only game in town. I need some time to think about it, but it raised a question in my mind that I believe needs to be discussed in the perilous times we find ourselves in.

Have you taken the time to dissect the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, codified in the U.S. Bill of Rights, which lists the first ten amendments to the Constitution? So many of the rights we deem precious are reflected in the Amendment that leads off the Bill of Rights:

Over the years, the Supreme Court, through various rulings under the banner of the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause and the incorporation doctrine, extended the First Amendment's prohibitions to state and local governments, as well as to the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of all governments.

Effectively, government at any level cannot impose a religious faith on you, nor can it prevent you from practicing your faith, and it cannot “abridge” - “lessen, curtail, or cut off” - your freedoms of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom for you to assemble peacefully for any reason, or the freedom to complain to or request assistance from the government.

The freedom of the press is important because of its role in preserving democratic forms of government. James Madison, the author of the 1st Amendment, put it clearly in an August 4, 1822, letter to Kentucky politician William T. Barry:

Interestingly enough, and particularly relevant for our times, Madison wasn’t “all in” on the liberties granted the citizenry by the 1st Amendment, or the Bill of Rights in general. He was an institutionalist, and he believed that a well-designed government with checks and balances would be sufficient to curb the overreach of the power-hungry. Since the Bill of Rights was essential to the ratification of the Constitution, he drafted it, even though he didn’t believe it was an effective check against tyranny. He was more concerned about a tyranny of the majority until he saw a tyranny of the minority take hold with the passage of the Sedition Act of 1798.

When he realized that internal checks and balances didn’t prevent a political faction that controlled all three branches of government - sound familiar? - from overriding a codified right under the Constitution, Madison, in a powerful report to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1800, defended the rights of the press as an external check against government power, declaring:

This report, adopted in full by the Virginia General Assembly, is regarded by First Amendment Watch at New York University as “surely the most powerful defense of freedom of the press in America.” Moreover, it established a free press as not only a resource for an informed citizenry or an avenue of free expression, but also a bulwark against government overreach and corruption.

Despite President Trump’s assumption that all press about him should be positive, otherwise it’s treason, not one president or political leader in American history has been the beneficiary of exclusively favorable press. The press attacked our first president, George Washington, so relentlessly that some historians believe “The negative press attacks may well have been a major reason for Washington’s decision to retire in 1796.” Misinformation was common, so not all negative press coverage was objective or fair. Thomas Jefferson was quite cynical about the press of his day:

However, the Sedition Act of 1798, which attempted to squelch the press, even when its criticism was legitimate, by using the law as a cudgel, was rejected. The party that passed the act under the cover of “national security” but in reality sought to quiet its opposition - sound familiar? - was soundly defeated in the 1800 election. Congress repealed the Sedition Act, President Thomas Jefferson pardoned those still serving sentences under the act, and Congress repaid their fines.

Not every press outlet is legitimate, and the proliferation of “fake news” on social media is a real concern for democratic societies, where truth is a fundamental currency. What we are seeing today is not a concerted effort to combat misinformation and disinformation, but an effort to delegitimize credible and ethical news outlets so the government can create its own reality and lead the people wherever it wants them to go.

Donald Trump has conducted a sustained campaign against the press for a decade, calling them “corrupt” and “crooked,” and accusing them of lying. He repeatedly uses the phrases “fake news” and “enemy of the American people” to describe the mainstream press, and he is quick to insult reporters who ask him questions he doesn’t like, calling them “nasty,” “mean,” “terrible,” “low IQ,” and more:

In one highly publicized incident, he snapped at a female reporter who questioned him, saying, “Quiet. Quiet, Piggy.” The Society of Professional Journalists cited this and other attacks he’s launched at female reporters - “ugly,” “stupid,” and “third-rate” - as “part of an unmistakable pattern of hostility — often directed at women — that undermines the essential role of a free and independent press.”

Incidentally, I am very disappointed in the male reporters who stand there awkwardly when he insults their female peers in this manner. Perhaps chivalry is old-fashioned, or it’s not what women in journalism want or need because they want to be seen as resilient as their peers and therefore not in need of protection. However, I don’t think I could remain silent in that situation; I would probably lose access to the president and my job shortly thereafter, but I would still have my conscience. I would love to know what female reporters think regarding situations like this.

Trump, of course, knows exactly what he’s doing, other than playing to his base, who relishes his attacks on the press, and who he’s egged on at campaign rallies to boo the media contingent in attendance, and where he’s even suggested that he wouldn’t “mind…so much” if a potential assassin shot through the press pen in an attempt to get to him. His administration defends his remarks as “frank and open and honest” and says the president’s behavior is somehow “more respectful” than lying to or avoiding the press, which they accuse his predecessor, Joe Biden, of doing. If being attacked and insulted is considered “respectful” by this administration, they are operating with a different dictionary than the rest of the English-speaking world.

However, his larger objective isn’t to animate his base, but to remove the press as an obstacle to his authoritarian agenda. Consider this exchange with Trump as recounted by veteran news reporter Lesley Stahl from nearly ten years ago:

And his tactic is working. According to an October 2025 Gallup Poll:

In his second term, Trump is using more than words to attack the press. In the 16 months he’s been in office, he has:

• Restricted the Associated Press’s (AP) access to official press events and the Oval Office due to their refusal to adopt the administration’s moniker “Gulf of America” over the “Gulf of Mexico,” the internationally recognized geographic designation.

• Took White House press pool assignment authority from the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) and brought in “new media” - social media podcasters, influencers, far-right news organizations, and so-called “independent” journalists who favor the administration - and gave them prominent seating and attention over traditional news outlets.

• Threatened, through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to investigate major broadcasters or threaten the broadcast licenses because they presented programming or platformed people he didn’t like.

• Eliminated federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), claiming partisan bias.

• Filed lawsuits against major news organizations, and some settled rather than fight in court, creating a chilling effect in newsrooms across the country.

• Restricted access to the Pentagon and demanded editorial access to reporting prior to release to ensure sensitive information isn’t released.

• Pulled down datasets, previous press releases, and documents from agency websites, and restricted communications teams at the agencies from speaking freely to the press.

Meanwhile, social media is rapidly becoming the primary source of news for Americans, which isn’t necessarily a good thing for media accuracy or objectivity. Social media allows aspiring authoritarians like Trump to bypass critical news outlets for “friendly partisan media” that avoids difficult questions and helps to spread “false narratives or worse.”

We need media that “comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable,” to quote the fictitious Irish bartender character Mr. Dooley from the works of humorist and journalist Finley Peter Dunne. This slogan, delivered as satire in Mr. Dunne’s 1902 essay, became a touchstone for journalism's primary purpose - “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” - one that aligns with James Madison’s objective of “freely examining public characters and measures,” with “public characters” clearly falling into the category of “the comfortable.”

But can journalism - “the collection, preparation, and distribution of news and related commentary and feature materials” - be a democratizing force if it’s behind a paywall?

I spend a lot of money on subscriptions to various news outlets and information services, probably more than I should, given my neurodivergence and my tendency to lose track of things, like how many subscriptions I have! I know I spend over $3,000 annually on Substack subscriptions alone, so that is a significant investment in information. I want to be informed, and I want the sources I use to demonstrate either a certain level of professionalism and integrity or present compelling information or opinions for me to ponder. If I have to pay for access to those sources, so be it.

However, not everyone has the luxury of paying for access to information; frankly, after I sit down and calculate what I actually spend, I may conclude that it’s too much. This presents a dilemma in a political system that relies on informed citizens to hold government accountable. What if the only information available for most Americans to consume is free, but is not verified or fact-checked, nor is it clear of partisan influence or a desire to generate traffic through sensationalism?

The profit motive is why I generally don’t watch cable news programs like Fox News or MSNBC (formerly MSNBC), although I make an exception for national elections, as their coverage is usually informative and sometimes entertaining. Regardless of their intentions, because they rely primarily on advertising for income, they are compelled to pander to their audience to keep eyeballs on the screen, and advertisers are assured that their commercials are being seen by enough people to justify the price they paid. This is my previous take on the question of television news:

Fox News and MS NOW know what their audiences want, and you can see this for yourself if you put stories about the same news event from each network side by side. Their content will diverge at some point, or one network may emphasize something that the other doesn’t acknowledge at all. As I indicated in a previous article, I don’t mind making such comparisons because I get a fuller picture as a result, but not everyone has the time or the obsession with accuracy in media that I have.

Richard Stengel of The Atlantic noted the tension between profit and public service that exists in the media, and he was somewhat critical of the profit motive taking precedence over what he perceived as a critical moment in U.S. history:

So what is the solution, particularly when the government that is supposed to defend the free press is openly at war with it, with the intention of rendering it irrelevant?

I commend Time magazine for removing its paywall and granting access to its century-old archives. Their CEO, Jessica Sibley, said, “We fundamentally believe that access to trusted information is a global imperative and should be available to all of humanity.”

I am also grateful for The Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal for their unlimited gift articles, where you can copy a gift link and share it with anyone, particularly people without a subscription. Other news sites that offer gift articles limit you to 5 or 10, or require the unsubscribed reader to enter an email address before they can read it, which is an underhanded way of capturing someone’s contact information so they can be harassed into subscribing. I don’t know if the gift articles are accessible for life; some gift links are only valid for 14 to 30 days. This is not a panacea; you still need someone with a subscription, and they need to be willing to share the news with others. It lacks the reach of a free news service.

Some news aggregators, most notably MSN, have news-sharing agreements with major press organizations and publish stories from those outlets that would otherwise be behind paywalls. However, the aggregators don’t share all the news from those organizations, and the article you want to read may not be among them.

I like Stengel’s suggestion of suspending paywalls during times when credible information is vital to ensure informed decision-making in governance, such as elections. Another idea is for major news outlets to offer a free tier that includes actionable information for governance, though deciding what news fits that category would require serious discernment on the part of the editors.

Ultimately, it is we, the people, who need to take action and demonstrate discernment and wisdom as we pursue the truth. As a believer, I am encouraged that even the Lord submitted Himself for examination so we will know the truth:

During his missionary journeys, Paul encountered the Bereans, Jewish residents of the ancient city of Berea in Greece, who eagerly listened to his teaching, but didn’t accept it as the truth without verification:

Proverbs 14:15 tells us, “The simple man believes every word, but the prudent man watches his steps.” Paul says, “Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:20-22). John exhorts us, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).

In case my point isn’t clear, there is no systemic solution that will work unless we do our due diligence daily.

James Madison came to understand this with the passage of the Sedition Act, which persuaded him that internal checks and balances wouldn’t work without external accountability.

Jesus told us, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules” (Matthew 15:9-10). The Mosaic Law was not enough to prevent the corruption of the faith, turning it away from the Truth that stood right in front of them.

It is up to us to be “as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). Don’t believe everything you read or hear, especially if it appeals to your beliefs; people who traffic in disinformation know what captures your allegiance and will give you exactly what you want. Particularly in the age of artificial intelligence, when something seems so real, but each pixel is 100% fabricated, we must verify everything.

Seek the truth in all things, at all times, if you want to be free.

However, some of my peers are quick to lecture their well-wishers that Memorial Day is intended to honor service members who died while on duty, and that Veterans Day is the day we recognize all veterans, the living who serve and have served, those who died while serving, and those who passed away after their service ended.

I am usually a little more gentle; I thank them for their well-wishes, but deflect the honor to those who gave that “last full measure of devotion” while wearing the uniform of our armed forces.

As I thought about how to recognize fallen service members this Memorial Day, it occurred to me that, except for the local news in their respective hometowns, very little has been said about those service members who died in theater during Operation Epic Fury, which, depending on who you believe, is either over or under a ceasefire despite the fact that shots are still being fired and the Strait of Hormuz is still a hazardous waterway for commercial traffic.

It took some time to compile their photos and their basic biographical information - name, rank, age, hometown, and the unit in which they served. Nevertheless, it brings gravity to the price of war, and their deaths ripple throughout the families, friends, and communities they left behind. Not all of them died in combat, but two of them were deployed to the region when they met their untimely fate. I know that other service members have died on active duty outside of Operation Epic Fury, and I honor them for their service; it just wasn’t possible for me to find them all.

Nevertheless, I hope you will take a moment to look at the faces of these Americans, of different ages, genders, and races, from cities and towns spanning the East to the West, from the Midwest to the South, yet all of whom probably thought they would make it to Veterans Day in November and receive their flowers while they were still around to enjoy them.

May they all rest in peace.

Now that we’ve had two consequential court rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais that essentially neutered the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Virginia Supreme Court decision in McDougle v. Scott to invalidate the referendum results despite being the expressed will of the voters, I felt compelled to write about this moment in what has been a tumultuous period in our nation’s history, because writing is part of my deliberative process, and I usually arrive at a point of greater clarity at the end. At the very least, I define the boundaries of my ability to affect things, and I make peace with them. Ultimately, I rest in the faith of God’s omniscience, even when things look bleak, and they often do.

So if we’re going to define a war, we need to start with what the fighting is all about.

We get the term “gerrymandering” from the mockery of a state senate district map signed into law in 1812 by Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry (Gerry is pronounced with a hard “g”).

Gerry was a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, which has evolved and divided over time; however, today’s Democratic Party can trace its lineage back to the party founded by Thomas Jefferson. That party eventually split, with Andrew Jackson’s supporters creating the Democratic Party and the breakaway faction of Jackson opponents becoming the Whig Party, which dissolved in 1854.

Most of the Whig Party’s former members joined the newly formed Republican Party, which still exists today. None of these parties resembles, in terms of ideology or practice, what they were then, so these histories are largely academic in their description of the origins of today’s partisan politics.

Gerry’s party was in control in Massachusetts, and the map he approved was intended to favor them. However, the unique geography of one particular district, the Massachusetts Senate district of South Essex, was mocked by his opponents in the Federalist Party as resembling a salamander. Someone came up with the clever lexical blend of Gerry’s last name and “salamander,” and the Boston Gazette introduced the word “Gerry-mander” to the public for the first time on March 26, 1812.

Accompanying the article was an illustration by artist Elkanah Tisdale entitled “The Gerry-Mander”, and it is the most famous depiction of the infamous Massachusetts district. In fact, it was hard for me to find a map of the original district without the artistic embellishments.

Although Gerry was pronounced with a hard “g,” and so was the new word initially, over time, the soft “g” became more common and is the standard usage today. The torturously designed district had its intended effect; the Democratic-Republicans kept control of the Massachusetts Senate in the 1812 elections, but Governor Gerry and his party went down to defeat, losing the governorship and the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Gerry, a signatory to the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, later became the fifth vice president of the United States under James Madison in 1813. He served only 21 months before dying of a heart attack on November 23, 1814, and is the only signer of the Declaration of Independence buried in Washington, D.C.

Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution of the United States says:

Congress has exercised its constitutional authority over elections, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, “to protect voters’ rights to access and cast ballots, set baseline national standards to ensure fairness, and provide funding and services to election officials to help them run elections more effectively.” Otherwise, the states are free to administer elections as they see fit, including redistricting.

Typically, Congressional redistricting is a state-level responsibility, with state legislatures, or, in some cases, independent commissions, drawing district boundaries every 10 years following the federal census. States with independent commissions for that purpose are attempting to remove partisanship from the process, but in states where the legislature draws the districts, the political party controlling the state government usually designs the maps in its favor.

This is nakedly partisan and, until recently, was viewed unfavorably by most Americans. A NORC survey reveals that, “When it comes to drawing legislative district boundaries, Americans overwhelmingly favor taking politics out of the process.”

Despite these findings, partisan redistricting is not illegal if it’s not called out in a state’s constitution or laws, or rendered irrelevant by the establishment of an independent commission. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Rucho v. Common Cause ruling held that partisan redistricting is a political matter and not subject to federal-court review, and efforts in the U.S. Congress to pass a law against it have not succeeded.

There is one form of redistricting that is illegal, and that is racial redistricting to dilute the voting power of racial minorities, forbidden by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

So, until 2026, it was understood that:

• Redistricting is a state responsibility and comes under either the state government or an independent commission granted authority by the state.

• It happens only after the federal census.

• Partisan redistricting is unpopular with the public, but it’s not illegal and happens often.

• Using race as a factor in drawing districts that dilute minority representation is against the law.

Leave it to Donald John Trump, the New York City real estate developer-turned-president of the United States, who seems to have a greater penchant for destruction than construction, to upend every consensus and accepted norm when it comes to redistricting. The irony is that the same man who declares every election he or his party loses to be “rigged” is doing exactly that to try to secure his political party’s razor-thin majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The congressional midterm elections, which occur two years after the previous presidential election and two years before the next, are typically not favorable for the party that occupies the White House, and if that party also controls the House and the Senate, as the GOP does, it’s likely that they will lose control of one or both. There are only two times since 1934 that the ruling party has gained seats in the House and Senate during the midterms: the 1934 election itself, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president, and 2002, when George W. Bush was president.

While voter turnout is typically low during midterm elections, this one is expected to buck the trend. President Trump has been on an unprecedented rampage over the past 15 months, remaking the federal government to pledge full loyalty to him rather than to the people, deploying the nation’s top law enforcement agency against his perceived enemies, and releasing a masked, paramilitary force onto the streets of American cities to terrorize immigrants, American citizens suspected of being immigrants, and Americans who defend immigrants as fellow image-bearers of God, all the while exploiting the presidency to enrich himself and his family to levels unseen in American history. His military excursions into Iran and Venezuela have even caused rifts among his supporters, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson prominent among them. Inflation, which he promised to end as soon as he took office, is higher than it was when he took office, and the war in Iran has caused gas prices to skyrocket. The cost of grocery items, such as beef and chicken, remains high, although egg prices have fallen.

The scope and nature of the chaos he has unleashed on the nation reflect two realities, whether he admits them or not.

First, he knows that for the entirety of his term, he may not have a Congress that rolls over and shows its belly whenever he commands it, so he's issuing executive orders, demanding the prosecution of his enemies, attempting to distract us with foreign military excursions he can neither explain nor justify, and unleashing furious rants on social media in the early-morning hours, at a frenetic pace. He is likely concerned, with some justification, that a Democratic Congress will impeach him for the third time.

Second, his disapproval rating is at an all-time high. When you combine that with past midterm trends against the party in power, Republicans have every reason to expect a potentially historic rejection at the polls in November.

As a result, Trump demanded something no one had done in recent memory: he asked the Texas state legislature to create five new winnable congressional seats for the GOP through mid-decade redistricting, rather than waiting until the 2030 census. There was high drama, including the walkout of over 50 Texas Democrats in the legislature, who left the state rather than vote on the proposal. Eventually, they returned, the proposal was passed, and it withstood a Supreme Court challenge; therefore, the first shots of the Great Gerrymandering War of 2025-2026 were fired.

In November 2025, the voters of the state of California approved a redistricting plan that would effectively neutralize the Texas redistricting action by creating five new winnable seats for the Democrats. However, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, and Tennessee have all enacted revised House districts that boost the GOP’s chances of winning nine additional seats in all. A court-ordered map in Utah produced one Democratic gain after a judge imposed it in place of the map lawmakers had previously passed, ruling that the legislature's map violated the state's anti-gerrymandering law.

Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina, in the wake of Louisiana v. Callais, are seeking to quickly revise their congressional maps so they can take effect in the 2026 election, adding three seats to the GOP tally.

If you’re keeping score, it’s GOP 17, Democrats 6. Since this “winnable seat” strategy is a zero-sum game, you can subtract the number of winnable seats from each party according to how many their opponents gain.

Then, my home state of Virginia entered the fray, and on April 21st, the voters approved a redistricting plan that would have gained four additional winnable seats for the Democrats. That is the referendum that the Virginia Supreme Court declared invalid on a technicality involving when the Virginia General Assembly voted on it. Any referendum that amends the state constitution, as this one would, must have two votes, with one held before an election so voters know how their representatives voted and can cast their ballots accordingly. The court said that people who participated in early voting for Virginia’s election on November 4th, 2025, which began on September 19th, did not have an opportunity to use their representative’s vote on the referendum to inform their ballots, because that vote took place on October 31st, just days before the election.

Did you get all that?

Therefore, despite the people's expressed will in the April 21st vote, the court ruled against the referendum. The attorney general of Virginia is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, despite questions about whether federal jurisdiction applies to matters involving a state constitution. One of his key arguments is that the Virginia Supreme Court misinterpreted the term “election” under federal law.

The Virginia Supreme Court's decision was a serious blow to a party already reeling from the U.S. Supreme Court's decision disallowing a majority-minority district in Louisiana because it represented a "racial gerrymander," which is illegal. However, majority-minority congressional districts in Alabama were upheld on similar grounds by the Supreme Court as recently as 2023 by the very same justices. One wonders what changed so dramatically in just three years that they felt compelled to make a 180-degree turn and essentially render the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the greatest accomplishments of the American civil rights movement, impotent.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was necessary because of the South’s refusal to honor the 15th Amendment granting Black people the right to vote, and Section 2 of the law begins with this statement.

This meant, among other things, no more poll taxes, literacy tests, or congressional districts designed to dilute the Black vote and prevent Black voters from electing representatives more attuned to their priorities. The Voting Rights Act helped Black voters exercise their voice, and many Black representatives were elected to ensure those voices were heard in the institutions where laws were made and enforced.

In the past, you didn’t need to prove racial intent to declare a congressional map illegal for racial discrimination. If a redrawn congressional map was discriminatory against Black voters based on the electoral outcome, it was deemed invalid, and the courts compelled the states to redraw it. After Louisiana v. Callais, the burden of proof falls on the litigants to show that race was the reason for redistricting, and proving racial intent is nearly impossible. Moreover, Justice Samuel Alito made an incredible statement, as reflected in this New York Times report.

Many civil rights advocates decried this statement, saying it revealed the justice’s ignorance about the continued disparities in generational wealth, educational outcomes, average income, life expectancy, and infant mortality that exist between Black and white Americans. It is also dismissive of the multigenerational effects of slavery and systemic and institutionalized racism, which people wouldn't understand unless they read the true, unsanitized version of American history. Alito’s uninformed statement certainly opened my eyes to why we are still talking about race in America today. I can assure you it’s a necessary conversation because past discrimination and “present-day disparities” are not inconsequential. But that’s a topic for another time.

However, I want to point out the irony in the states that chose to act on the Supreme Court’s ruling almost immediately after it was published.

Tennessee and Florida passed new maps within a matter of days; Louisiana suspended its primary elections in order to do the same; and Mississippi and Alabama are seeking to call special sessions of their legislatures to consider new maps. In the wake of Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court cleared the path for Alabama to revert to a map with only one majority-Black congressional district, a map that a lower court had disallowed in 2023. The Supreme Court sided with the lower court in its decision back in 2023, but the “vast social change” mentioned in the majority opinion, which none of the people affected by the purported change have actually experienced, prompted them to flip like an Olympic gymnast.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 contains "special provisions" that apply to jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in voting, and the Southern states that have either redistricted or are seeking to redistrict are on the list.

So the irony is this: if you add what’s already been done in Texas and North Carolina, and what Trump is pressuring the South Carolina Senate to do, the grouping of states racing to redraw their maps and eliminate majority-minority districts would look almost like the Confederate States of America, minus three former states.

Arkansas isn’t redistricting because all four of its members of Congress are Republicans, and it hasn’t elected a Democrat to Congress in 14 years. Two of the remaining states, Georgia and Virginia, are probably the only legitimate “purple” states in the old Confederacy. Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, a “frenemy” of the president, has resisted calls to redistrict for the 2026 mid-term elections, but is open to doing so before the 2028 presidential elections.

But we’ve had “vast social change” in just three years’ time, according to Justice Alito. Perhaps he needs to venture beyond the confines of the courthouse or his suburban home in northern Virginia, although I doubt that would help.

So, here we are as the 2026 midterm election approaches, and states like New York, Illinois, Washington, and Maryland are having conversations about how to counter this Republican redistricting surge that threatens to remake Congress. What Trump unleashed in Texas threatens to carry over into the 2028 presidential election, so there is no immediate end in sight to the Great Gerrymandering War of 2025-2026. A Wikipedia article calls it “one of the largest coordinated attempts to redraw congressional districts between decennial censuses in modern American history.”

It has also prompted a complex discussion about how Democrats should meet this moment. While some argue that two wrongs don’t make a right and that Democrats shouldn’t stoop to the level of their GOP counterparts, others say the consequences of allowing Republicans to retain control of Congress for another two years, rubber-stamping everything President Trump says or does, could be devastating to our democratic republic, and that this must be prevented by any means necessary.

To me, the question of whether to play by the rules when your opponent eviscerates them is a political and moral one, and there is no simple answer. I am reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian executed by the Nazis in 1945 for his involvement in the anti-Nazi resistance, which implicated him in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Although not directly involved, he was likely aware of the plot and didn’t discourage others from carrying it out. Politically, ridding the nation of Hitler was entirely defensible; he was leading Germany to certain defeat in World War II, and the resistance had become aware of the full extent of his atrocities against the Jews and other minorities, and his unspeakable actions justified tyrannicide. However, as a devout Christian, Bonhoeffer took God’s command against murder seriously and didn’t attempt to explain it or absolve himself of the guilt of condoning such an action, even if not at his own hand.

Fortunately, the decision before the Democrats has nothing to do with violence of any kind. Frankly, I don’t have a good answer for how the Democrats should respond. I understand the political calculus, and their opponents seem hell-bent on rewriting the electoral map as much as possible to their advantage before the next election.

However, in some states, because of reforms they instituted to take partisanship out of redistricting, the Democrats, who, according to a Politico article, are “historically the party aligning itself with 'good-government’ reforms such as opposition to partisan gerrymandering,” have tied their own hands. As a result, they “have made a sharp U-turn on redistricting this year as Trump and Republicans push the bounds of mid-cycle map-drawing.”

The reason Virginia had to go through a convoluted process to get the referendum on the ballot is that the commonwealth is one of the states with an independent commission that draws congressional maps, presumably free of partisan gerrymandering. California has a similar commission, so in both cases, the state governments took the question to the voters to get their permission to bypass the commissions. The popular vote is yet another distinction the Democrats have from the GOP in the Great Gerrymandering War of 2025-2026: at least to date, none of the states that have redistricted in the GOP’s favor have given the people a say in the decision.

One thing I can say with certainty is that the Republicans in my home state who are exulting in the Virginia State Supreme Court’s decision as a “moral” victory can spare me the sanctimony. Not only did they run a deceptive ad campaign and feign concern about the minority vote while cheering on the numerous racially charged actions of the current presidential administration, but they were also either silent or endorsed the redistricting power grabs in Texas and other states where their political counterparts controlled the levers of government.

If you weren’t as vociferously and publicly opposed to gerrymandering in Texas and elsewhere as you were here in Virginia, you have no authority to claim the moral high ground. Frankly, there is none; this is not an occasion for lofty language and high ethics; this is raw, bare-knuckled politics, and people on both sides of the political aisle should stop pretending it’s anything else.

It also takes a ton of chutzpah to claim that the Democrats cheat in elections, one of President Trump’s persistent claims that Republicans love to echo, when they are openly and brazenly reengineering the electoral map to tip the scales in their favor. I don’t want to hear another GOP jeremiad about Democrats rigging elections ever again.

Regrettably, the Great Gerrymandering War of 2025-2026 has also turned public opinion. While, in the past, comfortable majorities of voters, regardless of party, opposed partisan gerrymandering, a poll at the end of last year revealed the intensity of this partisan battle.

Some observers hope this is just a temporary response and that the desire for government reform will return in the near future, presumably after this election cycle.

I sought guidance in the Scriptures to help me form my thoughts on this topic, and while popular elections were not how kingdoms rose and fell in Biblical times, there was one form of public interaction that gives us a sense of God’s heart - commerce.

An “ephah” was a dry measure with a capacity of about 3/5 of a bushel, or about 22 liters, and a “hin” was a liquid measure having the capacity of about 1 gallon or about 3.8 liters. This admonition against dishonest weights and measures is repeated throughout the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 25:13-15; Proverbs 11:1; Proverbs 16:11; Proverbs 20:10; Hosea 12:7; and Micah 6:10-11.

The Lord declares dishonesty in commerce an “abomination” (Proverbs 11:1) and “detestable” (Proverbs 20:10), while honesty is “from the Lord” (Proverbs 16:11) and “His delight” (Proverbs 20:10).

When it comes to redistricting, it seems that the only standard that honors the Lord is one that is fair and honest and doesn’t give the politicians, the “merchants” in this analogy, an advantage over the voters, the “customers.” Fair redistricting keeps communities together, reflects their diversity, and gives every voter an equal voice. The process should be transparent, free from political influence, and encourage voter participation in decision-making. At some point, responsible citizens have to stand up and say “no more,” even if it costs them, as it did several state senators in Indiana.

There is one other thing people can do to launch a counteroffensive in the Great Gerrymandering War of 2025-2026: vote in this year’s mid-term election. Redistricting is not a guarantee of outcome; only your vote will matter in the end.

• Musings from my hospital bed

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Thanksgiving

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Advent

• Dispatch from the home healing front: A thorn in the flesh

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Every good and perfect gift

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Profound loss

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Weary and burdened

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Christmastide and new beginnings

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Resetting expectations

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Gearing up for 2026

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Hard pressed on every side

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Laments allowed

• Dispatch from the home healing front: But now I see

• Dispatch from the home healing front: The vine and the branches

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Small steps

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Seeing the end from the beginning

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Anoint your head and wash your face

This has been a rough week. My energy has been flagging as my body adapts to tapering my daily prednisone intake, and chronic fatigue is the norm, because no matter how much sleep I get, I have moments during the day when I am simply unable to function. The fatigue from the steroid withdrawal compounds the fatigue associated with the disease itself, so my vitality is on a roller coaster.

Moreover, I’m finding bruises and wiping up blood in unexpected places on my body. I have no idea how these wounds originated, but they are apparently yet another side effect of the steroid I’ve been on since October. It causes thinner, more translucent skin and capillaries that rupture under minimal trauma, even when wiping with a washcloth or tissue.

There is a name for the unexplained forearm bruises — “steroid purpura” — “bruises appearing without recalled trauma, often on extensor surfaces and forearms.”

Between these symptoms and many others, including a battle with a bacterial infection that’s now into its fifth month, Dr. Margaret “Peggy” Bettin, my neurologist, has decided to accelerate the steroid tapering to mitigate its immunosuppressive effects, with the hope that my monthly IVIG treatments will carry the burden of managing my immune system going forward.

However, she is concerned because there are negative side effects associated with tapering too quickly, like adrenal insufficiency, because the adrenal glands, which stop producing cortisol while you’re on high-dosage steroids, need time to restart and begin producing cortisol again. I’m already struggling with chronic fatigue, so there is probably already a cortisol deficit at play.

Dr. Mark Kleiner, my primary care physician, is also involved in helping me manage the side effects of my comprehensive medication regimen, which has, at times, involved 17 different prescriptions, over-the-counter medicines, or supplements. I mentioned a recurring, persistent bacterial infection that Dr. Kleiner has been trying to manage with a particular prescription, and it has proven effective as long as I’m on it. However, it comes with a risk of tendon rupture so high that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a “black box” warning, its most stringent, and says the risk continues even after patients stop taking the drug. The risk is higher for people in their 60s who are on steroids — that’s me! — and I already have a history of tendon ruptures, five in a ten-year period, to be precise, which suggests a predisposition to tendon damage. Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if, sometime in the near future, I rupture a tendon because it was weakened as a consequence of my anti-bacterial treatment regimen.

Given what I know, why in the world do I accept their prescriptions? It sounds like the cure is as bad as, or worse than, the disease.

We’ve all seen the drug commercials where smiling people and upbeat music try to distract us while the long list of side effects they are obligated to share is being read by the voiceover actor. Personally, I always laugh when the words “lethal,” “fatal,” or “death” are spoken — that may seem morbid, but the cognitive dissonance between the happy people on the screen and those words elicits that reaction from me.

Those commercials and my lived experience over the past seven months since I was diagnosed with this autoimmune disease have taught me that, when it comes to managing illness, there are always trade-offs. Doctors have to weigh a medication’s impact on the condition against the side effects that detract from the patient’s quality of life. In many cases, they will prescribe a medication and include several others intended to counteract the unwelcome effects of the original prescription. I lost count of how many medications I’m taking whose sole purpose is to manage steroid-induced side effects.

As I’ve become more informed about my illness and treatment, I’ve made some unwelcome discoveries. Let me offer a word of advice about prescriptions: read the documentation they send home with you. I started doing that, perhaps a few months into my daily regimen, and I was surprised by what I learned. Some things my doctors had already made me aware of, so those weren’t the issue. There were others, though, that made me think, “Why didn’t they ask me about that?”

My cataract issue is a prime example of that. When my vision began deteriorating rapidly around the beginning of the year, I did an artificial intelligence (AI) search on vision issues cross-referenced with my illness and the medication I was taking, and that is how I found out that the first thing your doctor should be aware of when prescribing prednisone is whether you have cataracts. Prednisone causes cataracts on its own, but it also aggravates existing cataracts, and as I’ve written about previously, mine grew to the point where cataract surgery on both eyes was required.

Although this particular saga had a happy ending, with the vision in both eyes already at 20/20 and getting better every day as my brain adapts to the new trifocal lenses that replaced my damaged natural ones, I confess I was a tad indignant at first. No one said a word to me about cataracts when they put me on high-dosage prednisone.

However, upon reflection, I remembered the state I was in when they admitted me to the hospital in October, and I realized that, had they told me that the prednisone would cause my cataracts to worsen and lead to surgery much sooner than I had anticipated, I would still have approved the treatment because, without it, my immune system would have permanently crippled or killed me.

So that is what I’ve come to realize about the doctors responsible for my care. They aren’t magicians, and they can’t create miracle cures that only go after the bad things happening in a body while leaving everything else untouched. We are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14), and the intricacy and complexity of the human body mean there are a myriad of factors doctors must consider when treating someone.

Despite the hardships of the multiple surgeries I underwent during the 2nd decade of the 21st century, the good thing about them is that they were pretty straightforward. The injured body part was identifiable and fixable, and, beyond managing pain, there weren’t a lot of internal chemical reactions to be considered after repairing a ruptured tendon or a broken ankle. The body’s immune system is a different beast altogether, and there is so much to account for when dealing with autoimmune diseases.

Even the fact that I have SINAM (statin-induced necrotizing autoimmune myopathy) is because of an unanticipated reaction between atorvastatin, the anti-cholesterol medication I had been taking for over two years, and a rare gene in my body chemistry that was triggered by the statins into recalibrating my immune system and causing it to attack healthy muscle tissue.

Why was it triggered now instead of in 2023, when I first started taking the medication? Why do some people develop SINAM only months after starting statins, while for others it can take years? Is there any way to know about this gene before a prescription is filled, or is it so rare that it isn’t practical to test everyone just in case someone has it?

Only God knows.

Some in my family think Dr. Kleiner shouldn’t have prescribed atorvastatin for me because my cholesterol wasn’t seriously high and my cardiovascular risk was low. I don’t blame him; he was trying to prevent something more serious down the road, and he had no way of knowing I was walking around with this gene that interacts poorly with the medication. I mentioned in an earlier article that this happens to one in every 100,000 statin-taking patients, so Dr. Kleiner was the unlucky one to draw me as a patient!

Prednisone has messed me up in multiple ways, but it was the only weapon my doctors had against a raging immune system that was turning my muscles into tissue paper. Lest you think I’m exaggerating, here is a line item from the surgeon’s operative report on the muscle biopsy they did to confirm my diagnosis:

When I read that, I had to look up the word “friable” as it relates to muscle tissue. It describes “fragile, abnormal tissue that tears, bleeds, or crumbles easily when touched or lightly manipulated.” Even though they caught the disease early, some of the muscle loss is permanent. So, the choice between suffering through multiple side effects from months of high-dosage prednisone or allowing the necrosis to continue until I was permanently disabled and eventually dead was no choice at all.

Tradeoffs.

My doctors are very communicative and receptive, which is a good thing because I am a frequent user of the patient portals and have many questions and comments to share! I see us as working together to redeem this unfortunate circumstance in my life, and I try to do my part by staying as informed as I can about my disease and being transparent with them about how I feel, so they can make the right decisions in my best interests.

In 1909, a Christian writer, Elbert Hubbard, wrote, “A genius is a man who takes the lemons that Fate hands him and starts a lemonade-stand with them.” Over time, that statement has evolved into the maxim, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Its premise is simple: make the best out of a bad situation.

The apostle Paul, in his magnum opus to the church in Rome, sought to encourage the believers there who were going through various trials, and we learn that God is the master at making lemonade out of lemons.

Romans 8:28 is a very well-known verse to most Christians and is a reliable “go-to” verse for people in the midst of trials:

If you read the verses that precede it, you will understand that Romans 8:28 is meant for Christians in the throes of groaning because of the state of the world, or their own personal struggles, whether physical or spiritual. How can I not read about the believers of Paul’s day anxiously awaiting the day when they will receive “the new bodies he has promised us” (Romans 8:23) and not relate?

The context of the verse is that all creation is groaning, and so are we. The Holy Spirit within us takes our groaning, which we struggle to put into words, and pleads for us in exactly the way God needs to receive it, because He and the Holy Spirit are one, and the Holy Spirit knows God’s will and heart. God, then, in His mercy and wisdom, takes those things that are causing us to groan and uses them to accomplish His purposes, which are always good and for our good. As Verse 29 reveals, this is achieving Christlikeness and, as such, receiving God’s glory.

The EasyEnglish Bible, which is a translation I didn’t know existed until I started delving into the various interpretations of Romans 8:28, states, “ He uses everything that happens to them to bring something good.” The clear implication is that it could be good or bad, but he will use it to achieve something good.

I am fortunate to be under the care of doctors who want to make something good of the disease that afflicts me, and I consider them part of God’s plan for me. However, their goal of physical wellness, to the maximum extent possible given my condition, is only part of the journey. God wants to use this to take me beyond my physical well-being and into a realm of spiritual wellness that reflects Christ and brings Him glory. Keeping that in mind helps me deal with the roller coaster ride and the tradeoffs that come with chronic illness and its treatment. My responsibility and my prayer are to be receptive to what He has for me, even as I sometimes struggle with being physically present.

After all, who doesn’t love a tall, cold glass of lemonade?

Business establishments play one of the multiple Christian radio stations in the background. If a news channel is shown on a TV in a waiting room, it’s most likely Fox News. The local TV station is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the second-largest television station operator in the United States and regarded as politically conservative. Liberty University, the region’s largest employer and claiming to be the world’s largest Christian university, calls central Virginia home.

The region’s state representatives and senators in the Virginia General Assembly, as well as the members of the U.S. House of Representatives, are all Republicans, at least for the moment, given the ongoing gerrymandering war.

You can’t drive more than a few minutes without encountering a church, and no one bats an eye when a patron asks a restaurant server how they can pray for them. My ophthalmologist prayed for me at my initial consultation appointment for cataract surgery; I recall that, at the time, while I personally appreciated the gesture, I wondered if everyone felt as I did.

You’ll notice a few statements I sprinkled into the mix that probably rubbed you the wrong way if you are deeply committed to a Kingdom perspective of Christianity, meaning that our Kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36), is universal and not confined to one nation or tribe (Daniel 7:14; Revelation 5:9; Revelation 7:9), and that we are to reject the temptation of worldly kingdoms and serve God only (Matthew 4:8-10).

Contrary to literal statements made by public officials, including the President of the United States, it is possible to be a Democrat, or someone who doesn’t get all of their information about the world from Fox News, and still be a Christian.

When I hear some Republican Party official spouting the nonsense about Democrats not being Christians, I am offended on behalf of my late parents, who were lifelong Democrats and were among the most devout believers I knew.

I know the political calculus; from conservative believers' perspective, Christianity means you must oppose abortion, LGBTQ identity, and same-sex marriage. Culturally, I can honestly say that my parents were conservative in that regard. However, that didn’t translate to politics because, frankly, politics is less about issues and more about cultural identity. Millions of people reflexively vote for people who oppose policies and programs that would legitimately make their lives better because they identify with them culturally.

My parents didn’t vote for Democrats because of Democrats’ support for the hot-button issues conservatives use to keep people aligned with them. They believed Democrats had more respect and regard for people like them than Republicans, whom they perceived as indifferent or hostile to Black Americans.

Before you come at me with “The Democrats are the party of the KKK, and the Republicans are the party of Lincoln,” please know that I understand this country’s history well enough to recognize that party labels, past or present, are not relevant to this conversation. From the Anti-Federalists of the constitutional era to the breakaway states of the Confederacy, to the Jim Crow Democrats of the post-Reconstruction period, to the Dixiecrats and southern Democrats of the post-World War II era, to the architects of the “Southern Strategy” in the Nixon-era GOP, to the “law and order” and “welfare queen” slogans of the Reagan years, to today’s MAGA movement, there is one common thread: not all conservatives are racially motivated, but the overwhelming majority of racially motivated people identify as conservatives. Principled conservatives throughout history have sought to rid themselves of this ugly stain, but hate has a long shelf life and feeds on fear and uncertainty, particularly when people of influence in public life are willing to exploit those fears for power.

Despite all of this, professing Christians continue to use political stances as a plumbline for who is truly saved. Thankfully, it’s not humankind that defines the requirements for salvation:

It’s really that simple, yet that hard. Jesus sees beyond our performative piety to the heart, and He knows if we truly believe in Him and His resurrection. Those beliefs alone are sufficient for salvation, but they should also generate a change of heart (Ezekiel 11:19) and actions (Matthew 7:16-20) from the moment of salvation forward.

I can honestly say that becoming a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17) and not conforming to the patterns of this world but being transformed by the renewal of my mind (Romans 12:2) has been a process and a journey for me. I don’t expect it to end until my time on this planet is over.

That is why I’m not the same person I was when I moved from Maryland to central Virginia in 2011, and why I now reject so many beliefs and practices I once presumed were de rigueur for all committed believers. Many discussions in the public arena focus on deconstruction and its potential harm to faith. However, I believe it can be beneficial if it 1) helps distinguish the truth of the Gospel from worldly beliefs and passions, and 2) leads to a process of rebuilding a pure faith that remains untainted by cultural distortions.

I take no credit for my ongoing transformation into a person seeking to abide - remain or live - in Christ and, therefore, live like Him (1 John 2:6), other than being willing to listen and obey the Holy Spirit in my heart when something doesn’t look or feel Christ-like. I remember being taught that my heart, analogous to my feelings, wasn’t to be trusted. How many times were you told, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it” (Jeremiah 17:9)? It took me a while to determine that this verse describes the human heart, not the new heart that resides in us once we are made new in Christ and forever changed. Jesus describes this new heart as a source of life, not deceit: “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (John 7:38). Theologian and pastor John Piper, whose name will come up again in this article, put it well:

In case you’re wondering where this is headed, I’m setting the stage for a difficult discussion. I made a decision a long time ago not to challenge anyone’s claim to salvation; if someone says they are a Christian, I choose, at least publicly, to take them at their word. However, I am mindful of what Jesus said about knowing people by their fruit, and when I see the output from professing Christians on the complex and controversial topic of immigration, I can’t help but question whether they are allowing their new nature to manifest.

Fellow Substacker Brian Metzger recently wrote an article about a February 25th post on the platform X by John Piper that caused quite a stir in evangelical circles. I’ll let him describe it since he did it so well.

Piper has a history of briefly touching on sensitive political and cultural topics, yet not engaging in the subsequent debate that his engagement generates. He addresses this himself in a thoughtful response to the question, “…[W]hy does John Piper mostly avoid talking about politics and breaking news and hot trends?” While I encourage you to read the whole thing because there is much wisdom, in my opinion, in what he has to say, these excerpts will give you a sense of why he takes the position he does:

To date, Piper has not publicly or formally responded to the brouhaha over his post, which was part of a regular cycle of Scripture verses he shares on social media. In that context, it may not even have been a deliberate political statement, but that is certainly how it was received by MAGA-aligned believers, who literally present their political agenda as Biblically endorsed.

Leviticus 19:34 is the most often-quoted verse in the Bible about how we should treat “strangers” - the word in Hebrew is “ger,” meaning “sojourner,” “temporary resident,” or “resident alien” - but it is far from the only one. The Old Testament addresses God’s posture toward strangers 36 times, and each time it calls for treating the stranger with love and compassion, equating them with widows, orphans, prisoners, and other oppressed or suffering people.

Jesus, describing how He would one day judge those who sought to sit at the right hand of the Father, said to the righteous, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35), and to the unrighteous, “I was a stranger and you did not invite me in” (Matthew 25:43). He said that how we treated the stranger - the word in Greek is xenos, which means “foreigner,” “alien,” or “outsider,” and is the root of modern terms like “xenophobia,” which means “irrational fear, distrust, or hatred of strangers, foreigners, or anything perceived as foreign” - is how we treated Him (Matthew 25:40, 45).

So if the Bible is emphatic about how we treat foreigners in our midst, why do Christians who align with the political and cultural right object so vociferously when these passages of Scripture are pointed out?

At the risk of oversimplifying their positions, the objections I see tend to fall into one of these three categories.

• National sovereignty as a greater good

• Obedience to government authorities

• The negative impact of immigrants on our society

Let me say that, from a Christian perspective, the position you take on these issues won’t affect your salvation, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. People tend to think the political or cultural issues that animate them most are doctrinally essential, but Jesus and the apostles are clear and united that belief in Christ and His resurrection, and acceptance of His Lordship over our lives, is what saves us, and everything else is, or should be, an outward response to an inward change.

While there are many things in the world competing for our attention and allegiance, Jesus gives us three simple tasks to distinguish us from the world, and they should govern whatever we say or do, regardless of the specific position we take:

• Love God with all your being (Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:37; Luke 10:27)

• Love others as yourself (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Romans 13:9)

• Go and make disciples (Matthew 28:18)

Romans 12 is an excellent read for the Christian who wants a concise yet complete guide to daily Christian living. Philippians 2:3-4 establishes the proper positional relationship between other people and us, and 1 Corinthians 13, “the love chapter,” describes the nature of God, who is love (1 John 4:8). If love flows out of us into the world, regardless of who is standing in front of us, we will do the right thing, whatever our position on immigration.

So, is national sovereignty important to God? Acts 17:26 says that “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.” However, does national sovereignty preempt treating immigrants with the humanity, compassion, and dignity every image-bearer of God deserves? The numerous references to how we should treat the stranger tell us that it doesn’t. Loving America doesn’t mean hating the immigrant and treating them with cruelty and contempt.

Is obedience to government authorities important to God? The Scriptures tell us to be good citizens and honor the laws and rulers of the nations where He has placed us (Romans 13:1-7; Titus 3:1-2; 1 Peter 2:13-17); as ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20), our behavior reflects on Him, and we are to give Him glory and honor in how we conduct our lives. However, do we follow laws that go against God's will? The answer to that question is a firm no: “Peter and the other apostles replied: ‘We must obey God rather than human beings!’” Moreover, if we are persecuted for disobeying unjust laws, we are to accept the punishment without complaint:

What about the negative impact of immigrants on our society? Let’s get a couple of things off the table right up front. Immigrants are not responsible for a “crime wave” in America, and they are more law-abiding than native-born Americans; in fact, a recent study reveals that has been the case for over a century:

Those who claim otherwise are either misinformed, deceived, or have an agenda that depends on the lie holding up. Personally, I am disgusted by the tendency of some press outlets to highlight every crime committed by immigrants and of some politicians to exploit victims’ pain to advance their xenophobic goals. If crimes by native-born Americans received the same attention, it would dominate their coverage by several orders of magnitude. However, the point of taking the most egregious example of a people group one can find and magnifying their sins in the public square is to compel you to paint everyone who looks like them with a broad brush, presume the worst of them, make it easier to demonize and dehumanize them, and demand their removal.

Sadly, if you evaluate the statements from the administration and its most ardent supporters, the only conclusion you can reach is that the real agenda being advanced by this lie and others is to rid the United States of “third-world” immigrants, whom the president characterizes as “vermin” from “s***hole countries” who are “poisoning the blood of our country.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said, “We need a moratorium on immigration from third-world countries until we can heal ourselves as a nation,” a position echoed by MAGA influencers and Trump himself.

Heal ourselves from what, exactly? Every ill they attribute to immigration is a lie dredged from the pit of hell.

Do you need more evidence that the real objective is to rid America of non-white immigrants? This image from the Department of Homeland Security is subtle but ominous in its message.

The image was accompanied by a caption that read, “The peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world.”

Estimates of the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States range from 11 million to 14 million. Deporting 100 million people would mean that 86 million foreign-born people who are here legally, either through visas, resident alien status, or naturalization, would presumably be targeted, a tall task since there are only 53.3 million foreign-born people in the U.S., legal and undocumented.

Their attempt to revoke birthright citizenship, a guarantee of the 14th Amendment, and their increased efforts to strip naturalized Americans of their citizenship based on alleged fraud or threats to national security are part of the plan to come as close as possible to that 100-million number.

Given that all refugee programs have been suspended except for white South Africans seeking to escape alleged and disproven “white genocide,” and that the president wonders why we don’t receive immigrants from “nice” countries, all of which happen to be majority-white, it’s not a stretch to presume which foreign-born people aren’t welcome and would be expelled.

Let me be clear about one thing: no one supports “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes. If they have been convicted of criminal acts, they should be subject to arrest and deportation.

“But they’re all criminals because they’re here illegally,” some would respond.

How do you think Jesus would respond to someone whose only “crime” was seeking work to care for their family? Even U.S. law states that being in the country illegally is a civil infraction, not a criminal one, and the Due Process Clause in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution ensures that everyone within the nation’s borders, citizen or non-citizen, is treated fairly and humanely.

Much of the controversy around the tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, from agents to attorneys to deportation officers, centers around this question: Do we regard the undocumented immigrant as a human being, and are they accorded the rights, treatment, and dignity to which all human beings, even those who have broken the law, are entitled?

We speak of being a “Christian nation,” but if we are not treating all people in a Christ-like manner, then we are lying to ourselves about who we are.

Since we are addressing lies, let’s debunk the one that undocumented immigrants are receiving federal benefits. In fact, it’s actually against federal law for undocumented immigrants to receive welfare, food stamps, or Medicaid. Most immigrants pay taxes, and in many cases, they pay more into the system than they take out. While some U.S. citizen children of immigrants receive benefits, their parents are generally ineligible. Besides, if they applied for them, they would risk being identified and targeted by federal officials for arrest and deportation. What they are eligible for is an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) so they can pay federal, state, and local taxes, to the tune of nearly $90 billion a year, a bounty for which, given our declining population growth, all Americans receiving government benefits should be grateful.

Are undocumented immigrants voting? Just as it’s likely to find some native-born Americans who commit voter fraud, you will probably find some immigrants who were ineligible to vote and did so anyway. However, the numbers are so low that the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, declares the issue of non-citizen voting “virtually nonexistent.” They go on to note:

As with the accusations of increased crime and illegal receipt of federal benefits, this is yet another lie intended to inflame emotions and demonize people who are doing us no harm.

Let’s continue down the corridor of lies, shall we?

Do opponents of ICE’s cruel, aggressive, and sometimes lethal tactics want open borders? Polls show that most Americans, even those who support a pathway to citizenship for otherwise law-abiding immigrants already in America, oppose open borders; the accusation is a cudgel anti-immigration forces use to silence or discredit critics.

Are immigrants taking jobs from Americans and driving down wages? That’s not supported by the evidence; they tend to take jobs that Americans don’t want to do, and they are highly entrepreneurial; they are 80% more likely to start a business than native-born Americans. Even most Americans believe, regardless of political affiliation, that immigrants perform jobs that Americans don’t want.

What about their impact on American culture? Frankly, I don’t know what that is, although I suspect those who use the term would define it as people who speak English and abandon the heritage of their homelands for something that looks more like the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant archetype that characterizes so-called “heritage Americans.” Even Vivek Ramaswamy, a MAGA-aligned public figure and a child of immigrants, has a more expansive view of America than that:

Those shared ideals, along with the influence of cultures from around the world, make America a diverse, colorful, and special place. Since heaven will be comprised of “every nation, tribe, people and language” (Revelation 7:9), we can practice now what it will be like to worship the Lord with a multitude of people who look, sound, and act nothing like us.

So, where does that leave us as Christians who take the call to be like Christ in the world today seriously? As I’ve illustrated, the arguments used to justify the cruelty and dehumanization of immigrants are lies, and since we serve a Savior who called Himself “the truth” (John 14:6), and who declared that “the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth” (John 18:37), we must reject the lies and live in truth. Be discerning and don’t let rhetoric based on fear and hate manipulate you.

Once we have clarity on the facts, we can begin a serious conversation about how to address immigration. Honestly, it is shameful that we haven’t solved this problem already. For years, Americans have been consistent in poll after poll on three things related to immigration:

• They want secure borders.

• They want criminal immigrants to be arrested and deported.

• They want a path to citizenship for immigrants who are already here and contribute to their communities and the nation through their hard work, their significant economic contributions, including the taxes they pay, and their desire to be good neighbors.

At the end of the day, whether you support strict enforcement of immigration laws because you believe God is about law and order, or you support a path to citizenship for immigrants who are already here because you believe God would show compassion to those who’ve done no harm, ask yourself: Am I showing love? Do I speak of immigrants lovingly and acknowledge the humanity I share with them? Am I speaking out for humane treatment of immigrants, for ensuring they are treated well if incarcerated, and that their rights under the law are being upheld? In professing my stance on immigration, am I presenting an example that would attract people to Jesus?

If we love God with all our being, love others as ourselves, and imitate Christ in order to make disciples, not only will our treatment of immigrants as fellow image-bearers of God be apparent to everyone, but we will also find more people willing to become disciples of the Savior we serve.

Just as the ancient Israelites were told to show hospitality and compassion to strangers because they had once been strangers in Egypt, so are we to do the same, because if Jesus’ Kingdom is “not of this world,” we are also strangers in a foreign land. It should be easy for us to treat immigrants as we want to be treated, for as Jesus said of us, “they are not of the world any more than I am of the world” (John 17:14). In that regard, they are truly the strangers who sojourn with us.

• Musings from my hospital bed

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Thanksgiving

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Advent

• Dispatch from the home healing front: A thorn in the flesh

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Every good and perfect gift

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Profound loss

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Weary and burdened

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Christmastide and new beginnings

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Resetting expectations

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Gearing up for 2026

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Hard pressed on every side

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Laments allowed

• Dispatch from the home healing front: But now I see

• Dispatch from the home healing front: The vine and the branches

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Small steps

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Seeing the end from the beginning

A few days ago, I woke up and decided to groom my face, mustache, and beard. I don’t do it every day, since my full grooming routine — pre-shave preparation, shaving my head, shaving my cheeks, trimming and moisturizing my mustache and beard, and flossing and brushing my teeth — takes about an hour, and these days, my energy stores are depleted quickly, so I choose my activities carefully.

However, I always feel better when I’m well-groomed, and after I finished, I went outside to get some sun, since it was a beautiful day. I decided to take a selfie and shared it on social media, with a caption that said:

I got several compliments on the photo, but an assumption people made, based on my freshly groomed face and sun-drenched smile, bothered me more than I expected.

A few months ago, someone sent me a meme from a Facebook page for people with chronic illnesses, and it was so funny that I shared it and “liked” the page for more of the same. However, after a while, I stopped following it because the posts made me painfully aware of the realities that people with chronic illness deal with every day, and, realizing I was now one of them, I found that depressing.

However, over time, I’m beginning to realize that I share many of the sentiments expressed there, whether in humor or candor. The public response to my selfie revealed at least one of those sentiments, and I was surprised to feel it well up within me.

Friends and acquaintances remarked on how well I looked, and they either implied or explicitly stated that they were happy I was getting better. I had a visceral reaction to that assumption because, as my neurologist points out, my body has been through a lot and continues to go through a lot, and practically none of it is visible.

Yes, I have gotten better since the worst of it from October of last year; I can sit up, walk, go up and down the stairs, lift with my arms, and push myself up from the floor without assistance. However, what’s going on inside my body is what I’m living with daily, and it’s a lot more than people realize.

When people ask how I’m doing, my usual response is “OK,” because unless they really want to know exactly how I feel, I don’t want to burden them with the details. The fact that I have to manage a carousel of 16 different medications or supplements, most of them daily or multiple times a day, and two six-hour IVIG infusions a month on consecutive days, should be enough of an indication that I’m still dealing with a lot inside.

Current medical data suggests it could take up to four years for me to regain nearly all my functionality, and that assumes no relapses or setbacks in my treatment. Some of the damage already done to my muscles is irreversible. So, when well-meaning people remark about how well I look, my thoughts go immediately to how I really feel inside, and I’m torn between frustration because people don’t know the whole story, or guilt because telling them would sound like complaining, and I don’t want to be that person. Besides, they don’t mean any harm.

Initially, I didn’t understand many of the items on that Facebook page because the idea of being chronically ill was new to me. However, over time, I’ve exhibited many of the traits they describe — defensiveness when people assume I’m “fine” or “getting better” because I show no outward signs of illness, shame for burdening people when I’m honest about how I feel or ask for help because of my condition, and exasperation when people, thinking they know how I feel or what I should do to “get better,” try to push me to do things I’m not physically or emotionally prepared to do. I can understand why some people with chronic illness become bitter and resentful over time. You can see it in many of the posts they share on this page.

Yet, I don’t think most people would ever guess that I was bothered by my illness or people’s reaction to it, and I attribute that to my faith. Jesus teaches a great lesson in Matthew 6 on how we are to conduct ourselves when practicing certain disciplines of the faith, such as prayer and fasting. Particularly when it comes to fasting, Jesus offers guidance that I’ve chosen to extend to other areas of my life:

Jesus was castigating those who wanted everyone to know how pious they were, so they put on a display of great suffering while fasting, hoping everyone would see them and marvel at their faith. When he says “they have received their reward in full,” he’s essentially saying that the praise of men is all they’re going to get for their performative piety, and that nothing from heaven is coming their way just because they put on a good show.

I think the same admonition applies to suffering in general. I’ve shared multiple times that suffering is integral to the Christian life, and that we are not to avoid it but to persevere, allowing it to help us draw nearer to God and adopt more of His character. However, just as he doesn’t want us to flaunt our suffering while fasting, I don’t think he expects us to make a spectacle of our suffering in other ways either. Sometimes, it can’t be helped; when I was in a wheelchair or using a rollator, my suffering was pretty obvious, and it wasn’t about spectacle, but mobility.

Now that the outward signs of my autoimmune disease are mostly gone, with facial swelling and weight gain the only obvious changes to my body, rather than put on a somber face, I literally put oil on my head — shaving oil before shaving cream- and wash my face, among other things.

It’s not just a matter of faithfulness, either. I find that when I go through the trouble of grooming and doing whatever I can to present myself well to the world, regardless of how I feel, I gain a sense of accomplishment that lifts my spirits, and sometimes that’s the best thing that happens to me on a particular day.

Now I need to worry less about people acting as if everything is fine when it isn’t, and to trust that my “Father, who sees what is done in secret,” knows what I’m going through, cares about me, and wants to walk with me as I endure it.

First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1-4)

He began by having each of us think about a person in different categories, and then a nation.

• Someone so near and dear to you that if they were no longer in your life, it would be a great loss.

• Someone you don’t particularly care for, someone you find difficult, someone whose beliefs are opposed to those you hold dear, or someone who has wronged you in some way.

• A nation that has meaning for us, whether it’s its people, the church, or a trial that the nation is currently enduring.

After each type of person and a nation was defined, he gave us a minute each to pray for their well-being and edification.

After that, he posted a picture of several world leaders, asked us to select one we disliked, and gave us a minute to pray for them, not with imprecatory prayers but with prayers that build them up and seek their flourishing.

After we participated in this exercise, he returned to Paul’s admonition to pray for everyone. He said he could have preached this message and instructed us to go home and carry out Paul’s edict, but he speculated that some of us would, while many wouldn’t. He asked how many of us regularly pray for world leaders, people with “prickly personalities,” or those with whom we don’t agree, and challenged us to expand our prayer lives beyond our tribes, whatever they may look like.

I confess that I felt like God had grabbed me by the lapels and shaken me, gently but firmly. I don’t remember the last time I prayed for President Trump, and I’m sure it wasn’t a prayer to build him up. Most likely, it was a prayer for God to help him see the damage he had done, and continues to do to this day, and to feel the weight of shame and judgment, thereby leading him to repent. While I didn’t wish death or bodily harm to come to him, I suppose that qualifies as an imprecatory prayer.

I can say with certainty that I prayed for President George W. Bush when I served for him, because during a post-9/11 visit to FEMA, where the White House Office of Presidential Personnel had assigned me, he was shaking hands with several of us and explicitly asked us to pray for him. I recall praying for President Obama as our first Black president, because I understood the additional burden that came with it. As previously noted, Black people placed on him their expectations of the realization of long-overdue righteousness and justice. In contrast, white people expected absolution for the sins of slavery and racism solely due to his presidency. Ultimately, through no fault of his own, he wasn’t able to meet either expectation; indeed, neither rests with him alone. But that is a topic for another time.

The topic of showing grace to people who vex us has taken on some prevalence in recent weeks as several adherents of Trump’s MAGA movement are abandoning him over his prosecution of the war against Iran, which some see as a betrayal of his “America First” agenda and his promise not to entangle the U.S. in foreign wars, as we were in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others have taken exception to his attacks against Pope Leo for standing on Christian doctrine against war and state-sponsored violence, or his self-portrayal as a messianic figure akin to Jesus. For some, he crossed the line with his attempted dismissal of the Epstein files as a hoax or nothing to be concerned about, since, as he frequently and loudly proclaims, they have nothing to do with him.

Perhaps the most prominent mea culpa came from media personality Tucker Carlson, whose public statement of remorse has generated a lot of chatter on social media:

Most people have questioned the sincerity of Carlson’s remorse and his assertion that his “misleading people” was “not intentional,” particularly since he was a vocal, prominent Trump supporter despite privately disliking him, as revealed by internal Fox News emails released in discovery during the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, and his description of Trump as a person “of low character” in the aforementioned confessional podcast. At the very least, given the many ways in which Trump has done grievous and, in some cases, irreversible harm to millions of people around the world, many are incredulous that it took his unilateral aggression against Iran to turn Carlson against him.

In my opinion, it’s appropriate for the public to scrutinize people with substantial public platforms and influence over others, whether they reach thousands, tens of thousands, or millions, when they recant their previously full-throated support for a man many of us identified as unworthy of leadership in any capacity, much less the presidency of the world’s greatest superpower, before the Iowa caucuses in 2016. Because of their profile and influence, they have an obligation to know better.

But what about the roughly 63 million in 2016, 74.2 million in 2020, and 77.3 million in 2024 who voted for him? What about your neighbors, friends, or family members who supported him without reservation and despite his character, risking and, in some cases, ending relationships with people who disagreed with them, even those they previously professed to care deeply about?

Many of them have popped up on social media, making their public professions of regret and, in some cases, seeking forgiveness and to be welcomed into the tribe of “Never Trumpers,” since they are no longer welcome among hard-core, unrepentant Trump supporters. And this is where the conversation gets interesting.

There are many people who refuse to accept them, essentially saying that they don’t get to explain away their previous support for Trump that easily. By their estimation, these people are the reason why over 14 million people globally, including approximately 4.5 million children under five, could die by 2030 because of the U.S. humanitarian aid cuts; why the U.S. is falling behind in scientific research due to the administration’s war on expertise at our elite universities; why masked, armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents roam the streets of American cities, terrorizing and, in two cases, murdering U.S. citizens, and dragging immigrants who pose no threat to society from their homes, cars, or workplaces; why freedom of the press is threatened daily by bans, threats of revoking licenses, and constant insults and gaslighting from every administration official up to the president himself; and why we are caught in another Middle East quagmire because we went to war with Iran. International agencies that monitor governments worldwide no longer list the U.S. among the world’s great democracies, declaring that our freedoms have regressed significantly over the past year.

To many people, these actions, along with others not listed here, and the cruelty, crudity, and corruption this man has normalized in our politics and society, don’t warrant a pat on the back or letting bygones be bygones. Real people have been hurt or killed because of this administration’s actions, and that is unforgivable to them.

Some people are saying that we don’t have the luxury of denying people entry into the anti-Trump coalition, because it will take everyone coming together to deny him and his acolytes their way, which many believe will spell the demise of our secular, pluralistic constitutional republic.

Among professing Christians, this debate is more intense because it involves matters of eternity, which are even harder to reconcile. Millions of people have left the church, across denominational and non-denominational congregations, because too many church leaders and their followers have blurred the line between their fidelity to the Lord and to their nation, blending their beliefs into something that doesn’t resemble the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They have assigned divine sanction to worldly goals and bestowed a messianic mission on a deeply flawed and self-absorbed man whose primary goals are his own aggrandizement and enrichment, and who has publicly stated that the only morality limiting his exercise of power is his own.

It alternatively saddens and angers me personally that people who don’t know Jesus associate Him with what they see and hear from Trump and his professed Christian supporters. The Jesus of the Gospels eschewed earthly kingdoms and positions of power (Matthew 4:8-10; Luke 4:5-8; John 6:15; John 18:36), embraced the least honored people of society (Matthew 25:31-46; Luke 5: 12-16, 27-32, 14:12-14), directed his greatest criticism at religious leaders for their performative piety that masked the darkness of their hearts (Matthew 23:37-39), and, although He was one with the Father (John 10:30, 14:10 17:20-23), chose to live the life of a humble servant who had no place to lie his head at night (Matthew 8:20; Luke 9:58), and die a criminal’s death (Philippians 2:8) as restitution for our sins, not His own, for He “knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Indeed, Jesus spoke the words of the prophet Isaiah in Luke 4:16-20 to introduce Himself to the world as the One who fulfills the prophecy, and those words were not about worldly power or the acquisition of riches:

This is the Jesus I want to introduce and make famous to the world, yet too many Americans who call out His name and put on an ostentatious public display of religiosity are worshipping a “MAGA Jesus” who will smite the people they deem unworthy who have overrun the land, and give them back the nation they believe should be theirs.

It’s ironic that they are making the same mistake the ancient Israelites made when confronted with the Messiah. They expected a conqueror who would restore the nation’s former glory and sit on a throne in Jerusalem, even though their Scriptures spoke of a “suffering servant” (Isaiah 52:13–53:12) who would be despised and bear the burden of their sins to bring about their redemption before the Lord. When this itinerant rabbi appeared and roused the suffering and oppressed to believe in something that transcended their expectations, they didn’t know how to respond, and when the power and authority with which he conducted His ministry became too much for them, they had Him crucified, unaware that they were fulfilling the very prophecy they had learned since childhood.

Some people ask whether, if Jesus returned today in the same manner He did then, we would recognize Him, given that we have the benefit of the Gospels to know His true “gentle and humble” nature (Matthew 11:29)?

When a member of Congress declares without shame that Donald Trump is “almost a second coming, in my humble opinion,” and the White House faith advisor, in a room filled with 100 faith leaders and more than 25 pastors, compares Trump’s self-inflicted legal troubles to the suffering of Jesus Christ, a comparison that draws applause from those in the room, the answer is a resounding “no.”

So, how are believers who reject “MAGA Jesus” and mourn the prospective disciples lost to Christ because of this false idol supposed to respond to those who are just now realizing that they were wrong to embrace this man of “low character” and whose understanding of Jesus is transactional at best? Are we to excoriate them for the damage they’ve done, unwittingly or otherwise, to the name of Jesus Christ, essentially taking the Lord’s name in vain with their words and actions? Are we to excommunicate them, allowing them to make their peace with God, but banishing them from the protection and embrace of the community?

I think believers know the answer to that question without me having to offer it. The secular world may have the luxury of shunning ex-MAGA followers, but Christians are citizens of a different Kingdom.

Jesus also said, “Even if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times returns to say, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him” (Luke 17:4). He tells us to forgive as we’ve been forgiven (Matthew 6:14-15), and the apostle Paul reminds us of His command repeatedly (Ephesians 4:32; Colossians 3:13). Jesus commands us to “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36).

There are those who think Christianity is “weak,” and one of the reasons I think this distorted version of the faith has emerged in America is because of the perception that the way of Christ as described in the Gospels is effeminate and empathetic, lacking the traits necessary for a “war” to “take back America” from those who would poison it with their tainted cultures, beliefs, and bloodlines.

However, there is nothing weak about a faith that demands we surrender our anger and distaste for people with whom we vehemently disagree, and to show them the mercy and grace of God by forgiving and welcoming them into our circle. That is why I’m grateful for the presence of the Holy Spirit, because it’s so much harder to do on our own.

Personally, I’m fortunate; I have no family members who are ardent Trump supporters, and the friends I know who are MAGA devotees either respect the boundaries we have in our church, where the only Kingdom we speak of is our citizenship in heaven, like me more than they dislike my disdain for Trump, or, more likely, have no idea how much I hold him in contempt, since I take great pains not to discuss politics with the conservatives who once mostly made up my circle of friends and acquaintances.

And now, Jamie had to prick my spirit with the admonition to pray earnestly and edifyingly for our leaders, even Donald Trump. That’s not a task for the weak, but God tells us, time and again, that vengeance belongs to Him, and our only duty is to love. I’ve got some work to do, Holy Spirit.

• Musings from my hospital bed

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Thanksgiving

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Advent

• Dispatch from the home healing front: A thorn in the flesh

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Every good and perfect gift

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Profound loss

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Weary and burdened

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Christmastide and new beginnings

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Resetting expectations

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Gearing up for 2026

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Hard pressed on every side

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Laments allowed

• Dispatch from the home healing front: But now I see

• Dispatch from the home healing front: The vine and the branches

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Small steps

As I write this, I’m a little more than nine hours away from cataract surgery on my right eye. The surgery on the left eye on March 17th was a great success; my vision in that eye, always the worst of the two, was 20/20 as of April 1st, and I haven’t worn glasses since the surgery, which is pretty incredible because I’ve worn either glasses or contact lenses since I was 14 years old. I’m excited about the prospect of seeing even better after the right eye is done. After nearly eight months of challenging health episodes, hospitalizations, and dire diagnoses, this is a welcome ray of light — no pun intended!

I’ve said before that knowledge gives me some sense of agency over my autoimmune disease, but I have to be careful that I don’t let it discourage me. My treatment is at a critical stage right now; my neurologist is slowly tapering me off prednisone, with the objective of relying primarily on intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) for immunomodulation. That last word is important, so stick that in the parking lot of your brain for a bit.

I’ve felt quite fatigued for some time now, and it’s apparently due in part to the tapering process. Prednisone pumps your body full of cortisol, and your adrenal glands, which normally produce cortisol for your body, shut down because they sense you’re getting more than enough from outside. However, when you taper, the external supply drops quickly, and the adrenal glands struggle to resume cortisol production. The result is a cortisol deficit, with symptoms including fatigue, low stamina, and a flat, depleted feeling.

Those symptoms are compounded by the autoimmune myopathy itself; even though the steroids have suppressed it, it’s still there. Also, the IVIG process, even though it’s only two days once a month, has a fatiguing effect that can last for a week or so, and I have my next infusions this upcoming Friday and Saturday. I’m also dropping to the next level in my tapering on Friday, so I’m planning to nap a lot this weekend!

I know my neurologist wants the IVIG to do the heavy lifting in my treatment plan going forward, but I was curious about what that means in practical terms. I know that the infusions are injecting healthy human antibodies into my system because my antibodies are being medically suppressed due to their misbehavior. I also know it’s highly likely that I’ll be on immunotherapy for the rest of my life. However, I wanted to understand what it does once it’s inside my body, and how that will lead me to an existence closer to normal than what I’m experiencing now.

I found a medical report that was very helpful, but sobering in explaining the IVIG impacts on my physiology.

First of all, it doesn’t rebuild or repair my immune system. It suppresses my body’s already compromised immune system and replaces it with donor antibodies from the infusions. As a result, as long as I’m on IVIG, I have passive protection against infections, but there are gaps between treatments where the number of healthy antibodies decreases, and I might be more susceptible than most to getting sick. The bottom line is that I’ll be living off of other people’s immune system antibodies, not mine.

One interesting tidbit is that the current donor pool has strong COVID-19 antibodies, so my protection against that disease is significantly greater. I didn’t get COVID until four years after the outbreak in the United States, and I got the vaccine regularly before and after that, so I’m confident I have the antibodies to keep COVID at bay.

However, the infused antibodies also blunt the effect of vaccines, so they may not be as effective as they used to be.

There is also a possibility that I might remain on a small dose of steroids indefinitely, depending on how effective the IVIG infusions are in suppressing my malfunctioning immune system. That is why I have blood drawn and tested with every infusion; they need to know if the treatments are doing their job. The steroids are immunosuppressants, and their intention is to aggressively and quickly quiet a malfunctioning immune system. Once it is tamed, IVIG treatments are intended to regulate the immune system —a process called immunomodulation—that’s the word I asked you to put in the parking lot! In military terms, the prednisone was the Marine expeditionary force that hit the shores and beat back the antibodies that wanted to destroy my muscles. The IVIG is the occupying army, there to regulate behavior and maintain order.

So, that is what I’ve learned through my most recent research. It didn’t answer all my questions, though, and I’m left wondering what the rest of my life is going to look like in the years to come. Living with an autoimmune disease is certainly not what I envisioned.

There is one who knew this was coming well before I did. The Lord tells Isaiah that He transcends time and space and knows the outcome before it happens:

I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.’ (Isaiah 46:10)

Later, he tells Isaiah, “So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11).

So while it’s great to know that God not only saw this coming, but sees how it’s all going to play out in the years ahead, I’d also like to know what the future will look like. I could plan better and be less affected by setbacks because I’d already anticipated them.

However, if the path ahead has a lot of suffering and struggle, and I had foreknowledge of it, the likelihood is I’d do everything I could to avoid it. The one who makes known the end from the beginning knows this about us, and our history suggests that knowing the future doesn’t seem to affect how one approaches the present. After all, God gave the prophets of old His messages of impending calamity to relay to the leaders and people of Israel, and they usually ignored them or took it out on the messenger. This is why He doesn’t give us the ability to transcend time and space and see events and outcomes before they happen because we’re not prepared to act on that kind of knowledge.

This would make many people anxious, and I’m not saying that if God offered me a glimpse into the future that I wouldn’t take it. However, He asks believers for something greater than being able to see into the future; He’s asking us to trust Him with our future.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight. (Proverbs 3:5–6)

Trusting God is easy in the good times; we are quick to attribute our success, good health, loving family, faithful friends, and numerous other blessings to Him. However, hard times are a fact of life, and the challenge before us, and me in this stage of my life, is to trust Him when it’s so stormy that you can’t see the road ahead and you have no idea where you’re going or what you’ll find.

Perhaps most importantly, trust Him not because He is omnipotent and omnipresent, although He is, but because He loves you and me with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3), and there is nothing that can take His love away from us.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38:39)

I was fortunate in that I recognized the symptoms and sought medical attention as quickly as possible, even though I didn’t know what was happening at the time. Regrettably, my immune system is no longer reliable without constant and long-term medical intervention, and all of this is because of a drug that, in most cases, is beneficial and not harmful, but in my case, triggered a gene that reprogrammed my immune system to turn on me.

The human body is an incredible creation, a highly elegant, resilient, and complex organism made up of parts that wouldn’t work together if we tried to build one, but somehow do so naturally. The Psalmist captured the awe of this design when he praised the Lord for creating him:

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well. (Psalm 139:14)

Yet, despite the complex nature of the human body, we know that external agents, whether intentionally or accidentally introduced, can disrupt the proper functioning of our physiology, minds, or emotions in countless ways.

I reflected on this as I scrolled through my social media feed recently and felt more frustrated with the experience. I thought about how it used to be and wondered how we got to the point where satire, propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, malinformation—true information weaponized out of context to cause harm—and AI-generated fables turned this immune system, meant to promote human connection and relationship-building across boundaries, into something so toxic.

As a student of American history, I am fascinated by the backstory of how our constitutional form of democracy came to be, and much of the credit falls to James Madison, whom a correspondent called the “Father of the Constitution,” a title he pushed back on, declaring the Constitution “the work of many heads and many hands.” Despite Madison’s humility, William Pierce, the Georgia delegate to the Constitutional Convention, noted Madison’s considerable intellect and influence during the proceedings in his character sketches of the various participants.

Mr. Maddison [sic] is a character who has long been in public life; and what is very remarkable every Person seems to acknowledge his greatness. He blends together the profound politician, with the Scholar. In the management of every great question he evidently took the lead in the Convention, and tho’ he cannot be called an Orator, he is a most agreeable, eloquent, and convincing Speaker. From a spirit of industry and application which he possesses in a most eminent degree, he always comes forward the best informed Man of any point in debate. The affairs of the United States, he perhaps, has the most correct knowledge of, of any Man in the Union. He has been twice a Member of Congress, and was always thought one of the ablest Members that ever sat in that Council. Mr. Maddison [sic] is about 37 years of age, a Gentleman of great modesty,—with a remarkable sweet temper. He is easy and unreserved among his acquaintances, and has a most agreeable style of conversation.

Madison prepared for the Constitutional Convention by studying over 2,000 years of human governance to determine why previous forms of self-governance had failed. He was also well-versed in the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, which loosely bound the United States of America. Armed with the knowledge he had accumulated, he and Virginia Governor Edmund Randolph drafted the Virginia Plan, which became the working document from which the Constitution eventually emerged. Madison was the most active and knowledgeable participant in the convention and, after the Constitution was written and published, co-authored The Federalist with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to defend it and encourage its ratification.

I cite Madison as an example of how meticulous and well-prepared the Founders were in crafting the document that governs our nation, and how they considered the fallibility of humankind when designing a government that rules with the consent of the governed while also protecting the rights of minorities against the tyranny of the majority. Even then, we acknowledge that some human failures are of a nature, size, or scope that they cannot be easily overcome, and it took a civil war for America to even begin addressing the issue of chattel slavery. A recent United Nations non-binding resolution suggests we still haven’t resolved everything regarding that dark era in American history. However, that is a topic for another time.

Because the Founders invested so much research and scholarship in the design of our form of government, they were unified on one point - an educated, informed populace was essential to effective self-government. Thomas Jefferson said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." He was confident in his conviction that “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

Therefore, as he declared to Madison in a 1787 letter, "Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." While Jefferson’s vision was exclusive, excluding enslaved people and those who didn’t own property, he is still regarded as the intellectual and philosophical force behind what eventually became the American universal public education system.

John Adams, the 2nd president of the United States, said, “Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty,” and insisted that “The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expenses of it.”

James Madison himself, in a letter to correspondent W.T. Barry in 1822, applauding the state’s investment in public education, wrote:

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowlege will for ever govern ignorance: and a people who mean to be their own Governours, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

In a government designed with checks and balances to address human flaws and enable effective self-governance, a knowledgeable citizenry isn't just beneficial - it’s a core check and balance itself. Anything that blocks people from gaining knowledge, whether invasive or self-imposed, threatens the health of our democratic constitutional republic.

I was using social media before it was popularly known by that name. I spent hours in electronic conversations on GEnie (General Electric Network for Information Exchange) and CompuServe, pioneering online services then called “bulletin boards” and “online forums.” I was a charter subscriber to America Online (AOL) when it launched under Geoworks Ensemble, a Windows-like PC software suite that was technically superior but couldn’t compete with Microsoft’s size, marketing might, or its 2-year exclusive deals with all of their PC manufacturers to put Windows on every machine, effectively shutting out the winner of the 1991 Software Publishers Association Excellence in Software Award for Best Consumer Program. With the advent of the World Wide Web, online services boomed, and today, it’s hard to imagine a world where social media was the province of a few tech nerds, online gamers, file sharers, and business technical support agents.

As with any human endeavor, you could certainly have bad actors stirring up trouble on early online services, but the communities back then were more intimate and close-knit, and they self-policed to ensure the integrity of their online discussions. Also, they were a small subset of the overall population and less diverse than today's social media users.

The vision around social media in the early part of the 21st century was utopian, as the major services saw themselves as pathways for increased public discourse and speech free from oppression, thereby encouraging democratization and liberation worldwide. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared his company’s mission was “to make the world more open and connected.” Later, in the wake of the 2016 election, he modified the mission statement, saying that Facebook and its various properties would “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”

Twitter, prior to Elon Musk and its transition to X, was the world’s water cooler, a public place for people from every walk of life and various stations to congregate and share news, cultural moments, and personal stories. While Twitter never truly represented all demographics and Facebook, over time, tended to skew toward older users, the concept of social media as a unifying force was still presented to the public as an aspirational goal.

What triggered social media to become the rage merchant and purveyor of lies it presents to many of us today is the need for these enterprises to turn a profit. The profit motive didn’t accidentally corrupt social media; it exposed what these platforms truly are once the idealism disappeared. There’s an old saying in the news business: “If it bleeds, it leads.” The algorithms behind these platforms were created to find what drives engagement — and it turned out that controversy, outrage, and fear are the most effective content. Making a profit meant feeding that demand, not fixing it.

The Founders’ world was one in which too little knowledge was shared, and only the privileged had access to most, if not all, of it. They recognized that for “the whole people” to exercise self-government, they needed knowledge, and they assumed that an informed citizenry would arrive at a common set of beliefs and a shared view of reality.

I have tried to determine what they missed in their careful calculations and deliberation, and I think that the speed, volume, and channels of information today are variables they couldn’t have anticipated. They lived in a time when information was transmitted through the written word for the few who were able to read, or orally from pulpits, daises, lecterns, town halls, and taverns across the nation. The notion that you could access practically all the publicly available information in the world instantaneously using a device that fits in the palm of your hand would never have occurred to them. When it comes to the veracity of information, speed kills: the first story to reach the public has an advantage over anything that follows, including corrections to the original, and by then, the damage is done.

The volume of information available to us today is staggering, and would have been incomprehensible to the Founders. Studies show that 90% of the world’s data has been created in just the past two years, and according to Statista, the global volume of data created, captured, copied, and consumed is 149 zettabytes. To put that number into context, a zettabyte of data would require 250 billion DVDs to store; 149 zettabytes, considered by many to be a conservative figure, would require 37.25 trillion DVDs. As impressive as the human brain’s processing and long-term storage capacities are, it’s impossible for it to handle even a small part of that volume.

A related issue to the amount of information is its quality. In ancient times, people generally assumed that knowledgeable individuals would assess the truthfulness of information before sharing it with the public. There was a trust that the information given was accurate and honest. Today, practically everyone is a content creator, and a significant cohort of Americans eschew the opinions of those who were previously looked to as experts, a phenomenon that only intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic as scientists, politicians, and public health experts grappled with this once-in-a-century global event and issued guidance that evolved almost as quickly as the virus itself. The atmosphere of fear that gripped people worldwide pushed them past legitimate scrutiny of expertise toward outright rejection of all expert recommendations, and hundreds of thousands of people died avoidable deaths because they refused the guidance available to them.

Excerpts from a summary of Tom Nichols’ The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters describe our current information environment very well.

…[T]echnology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Over the past several years, the rise of populism and conspiracy theories has taken this to new levels. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.

Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both.

Finally, the Founders couldn’t have anticipated a wide-open information marketplace like the Internet, and the variety of contributors to it, including individuals and state actors with malicious intent. In addition, the advent of artificial intelligence and its ability to generate realistic images and videos gives people the tools to create any “reality” they choose, making it increasingly hard for consumers to discern the truth.

The Founders believed that universal public education and access to information would strengthen the democratic constitutional republic they established against those trying to bring it down. A healthy information system in a democracy would filter out misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation through trusted institutions, a solid body of knowledge, and a shared set of core beliefs and values. However, as I’ve explained, that immune system has been overloaded and compromised by fear, anger, and mistrust, and it is now attacking the healthy body politic. No part of our society is shielded from this overly aggressive and misguided immune response, not even those founded on truth.

Despite my bleak view of social media and its harmful effects on our democracy, I remain an avid user because, like all tools, it can be used for good. It’s the best way for me to keep in touch with family and friends across time and distance, and it’s useful in my roles as a church elder and a non-profit board member or officer. It also serves as a source of news, entertainment, and cultural trends.

However, it’s been unpleasant to see how many people I care about are caught up in the web of falsehoods that are increasingly prevalent on the major social media sites. Uplifting stories about celebrities or politicians seem to be particularly favored, but it takes very little time and research on the Internet to determine they’re not true. There are entire pages devoted to celebrities with stories about health issues, feuds with other famous figures, heartfelt gestures from their children, or other events that never happened.

Some of them, like William Shatner of Star Trek fame, have publicly called out these sites and warned fans not to become entrapped in their lies:

“I wanted to put this out yesterday but given the day and the possibility that it would look like a joke I waited for today,” Shatner wrote, referring to April Fools’ Day. “There is a page on Facebook that is using AI to create horrible fake news stories about me... They have created stories that say I have stage 4 brain cancer, was in some kind of fight with Erika Kirk and that I’m dying. All their stories are monetized. Most of the stories use an AI image of me.”

He went on to write, "This is the downside of AI and yellow journalism. While can be a wonderful tool in the right hands; it can be used as a weapon in the wrong hands."

Moreover, these lies can cause real distress for real people. In this particular instance, Shatner’s granddaughter, who read all the false stories on Facebook, was so concerned for his health that her mother, Shatner’s daughter, went to check on him:

My Daughter came over to tell me her daughter heard that I had brain cancer. She took this photo and sent it to me to upload to prove I’m not ill. The people who are ill are those that are spreading these ridiculous stories. I’m fit as a fiddle. You don’t have to worry. This is getting insane.

Fake political stories are common, filled with falsehoods and alternate realities, meaning things that never happened except in someone’s imagination. However, these political lies are especially dangerous because they cause confusion for both believers and non-believers about whether Christ or culture is speaking.

What is really disturbing about all these fake stories is how many people respond to them as if they were true and share them with their friends, spreading the lies faster and farther than ever. You might see one or two people in the comments who call out the story as “fake news,” but they are drowned out by all the people desperate for the story to be true, either because it assuages their fears, amplifies their mistrust, or validates their anger.

Whenever I see a Christian, whether a close friend or a church member, sharing a false story, I feel deep sadness because there are people out there looking for reasons to dismiss or belittle the faith. Peter warns us to “be alert and of sober mind” precisely because our adversary prowls “like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). These individuals, who are precious to me, have no idea that what they are doing invites unnecessary scrutiny of the Christian faith. Sometimes, if I think they would be receptive to correction, I send them a private message indicating that the story they shared is false. Most of the time, they thank me, but they almost never remove the story or issue a correction to their followers. This tells me that these stories are crafted so well that they are hard to let go of. These stories are designed with precision — engineered to appeal to a deep emotional need, generate attention for the person sharing them, and validate their need to stand on the right side of something. Their private acknowledgment and thanks may soothe their conscience with me, but the social cost of taking down the article is apparently too high.

No falsehood brings honor to Christ, who declared at his trial before Pontius Pilate: “The reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me” (John 18:37). Therefore, I marvel at how strongly these stories seem to hold on to them and how their desire to fit in with a particular group or viewpoint competes with their calling to imitate Jesus, who explicitly called Himself “the truth” (John 14:6).

I previously wrote about how to be a discerning news consumer, a concept I now recognize as “media literacy.” Dominique Maria Bonessi, a journalist and Penn Kemble Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, was raised by her mother to ‘read everything’ — an upbringing she credits for both her career and her passion for media literacy. She describes it as “a nutritional diet with carbohydrates, protein, and fat” that requires every food group for a healthy lifestyle. Our media diet, she argues, should be equally diverse and complete. She outlines what that commitment requires — and what we lose without it.”

Being media literate takes time, it takes a commitment, and it takes a little bit of money if you want to get beyond the paywalls. Many busy people juggling work, family, and household chores passively watch, read, or listen to the news while sitting in traffic, cooking dinner, or working out. It’s understandable, the average consumer doesn’t have time to sit down and read a newspaper in this fast paced world–it’s something of the past.

But the alternative to not taking the time to actively partake and seek out the multitude of reliable news sources, and be a media literate individual is scarier. The alternative is being media illiterate in which the unverified, non-factual second-hand “news” from your friends on Facebook, YouTube or other social media sites is seen as a reliable source of information. People who are media illiterate don’t know about the need to seek out diverse, reliable sources to combat their confirmation biases. When large groups of individuals on all sides of the political spectrum fail to practice media literacy it leads to an uneducated public one that is easily influenced–dare I say, gullible–to easily believe what one person tells them.

Bonessi hints at this in her references to fighting one’s confirmation biases, but a key part of media literacy is having the humility to set aside fear, anger, mistrust, and one’s own ego to explore information spaces they usually avoid. Humility allows us to admit that we may not have all the answers, or that we might even be wrong about what we believe, and it helps us to listen to other perspectives and evaluate them to determine their truth. If we allow ourselves to be less certain about our worldview and more open to hearing others, we will find that either our worldview is strengthened or we learn something new and integrate it, showing growth in the process.

A vigilant citizenry is essential for preserving self-government because, as Bonessi noted, a passive citizen can be easily manipulated, and the idea of “consent of the governed” envisioned by the Founders no longer functions. When Benjamin Franklin, on the last day of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, responded to Ms. Elizabeth Willing Powell’s question, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” by saying, “A republic, if you can keep it,” he emphasized the responsibility of the governed to take charge of their governance. Ronald Reagan famously said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It has to be fought for and defended by each generation.” A government of, by, and for the people requires our active engagement, and we must be, as Jesus said to His disciples, “as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).

If the Founders, who were Deists and followers of the Enlightenment, understood that self-governance requires humble and disciplined engagement, If the Founders, who were Deists and followers of the Enlightenment, understood that self-governance requires humble and disciplined engagement, what about the 62% of Americans who claim to be Christians — people whose loyalty to Jesus Christ calls them not only to think critically, but to serve as His ambassadors in the nation where He has placed them? They carry a particular responsibility. And yet they are susceptible to the same lures as anyone who is not discerning.

Paul warned Timothy, and us:

For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

Increasingly, we are allowing our fears to cloud our discernment, and myths that soothe or validate our fears have taken hold of us. We need to follow Paul’s advice in Romans 12:3-4:

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.

This is the humility we are called to exhibit when determining whether something is true, and we are told, “Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:20-22). John says, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).

To reiterate what I mentioned in my previous article about media literacy, it’s important to me that my fellow Christians, especially those I serve as a church elder, are bearers of truth. This isn’t just for responsible and discerning citizenship. It matters to me because the United States of America is where the Lord has placed me, but it isn’t the main focus.

...[T]his isn’t just a matter of good citizenship for me. Indeed, that is very important and biblical since we Christians are called to live good lives in the time and place the Lord has put us and retain a good reputation with outsiders. However, we are also called to pursue the truth; as I stated in another article, “The truth matters to the Lord, and the Lord is truth, so the truth matters deeply to me.” I also quoted author and Bible teacher Chuck Missler, who said, “The only barrier to truth is the presumption that you already have it.” The truth demands humility and not the arrogance that we know more than the professionals who’ve answered the calling on their lives to research and report the news. They are not infallible; some may have agendas with which we disagree, and some will make mistakes, but discernment will guide you to the truth. Conspiratorial thinking and reliance on dubious information sources will not.

Proverbs 18:17 says, “In a lawsuit the first to speak seems right, until someone comes forward and cross-examines.” Leave room for more information than what your “side” offers, and test everything—especially if it aligns with what you want to believe. As Paul tells us, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2). That is the solution to keeping the republic — most importantly, it is our duty as followers of Jesus Christ, who deserves all our allegiance.

• Musings from my hospital bed

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Thanksgiving

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Advent

• Dispatch from the home healing front: A thorn in the flesh

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Every good and perfect gift

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Profound loss

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Weary and burdened

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Christmastide and new beginnings

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Resetting expectations

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Gearing up for 2026

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Hard pressed on every side

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Laments allowed

• Dispatch from the home healing front: But now I see

• Dispatch from the home healing front: The vine and the branches

March has been a blur as far as medical appointments, scheduled and unscheduled, are concerned, and April isn’t looking like it’s going to slow down. This has been my life over the last few weeks, and what will be my life in the weeks ahead:

• March 11–12: Trip to Lynchburg General Hospital due to severe swelling in both legs.

• March 13: Blood work for lab tests ordered by my neurologist; venous Doppler ultrasound of both legs.

• March 17: Cataract surgery on the left eye.

• March 18: Post-operative follow-up on cataract surgery on the left eye.

• March 19, 21: Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) infusions.

• March 23: Blood work and a urine sample for lab tests ordered by my primary care physician.

• March 24: Follow-up appointment with my neurologist.

• April 1: 2nd post-operative follow-up on cataract surgery on the left eye.

• April 3: Follow-up appointment with my primary care physician.

• April 14: Cataract surgery on the right eye.

• April 15: Post-operative follow-up on cataract surgery on the right eye.

• April 17–18: Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) infusions.

• April 29: 2nd post-operative follow-up on cataract surgery on the right eye.

This is going to be pretty typical for the next several months; the good news is that the cataract surgery on my left eye, my “bad” eye, was a resounding success, and I can see quite well without glasses. In fact, the vision in my left eye the day after the surgery was 20/25, despite the inflammation from the procedure, and the ophthalmologist expects it to be just about 20/20 by the time I see him later this week. This is an exciting development, and I’m anxious to see how much further my vision will improve after the right eye is fixed. My hope is that by the end of April or early May, I will be cleared to drive and can at least go to my medical appointments without having to beg my wife, daughter, or friends for transportation.

A dear friend of mine checked in on me a while ago, and she gave me a lot of good advice on how to handle chronic illness, since she herself was dealing with heart disease that dates back a few years. One of the things she said helped her was engaging in “retail therapy,” essentially treating herself to things that brought her pleasure, and she gave me permission to do the same!

As someone with ADHD, I’m aware of the risks involved in buying things to boost one’s mood, and people have overdone it and caused themselves financial and emotional harm. I didn’t go crazy, but I did grab some things from my Christmas list I didn’t get, and a couple of replacement items for my computer workstation that have made a real difference in daily use.

I upgraded my computer speakers from the Edifier M60 to the Edifier S880DB MKII. I’ve grown to trust the brand, and the design, quality, and sound are exceptional. They are larger than the compact Edifiers I previously owned, so I had to rearrange some things to make space for them, but they have been worth the effort. I love the sound that comes from these attractive speakers, and I expect to be very happy with them for a long time.

I have been a long-time user of ergonomic keyboards, primarily split-key designs that place the wrists at a more natural angle for typing. I have become particularly attracted to the Alice layout, a variation on the split-key design used primarily in mechanical keyboards, and, in my opinion, the best of these are made by Keychron. I’ve had three of their “Q” models — Pro, Max, and now the Ultra. These are not cheap keyboards, and their metal construction, extensive engineering, and upscale typing experience require a greater investment than the typical computer keyboard. However, I’ve found it very easy to sell the other Keychron keyboards on eBay for a good chunk of change, which has enabled me to upgrade pretty painlessly. I don’t expect Keychron to build anything to exceed their Ultra model, and even if they did, I think I have the willpower to stop with this one. Like the others, they make typing a pleasure, and when you spend as many hours on a computer as I do, that makes a meaningful difference in work and leisure.

You may have noticed the leather desk mat with my name on it. The St. George Leather Shop Capri Leather Office Desk Mat was something I decided to get along with the new keyboard, and they were offering them at half price, even with personalization. The fact that this family-owned business is based in Ukraine made me even more determined to buy one. I admire their entrepreneurship amid a long war they didn’t bring on themselves, and I hope my dollars, and those of others who discover them, will help them thrive despite the tragedy surrounding them.

The last tech upgrade I made was to the other input device I use, the trackball, or as some like to call it, the trackball mouse. I’ve used trackballs for many years, and they have been practically indispensable to me in the wake of two carpal tunnel surgeries in December 2017 and July 2018. I had one that I was happy with and that fit the white/silver/gray colorway I had designed for my workspace. I was curious enough about another model from a different manufacturer to buy it and try it out, but since it wasn’t the right color, I banished it to use with my laptop when I didn’t feel like getting up from the couch to work at my desk.

Recently, due to my illness, I’ve found myself using the laptop a little more, as I am often fatigued and unwilling to make the short trip from the couch to the desk behind me. I began to notice how much more smoothly this trackball functioned than the one I used at my desk, so I decided to swap it into my setup for a week to see if it was indeed better. After a week, I ordered another one for my desk and put the white one up for sale on eBay.

The ProtoArc EM05 NL Wireless Vertical Trackball Mouse not only has the smooth trackball movement I mentioned, but also a vertical design that puts your hand in a handshake position, which is less stressful and tiring than a typical trackball or mouse that forces you to lay your hand flat on the desk. It also has a small surface protrusion at the base, a natural place to rest the side of your palm, and a stylish one at that. I should add that trackballs are also very convenient for people who don’t have much desktop real estate to move a mouse around. Oh, and since my mini-workstation (that’s what the manufacturer calls my Minisforum MS-S1 MAX) is black, my Shure MV7+ Microphone windscreen is black, and my desk mat is black, the ProtoArc trackball doesn’t clash with my workspace design as much as I thought it would, and the silver trackball helps tie it into the silver/gray accent. That said, if they ever make one in white, I’m lining up to buy it!

These were just a few of the things I’ve purchased to bring a few sparks of happiness into my radically altered life, and while it may seem frivolous, I’m learning that small things matter and that small steps are vital to maintaining my emotional and mental well-being as I navigate a chronic disease.

Let me try to describe my frame of mind so that you understand a little of where I’m coming from. This will seem repetitive to those of you who’ve been with me from the beginning of my journaling about this, but please walk with me again. You’ll see where I’m headed.

Until mid-August, I was a relatively healthy 66-year-old man who had lost a considerable amount of weight in the preceding 13 months, between 60 and 70 pounds. I was optimistic about my physical well-being, even though I was in conversations at the time about a possible left shoulder replacement. Having been through numerous orthopedic procedures before, I wasn’t concerned. Body parts break or wear down, and orthopedic surgeons are experts at fixing or replacing them, and I’d had both done previously.

However, beginning in mid-August, I started losing strength in my hips and thighs and was having increasing difficulty walking, climbing stairs, stepping up on a stage, and even standing up from a seated position. I was lifting my legs with my arms to get in and out of a vehicle. Imagine how alarmed I was by this sudden, unexplained change in my health.

Faced with these changes, I go to the first specialist that comes to mind: my orthopedic doctor. He suspects nerve compression in the spine, and while the thought of spinal surgery to correct the problem concerned me a little, I was relieved to know that there was a structural reason for my declining mobility, and it was fixable.

However, this weakness progressed to my upper body, and eventually, even my sneezing, swallowing, and coughing were noticeably weaker. The back specialist to whom I had been assigned after my initial appointment ordered me to the emergency room, concerned that the nerve compression was worsening and could lead to irreversible damage. At this point, I hadn’t had an MRI, and the diagnosis of nerve compression was still preliminary. When a full-body MRI revealed no issues with my spine that would cause my symptoms, my perspective changed instantly. At least the emergency room doctor was candid with me when he said, “We don’t know what’s wrong with you.” Good, I thought; that makes two of us!

At this point, my health had been deteriorating for two months. Finally, on October 29th, we had a confirmed diagnosis: statin-induced necrotizing autoimmune myopathy (SINAM).

I had no idea what that was, but I understood that the root word for “necrotizing” meant death, and I knew my muscle tissue was dying. Over time, I learned that it was actually being attacked by my own immune system; now we were in uncharted waters for me.

However, even with all this new information, I held on to the fact that I had not been diagnosed with any of a number of frightening neuromuscular diseases. The one I feared the most was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, because I personally witnessed one of my military commanders slowly pass away from the disease, and the thought of having full cognition while trapped in a body that no longer functioned felt like hell to me.

Because all the other autoimmune panels came back negative, I got this notion in my head that this was an acute illness with an identifiable cause and effect, and a known treatment regimen that, once implemented, would result in a cure and a return to normal life.

That is why I will never forget December 16, 2025. That was the day of my first appointment with the neurologist, Dr. Margaret “Peggy” Bettin, who had been directing my treatment from afar while I was in the hospital. As we discussed the disease and the treatment plan, she used three words to describe my situation, and only the first two registered because they hit me like a freight train: “chronic” and “incurable.” I heard the third word, “manageable,” but it didn’t matter because my circuits had been overwhelmed by the first two.

That is when I realized my life would never be the same, and although it isn’t a horrific disease like ALS, it is still something that won’t go away, no matter what I do, and I will have to be on a disease management plan for the rest of my life. I asked Claude, an artificial intelligence chatbot, to summarize what the medical literature has to say about my condition:

SINAM affects roughly 2–3 people per 100,000 statin users — making it genuinely rare, not just uncommon. It is not a temporary drug side effect. It is an autoimmune disease that a statin triggered, but no longer drives — the immune system is now attacking the body’s own muscle tissue independently, and stopping the statin does not stop the disease. The published literature characterizes it as typically a chronic condition requiring long-term, often lifelong immunosuppressive management, with meaningful relapse risk whenever treatment is reduced or interrupted. Monthly IVIG infusions, corticosteroids, and close monitoring of CK and CPK are not precautionary measures — they are what’s keeping the autoimmune process from progressing.

I also know from my research that recovery is going to be slow, and I may not recover to the level I was before I became ill. A Johns Hopkins study of 50 SINAM patients followed for 2 or more years found that only 22 (44%) achieved full strength with immunotherapy, and only three of them could be tapered off immunotherapy entirely. I mentioned previously that my neurologist was aware of the probability I’d be on immunotherapy for life, but was apprehensive about telling me, so I finished the sentence for her because I knew it, too. My home health nurse told me about another patient of hers who recently passed away but lived for 28 years on immunotherapy for myasthenia gravis, another autoimmune disorder.

So, I’ve spent every day since December 16, 2025, trying to adapt to this permanent change in my life, and there are things about my adjustment to the new “normal” that I don’t know are obvious to well-meaning family and friends who are trying to tell me what to do or how I should be dealing with this.

The one thing I want people to understand is that I am not emotionally or mentally ready to think about or act on my situation beyond today. That doesn’t mean I don’t keep apprised of upcoming appointments or medical procedures; I just see them as part of the routine. That also doesn’t mean I don’t research my condition and learn as much as possible about it. That’s not only my nature, but I find knowledge reassuring, even if it’s not always positive.

What I mean is that I focus only on getting through each day with as little discomfort as possible. I am often fatigued, my cardiovascular endurance is limited, and my legs feel like lead and quickly worsen after minor exertion. I am not only dealing with the effects of the disease, but also the side effects of the prednisone I’ve been on for months now, such as weight gain, fluid retention in the lower extremities, and impaired vision due to accelerated cataract growth, to name a few.

The immunotherapy injections I receive monthly also take a toll initially as my body recalibrates to process the millions of distinct antibody specificities from thousands of human donors. Incidentally, I find it ironic that I used to sell my plasma as a college student so I’d have a little money in my pocket, and now I’m the beneficiary of thousands of people doing what I used to do.

My neurologist encourages me by reminding me that my body is going through a lot, and she says to accept that I’m going to be limited and not feel guilty about resting and proceeding at a pace that’s comfortable for me. However, not everyone agrees with my pace, and they want me to push beyond what I’m doing. They are well-intentioned; everyone wants to see me return to “normal,” and my family especially hopes I become stronger so I can contribute more to the household and ease some of their caregiving load. I fully understand their perspective, but their insistence that I do more only brings shame and stress, and I feel like I’m letting people down when I say I don’t want to push myself right now.

I want everyone to understand that this isn’t a temporary state that will pass, nor is it something that can be “fixed” by doing this or that. My chronic fatigue and leg heaviness may not be visible, but they are real, and while I do my best to put on a positive attitude, I am still reeling mentally and emotionally from this change in my life, and I’m still processing it.

Therefore, my focus is on the day at hand, managing my weakened body and compromised immune system when it comes to activity levels and public exposure, respectively, as well as handling medical appointments, keeping track of 13 different medications I need to take daily or multiple times a day, and conserving enough energy to do my job, fulfill my role as a church elder, and be as present a husband, father, and grandfather as I can be. That’s a pretty decent workload for a day, and it’s about what I can handle successfully right now.

Jesus is the Messiah whom the Lord promised would come, and the world’s greatest teacher. However, He is also a great therapist who understood the human condition better than anyone and offered guidance to help us live abundant lives. He knew that we worry about many things, and anxiety rules our lives, so in Matthew 6:34, He tells us, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Fretting about the future not only doesn’t change it, but it takes energy away from living in the present. Yes, plan and be prudent about the future, but don’t dwell on it at the expense of making the most of the present.

Paul says we are to “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God (Philippians 4:6), and Peter tells us not to be anxious but to “cast all your anxiety on Him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). If you give Him what happens tomorrow, you can rest assured that He’s got it, and you can live in the moment. Moreover, each new day is a fresh start.

Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. (Lamentations 3:22–26)

Some Bible translations use the word “mercies” rather than “compassions,” but the point is that if we wait on the Lord, He will give us what we need for the day, what some believers like to call His “tender mercies.”

Isaiah 30:18 says, “Blessed are all who wait for Him.” Psalm 37:7 says, “Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him,” and Psalm 27:14 exhorts, “Wait patiently for the LORD; be strong and courageous. Wait patiently for the LORD!” Micah 7:7 says, “But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.”

Wait. Receive His mercies. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Taking small steps is not only a way for me to show myself a little grace, but it also adds up. One day, I’ll look back and marvel at how far I’ve come, and I must remember then whose steps really got me there.

Oh, and don’t hesitate to treat yourself to things that make you happy along the way. Just remember to do it in moderation!

Both Russia and Germany are nations of exceptional beauty, their landscapes and legacies adorned with profound artistry. They have significantly contributed to the world’s collective heritage, leaving an indelible mark on arts, architecture, music, philosophy, education, religion, and other domains of shared human culture.

As I studied these nations and their histories, which, from a military perspective, are stained by the atrocities of Stalinism and Naziism respectively, I often asked myself how nations with such refined civilizations could have allowed such barbarism to take hold of the populace. I would add that the question in my mind would always be followed by an emphatic statement, “That would never happen in America.”

As I think back on that time in my life, I am amused and a little embarrassed at how ignorant and naive I was. Even without the breadth and depth of American history I’ve learned on my own, I was aware of the history of American atrocities against Black people, indigenous Americans, Asian-Americans, and others. However, my thinking at the time was not about what America had done, but what it had overcome. I honestly believed much of the evil that motivated America’s worst behavior had been pushed to the fringes of our collective consciousness and was no longer capable of infecting our society.

Many, if not most of us, have said it as a point of pride and exceptionalism: “It can’t happen here.” However, as I sit here, almost 34 years removed from my last day of duty as an intelligence officer, I have reached the sad conclusion that not only can it happen here, it has happened here before on our soil, it can happen again, and the people who are actively trying to make it happen again are ascendant and emboldened to make it happen again.

My sponsor, mentor, and boss at Liberty University was fond of quoting a passage of Scripture from the Old Testament to illustrate the discernment and wisdom that Christ-followers must possess:

From the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command. (1 Chronicles 12:32)

Issachar was the ninth son of Jacob, whom the Lord named Israel, meaning “he strived with God,” after he spent a night wrestling with an angel. Issachar was one of Jacob's 12 sons and represented one of the 12 tribes of Israel. The “sons of Issachar,” his descendants, numbered about 87,000 during King David’s reign, and they were known to be intensely loyal to the King, who they correctly discerned was God’s anointed one and therefore worthy of their allegiance.

The verse in 1 Chronicles states that the descendants of Issachar “understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do,” suggesting their awareness of the moment they found themselves in and how they were to respond.

I could delve into how this particular passage of Scripture gained popularity within certain Christian circles, particularly among Pentecostal, charismatic, and various non-denominational evangelical traditions, as they often misinterpret it as evidence of a mystical gift of prophecy – the ability to foresee the future – a partisan political agenda, or a special talent bestowed by God upon a select few or an unchallengeable elite leadership group. Suffice to say, I’m not going in that direction.

In the context of the passage, the sons of Issachar realized that David, not Saul, was the anointed king of Israel, and therefore it was their duty to steer the people of Israel toward David as their future leader. This wasn’t mysticism or an exclusive gift, but what we in the military would call “situational awareness” at a strategic level. Once their situational awareness was where it needed to be, they sought and received God’s direction for their nation's future, and they shared that wisdom with others.

Ironically, the sons of Issachar, by exhibiting discernment and having their senses on alert to hear God’s voice, were “woke” in the original definition of the term as it was intended by the Black community before it was co-opted and corrupted into a synonym for anything the current sociopolitical movement doesn’t like. To Black Americans in the first half of the 20th century, when the word “woke” and associated phrases gained traction as defining black political consciousness, it meant being aware of racial injustice and violence in the times in which they lived, being vigilant about the dangers they posed, and acting accordingly to protect themselves and others.

That is an inherently biblical way to live; it’s the very description of Jesus’ admonition to his disciples: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).

How many times in the Bible are believers told to be alert, to be on guard, to keep awake, or not to be caught asleep?

“So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober” (1 Thessalonians 5:6).

“Be sober-minded and alert. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

“Be on the alert. Stand firm in the faith. Be men of courage. Be strong” (1 Corinthians 16:13).

“And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed” (Romans 13:11).

Being alert to discern the time and place the Lord has placed us in, and to know how to act in accordance with God’s will, simply calls on Christians to have a sense of urgency about current events, to humbly seek God’s will, and to use the wisdom they gain to the benefit of others over themselves. That last point is key; discernment and wisdom are abused if they are not used to the benefit of the community, but only to protect or enrich oneself. While these gifts are not exclusive, I believe the Lord makes them accessible to those who will apply them generously and without regard for themselves.

So, how does this Scriptural lesson apply to us today? Many of us discern that we are living in troubling times; having come of age in the 1960s, I think it is safe to say that what we are seeing in our nation and around the world today rivals that era in political and cultural change and upheaval. Some scholars argue that we haven’t seen this level of division and disagreement since the Civil War. Only time will tell which era our current one mirrors.

It seems to me that much of today’s political and cultural activity is motivated by a desire to return to a perceived idyllic period before the 1960s, where men, women, and minorities all knew and exercised their rightful places in the social order. Authority, particularly white male authority, was respected and never questioned, and America was the undisputed world leader. You know, the “good old days.”

Except, as my wife, a naturalized American citizen who didn’t live here in the 1960s, points out, it wasn’t the “good old days” for everybody, and the 1960s were inevitable because of that. However, some would argue that the pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction and that we’ve lost some enduring principles about the nature of God, man, and the universe that were never in question until now. These are valid topics for civil debate and discussion in our pluralistic, secular democratic republic.

Yet, the conversation, if you can call it that, has been anything but civil. Political polarization in America is at an all-time high, and studies show that the extent of division in America compared to other democracies around the world is excessive:

In the study, Shapiro and colleagues present the first ever multi-nation evidence on long-term trends in “affective polarization” — a phenomenon in which citizens feel more negatively toward other political parties than toward their own. They found that in the U.S., affective polarization has increased more dramatically since the late 1970s than in the eight other countries they examined — the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden.

“A lot of analysis on polarization is focused on the U.S., so we thought it could be interesting to put the U.S. in context and see whether it is part of a global trend or whether it looks more exceptional,” Shapiro said. “We found that the trend in the U.S. is indeed exceptional.”

According to the Carnegie Corporation of New York:

Few dispute the fact that America is polarized. A September 2024 Gallup poll found that a record 80 percent of U.S. adults believe Americans are greatly divided on the most important values, while just 18 percent believe the country is united. Not only is the percentage of those who believe the country to be divided higher than ever before, but the view is held broadly consistently across gender, age, race, political affiliation, and educational attainment.

Perhaps more disturbingly, this polarization in America has tended toward a simplistic dichotomy of good and evil, with one’s favored tribe as “good” and the opposing tribe as “evil,” leaving no room for nuance, complexity, or “gray areas.” A Syracuse University report says:

Americans increasingly see the country as more divided than at any time since the Civil War. Pew Research Center polling reveals a sharp rise in partisan hostility: in 2022, 72% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats viewed the opposing party as more immoral than other Americans—up dramatically from 47% and 35% in 2016.

American Christians have not only adopted this narrative but have amplified it, characterizing political disagreements as apocalyptic battles between the forces of God and Satan, leaving no room for dialogue, debate, negotiation, compromise, or consensus, the essential lubricants of a healthy democratic society.

Our polarization has reached the point where we refuse to even associate with people who believe differently from us, and we excuse the behavior of our tribe, no matter how abhorrent, while condemning the position of the other tribe, even if it is supported by evidence, observation, or previously universal moral standards:

Recent research in psychology has primarily highlighted the negative consequences of polarization in America. Americans accept smaller paychecks to avoid listening to opposing partisans, move to new places to surround themselves with ideologically similar residents, and swipe left on people with whom they disagree politically. Polarized Americans are more willing to exclude people with opposing political beliefs than to exclude people of other races—a jarring comparison considering the prevalence of race-based exclusion.

Likewise, Americans have trouble critically evaluating the flaws and merits of policies. Instead, they seek information that confirms their partisan preferences and disregard facts that counter them. Out of loyalty, they treat core party issues as immune to debate and suppress their opponents’ views.

Discerning the times we are in today means understanding the infertile ground our polarization presents. Like a farmer trying to sow good seed among thorns, our efforts to bring about consensus and common ground are likely to be a struggle, if not destined for failure, because the thorns rise up and choke the seedlings (Matthew 13:7).

However, we must also acknowledge the thorns that have taken root in our polarized environment, as they pose the greatest threat to the United States of America as we aspire it to be.

I believe many historians would agree that World War II and the events leading up to it were unique in their global scale, extreme ideologies, unprecedented death toll and destruction, state-sponsored genocide, and brutality against both combatants and civilians. The world map was redrawn, the balance of global power shifted, and technology capable of destroying the world was revealed. The world order that emerged from that era has remained fairly constant to this day.

Because of this, it is always controversial when politicians compare their adversaries to the autocratic regimes of that time, particularly the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or the Nazi Party. The Nazis are regarded as the pinnacle of evil in human history, and invoking their name against an opponent is a guaranteed conversation stopper. Yet, it would be irresponsible for any objective student of history to ignore parallels between current events and those that led to the rise of the Nazis. Moreover, Naziism was not cut from whole cloth, but was derived in part from policies and practices observed in other countries, including and perhaps primarily the United States.

The racial authoritarianism in the South that our government allowed to exist within America’s supposedly liberal democratic republic from the Post-Reconstruction era to the 1960s laid the legal groundwork for the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which stripped Jews of their citizenship, racialized the Jewish faith, and banned sexual relations or marriage between Jews and people of “German or related blood.”

The Nazis took these laws to their horrific extreme, but we cannot escape the fact that America’s federal and state laws that discriminated against Black Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, indigenous Americans, and other racial groups were carefully studied and adopted by the Nazi regime.

Moreover, the American eugenics movement, which led to state laws adopting involuntary sterilization as a means of racial hygiene and reducing the number of “feeble-minded” people, provided the justification for barbaric experimentation on so-called “lesser” people in the name of science and racial purity.

Psychoanalyst Theodor Reik in 1965 said, “It has been said that history repeats itself. This is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes.” King Solomon in the Old Testament put it more poetically:

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

It was ignorant of me to believe that authoritarianism and the dehumanization that makes it possible had never happened in America before, when history tells quite a different tale. As I observe our leaders openly demeaning black and brown immigrants, calling them “vermin” who are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and using tactics similar to the secret police of oppressive regimes to detain and expel them, while prioritizing white foreigners' immigration; as white male Christian pastors shamelessly declare that women should not be educated, hold leadership roles, or be allowed to vote; and as “heritage Americans” assert that only those of white European descent are legitimate citizens, I realize it was naive of me to think it couldn’t happen here again. No, it’s not Nazism, but it rhymes.

I find that the most honest and objective way to evaluate myself is to let others do it. While I consider myself quite critical when it comes to my own performance, and I think I rate myself honestly, I can’t ensure that my own biases won’t creep in and render an evaluation that isn’t entirely accurate.

That’s also how I feel about organizational evaluations. I annoyed more than a few people in the organizations I led in the past because I invited scrutiny from external evaluators or watchdogs, such as the inspectors general in the federal government. The people in the organizations under my purview were acculturated to harbor suspicions of external evaluators, but I saw them as honest brokers who could make us better.

When the current administration began firing inspectors general, ethics officials, judge advocates - military lawyers - in the armed forces, and other government watchdogs, and shutting down independent agencies charged by Congress with oversight of corporations to protect citizens, I knew they weren’t serious about being accountable to anyone other than themselves.

I could write an article solely about accountability and how leadership, especially in the current administration, in many parts of the private sector, and in the church, secretly despises it but publicly pretends to believe in it, thus making a mockery of the very concept. However, that will have to wait for another time.

Accountability is why I subscribe to several well-regarded news organizations outside the United States. Not only are they not under the incredible pressure of a federal government that seems to think the free press should echo state-sponsored propaganda and declares them “enemies of the state” if they don’t, but they also are generally not influenced by the partisan debates and divisions raging in our country, and can therefore witness and report as disinterested observers.

I also believe in news aggregators because they gather several reports on the same events, giving me multiple perspectives to read, consider, and draw my own conclusions from. This is a technique similar to the all-source intelligence gathering and analysis I did in the Air Force; we never relied on a single source or method, but instead used multiple sources and methods to conduct the most comprehensive analysis and produce the most accurate finished intelligence reports possible. I have found this approach useful for becoming a discerning consumer of news and information, and I’ve recommended it before as a tool for responsible citizenship and faithful witness as a believer who seeks after the truth.

In fact, my previous article, “The News That's Fit,” dovetails nicely with this one, so I recommend you check it out after you’ve finished this one. You’re allowed a break between them, because I know I can be wordy!

External news organizations and news aggregators are not the only tools available to us for understanding the times we are in.

International research organizations conduct comparative analyses of nations across a wide range of subjects, using standardized, well-established criteria and extensive datasets. These comparative studies are very effective in dismantling the propaganda that nations put out about themselves, at least for those seeking the truth rather than validation of a viewpoint they already hold.

In a recent poll, 52% of Americans see the current government as “authoritarian,” with 47% describing it as a “dictatorship.” Of those who evaluate the terms “democracy,” “authoritarian,” “dictatorship,” “fascist,” and “oligarchy,” only 16% say the term “democracy” describes the federal government “very well.” The other terms illustrate the conviction with which Americans believe their government has changed:

A survey called Bright Line Watch has U.S. professors of political science rate the performance of American democracy, and the most recent one “finds that the vast majority think the United States is moving swiftly from liberal democracy toward some form of authoritarianism.”

However, many argue that the results of these surveys and polls are tainted by left-wing bias and the overwhelmingly left-leaning nature of scholars and others who are sounding the alarm simply because they don’t like the president or his policies. Indeed, another poll shows that “41% of Americans think ‘having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament or elections’ is a very good or fairly good system.” They are quick to point out that Trump was democratically elected, and that fact alone gives his government all the authority it needs to carry out the agenda on which he successfully ran for office.

Ironically, that poll supports the point being made by the others. Nevertheless, both the American left and right trade accusations about whose governance poses the greatest threat to American freedom, and their objectivity is legitimately questionable.

That’s why a research institute like the V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden is valuable. According to their website:

V-Dem provides a multidimensional and disaggregated dataset that reflects the complexity of the concept of democracy as a system of rule that goes beyond the simple presence of elections. We distinguish between five high-level principles of democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian, and collect data to measure these principles.

In short, “the simple presence of elections” is not the only indicator of true democracy. Russia has elections that almost no one believes are credible, and history tells us that following democratic electoral processes is not a bulwark against authoritarianism, as Hitler used the process to have himself appointed Chancellor, after which he dismantled the Weimar Republic and established a dictatorship. He made no secret of his intentions, either:

“We must hold our noses and enter the Reichstag (Parliament),” he told followers, “to procure for ourselves the weapons of democracy. We’ll play their game, get the power legally, and then wreck it!”

The V-Dem Institute’s annual report, along with its dataset and graphing tools, was recently made available to the public, and the results were telling: “Nearly a quarter of the world’s nations are going through democratic backsliding, or autocratization,” with the U.S. notably among them:

The U.S. democracy is currently in a much faster deterioration process than any other democracy in modern times. Within only one year, the USA’s score on the V-Dem Liberal Democracy index has declined by 24 percent, while its world rank dropped from 20th to 51st place out of 179 nations.

The press release cites the current administration “undercutting institutionalized checks and balances, politicizing civil service and oversight bodies, and intimidating the judiciary, alongside attacks on the press, academia, civil liberties, and dissenting voices” as reasons for America’s precipitous fall on the index.

Stefan Lindberg, who founded the V-Dem Institute in 2012 and grew it to become “the world’s leading source for analysis of the health of global democracy,” according to The Guardian, said the U.S. has essentially erased all the gains of the past 61 years, falling back to 1965 levels, the era when civil rights legislation was being enacted to end racial authoritarianism in America. He also noted the speed with which this backsliding has happened:

For Orbán in Hungary, it took about four years, for Vučić in Serbia, it took eight years, and for Erdoğan in Turkey and Modi in India, it took about 10 years to accomplish the suppression of democratic institutions that Trump has achieved in only one year.

The White House, of course, dismissed the report with its usual contempt for anyone who questions or criticizes it, but the institute is dedicated to reporting that is “100% scientific, research-driven,” and backed by 32 million data elements in what they say is “the largest global dataset on democracy,” dating back to 1789, “free from bias and state influence, from general punditry and political considerations.”

As if to add an exclamation point to the V-Dem findings, Freedom House, a U.S.-based democracy tracking firm, in their “Freedom in the World 2026” reports:

In the United States, an escalation in both legislative dysfunction and executive dominance, growing pressure on people’s ability to engage in free expression, and the new administration’s moves to undermine anticorruption safeguards all contributed to the negative score change. The United States lost 3 points on the report’s 100-point scale, bringing its net decline since 2005 to 12 points, more than any other country rated Free during the same period except for Nauru and Bulgaria.

It would seem that the preponderance of the evidence, both internally and externally, points in a particular direction. Abraham Lincoln famously said:

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Thus, we have come to this point, understanding that we live in a time of polarization and the threat of authoritarianism, unlike anything we have seen in recent decades. What are we to do with this understanding? How are we to know what to do?

This much I know: there were millions of people just like you and me living in the Weimar Republic of Germany who either didn’t understand the times or did and failed to respond to them.

Some of them were possibly overwhelmed by the sheer pace of their nation’s race to fascism, barely able to react to one atrocity before another came along.

Others may have tuned things out because of their mental health, finding it easier to take refuge in family, friends, community, anything other than what was happening in the world around them.

Some of them cheered what was happening because their pride was wounded and their position in society diminished in the wake of war and economic and cultural instability; they longed for Germany to return to its former glory.

Some didn’t take the threat seriously, mocking the Nazis and the “vulgar little corporal” who led them, and considered them a fringe element that would soon pass.

Some may have had burdens in their personal lives that consumed them, rendering them unable to respond to events beyond the trials they were experiencing.

But history rhymes, and I realize in the late autumn of my life that what has happened in the past, even in another part of the world, can happen here, to us, today.

Yes, my head spins at how rapidly we are descending, and it’s a challenge to keep up with the abuses of power, lies, corruption, and hatred emanating from Washington daily, if not by the hour.

Yes, I sometimes worry that taking in what’s happening could lead me to despair; as someone who has ADHD, endured clinical depression, and who my family thinks has a tendency toward anxiety, I have to be mindful of my mental health.

Yes, I once mocked Trump and his followers, and didn’t think they would survive because common sense and decency would eventually prevail.

Yes, my ability to respond to the times is made much more difficult as I navigate through a rare, chronic, and incurable autoimmune disorder that came unexpectedly at a moment when my overall health was the best it had been in years. At the same time, I am dealing with the loss of multiple immediate family members and a beloved pet, most of those losses coming in the past two years, and the compounded grief has made me emotionally numb and unsteady.

Nevertheless, history rhymes, and at the end of the day, I want my children and grandchildren to know that I understood the times in which we lived, prayed to the Lord for wisdom, and did what I could to share what I learned with others. Even if no one outside of my family reads the words I write, I want there to be a record that I tried to speak the truth and stand for the powerless against the powerful.

Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow. (Isaiah 1:17)

• Musings from my hospital bed

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Thanksgiving

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Advent

• Dispatch from the home healing front: A thorn in the flesh

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Every good and perfect gift

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Profound loss

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Weary and burdened

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Christmastide and new beginnings

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Resetting expectations

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Gearing up for 2026

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Hard pressed on every side

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Laments allowed

• Dispatch from the home healing front: But now I see

I had my first follow-up appointment with my neurologist this week, and there was positive news interspersed with the negative. I’ll lead with the latter and get it out of the way. I’ve gained 50 pounds in just over three months, and I’ve already shared my disappointment in losing so much ground after just over a year of significant weight loss. It’s not just about being slimmer and fitting into clothes I hadn’t worn in years, although those were exciting and motivating achievements. My overall health and quality of life had noticeably improved; for example, I could walk the dogs with my wife from start to finish without being so out of breath I couldn’t speak, and without my heart beating so hard, it felt like it was coming out of my chest. My arthritic joints didn’t ache, and I felt lighter on my feet.

I recognize that all of that is secondary when you’re dealing with a life-altering autoimmune disease, but as most of you know, losing weight is hard, and it gets harder with age and lessened activity. If my condition stabilizes, I’m going to try to lose the weight I’ve gained and regain the quality of life I had before.

So that was the negative news. The positives were meaningful after so many months of sobering medical reports. The primary indicator of ongoing muscular degeneration in necrotizing autoimmune myopathy is a creatine kinase (CK) blood test, which measures enzyme activity to detect muscle damage. A normal CK reading is 41 to 331 units per liter (U/L), although the normal range varies by race, gender, and other factors. When this number is abnormally high, it means enzymes are leaking into the bloodstream due to widespread muscle fiber necrosis (death). When I was first admitted to the hospital in October, it was a CK reading of 7,065 that set off alarm bells with the physicians responsible for my care, and the subsequent muscle biopsy confirmed the initial diagnosis of statin-induced necrotizing autoimmune myopathy (SINAM).

The good news is that my CK levels have been trending downward since they began my aggressive treatment regimen, and my latest two readings were 176 U/L and 92 U/L, both within the normal range. That means the muscle degeneration is dormant for now. There is always the risk of a relapse, so I can never say it’s gone for good. That’s not how this disease works.

I’m continuing to taper off the steroids with the objective of making the intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) treatments my primary means of long-term disease management. After they pumped me with 3,000 milligrams of IV methylprednisolone in the hospital, they put me on a 60 mg a day dosage of oral prednisone, and I’ve been tapering down from that. I am now at 30 mg a day, and next week, I go down to 25 mg a day. At 15 mg a day, I can stop taking Bactrim, the prophylactic antibiotic that protects me from catching a rare lung disease, pneumocystis pneumonia, to which immunocompromised patients like me are highly susceptible.

Bactrim is one of many medications I’m taking to counter the effects of prednisone on my body:

• Vitamin D and calcium — to prevent steroid‐induced osteoporosis

• Ramelteon — for steroid-induced insomnia

• Pantoprazole — to protect my stomach lining from the effects of high-dosage steroid use

The prospect of taking up to four medications off my plate once I’m no longer taking the steroids is a positive development all by itself. While the current tapering schedule has me off steroids by April 22nd, much depends on how quickly my adrenal glands awaken from their steroid-induced dormancy, as they haven’t needed to function due to the artificially ingested cortisol. That’s why my neurologist is tapering my dosages, because going “cold turkey” would be deadly if my adrenal glands are still asleep. The human body is nothing if not a fascinatingly complex organism, “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14), and the physicians God has entrusted with my care have a great deal of respect for the intricacies of His creation.

Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), the medicine my neurologist hopes will be my standard treatment going forward, is made from pooled and purified human plasma, containing healthy human antibodies from thousands of donors.

During my appointment last week, she was working up the courage to tell me that there was a strong possibility I could be on this treatment regimen for the rest of my life, and I finished the sentence for her, which seemed to give her a sense of relief. Having conducted extensive research on my condition, I am fully aware that maintaining control of my immune system will constitute a permanent and essential component of my ongoing healthcare management plan, and I have come to terms with this reality. She said she appreciated that I did my homework and had a good grasp of what was happening to me, because it made her job easier.

I thanked her for the compliment and asked how she knew so much about this rare autoimmune disorder. She said she has several patients who suffer from it, and when I asked how that could be, given its rarity, she said she chose to specialize in neuromuscular medicine, so patients diagnosed with it are sent to her. It is comforting to know I am in the hands of a specialist.

My present IVIG treatment plan has me receiving 120 grams of medicine every four weeks, spread out over two days. Each daily infusion of 60 grams, including pre-infusion and post-infusion activities, takes about six hours and is administered in my media room at home, where I live, work, and sleep.

Since IVIG is a specialty medication, it is made by an out-of-town pharmacy and shipped to my house the day before the first infusion, along with whatever medical supplies the home health care nurse will need.

My home health nurse is Heather, a registered nurse with extensive experience in emergency medicine, behavioral health, and IV therapy. She installs the IV catheter, takes blood samples for analysis to determine the effectiveness of the IVIG treatments, administers hydration and pre-medication (Benadryl and Tylenol) prior to the IVIG, and oversees the infusions in progress, taking my vitals every 30 minutes until the infusion is complete, and once more 10 minutes afterwards. We’ve spent a lot of time together, and she further solidifies my already high regard for nurses and the nursing profession.

There’s not a lot I can do during the six hours I’m hooked up to an IV bag, although I am allowed to disconnect for bathroom breaks! The Benadryl makes me drowsy, so I could nap much of the time, but the 30-minute vitals checks, which include temperature, pulse, blood oxygen saturation, and blood pressure measurements, don’t lend themselves to long snoozing.

For the most part, my job is to be still and receive the healthy antibodies, and to allow them to hopefully make me better.

Being still is not in our nature as human beings. We feel like we’re deficient, lazy, paralyzed, or unsure of ourselves if we’re not doing something. However, if my health journey has taught me anything, it’s that doing something can sometimes lead to catastrophe, and there are times in life where we just need to be still, be quiet, and let the Lord do His work.

I probably prolonged my hospital stay by insisting on going home when I wasn’t ready, only to end up back there two and a half days later, taking a fall that could have resulted in serious injury and frightening my wife and daughter, who tried to help me up and couldn’t. The humiliation of having first responders come to my home, pick me up off the floor, and load me into an ambulance to take me back to the hospital was enough to compel me to stop trying to force the situation to bend to my will, and to release myself to the capable hands of the caregivers the Lord assigned to me.

It was during that time of surrender that Jesus’ teaching on the vine and the branches came alive for me. Jesus is the vine, the source of nourishment and life for the branches attached to Him, those being His disciples. We are His disciples in the present day, so His words to the original disciples are as true for us as they were for them over 2,000 years ago.

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit — fruit that will last — and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other. (John 15:1–17)

Jesus’ words must have been so affirming to these people He chose to carry His message to the ends of the earth; he professed His love for them, a love as deep and lasting as the Father’s love for Him; He told them that He revealed all the lessons His Father taught Him to them; and He called them His friends. They probably didn’t understand the extent to which He would lay down His life for them, but they eventually came to know and give thanks for the amazing love and grace He showed them by dying on the cross for them — and us.

Note that the word “remain” is repeated several times in this passage of Scripture in the context of the disciples staying connected to Him. Some translations use the word “abide,” which means something different today, but in ancient times meant to “live” or “dwell.” The dictionary definition of “remain,” to “stay in the place that one has been occupying,” or “stay put,” is similar to the archaic definition of “abide.”

The metaphor of the vine and the branches has Jesus as the active conduit of the Lord’s love, provision, and power, and we, the branches, are to receive this divine nourishment by staying put — “abiding” or “remaining” in Him. There is no action on our part other than to be still and accept what the Lord gives us so we can be equipped and ready to bear fruit that will be visible to the world and point others to Him.

We have persuaded ourselves that our best posture in a chaotic and fast-changing world is to be “human doings” rather than “human beings.” I’m not trying to be cute with words here; far too often, we “human doings” define our worth by our productivity, or how well we perform relative to the field of endeavor we’re in. In contrast, a human being’s inherent worth lies in his or her mere existence. You are worthy because you are made in the image and likeness of God, and there is no higher valuation than that.

Can you find rest in the knowledge that nothing you do will either increase or diminish God’s love for you, that he “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4)? Can you “be still and know” that He is God (Psalm 46:10)? Can you abide — remain — in Him so He may abide in you?

When I’m sitting there for six hours a day, two days every four weeks, allowing life-saving medicine to flow into my veins, it’s easy for me to not only understand what Jesus means by abiding in Him as His disciples so we can be fruitful spiritually, but to apply that same lesson in a practical sense to my current medical condition. “Be still, Ron, and let the healing flow into you.” I don’t have to do anything but be there and stay connected to the source.

• Musings from my hospital bed

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Thanksgiving

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Advent

• Dispatch from the home healing front: A thorn in the flesh

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Every good and perfect gift

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Profound loss

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Weary and burdened

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Christmastide and new beginnings

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Resetting expectations

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Gearing up for 2026

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Hard pressed on every side

• Dispatch from the home healing front: Laments allowed

This may not seem funny to you, but I recently burst out laughing at the unwelcome changes my body is going through while taking prednisone as an immunosuppressant. I’ve described before that steroids are like a hammer to beat back an overly aggressive immune system. The problem is that, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and the side effects eventually outweigh the benefits. That is why my neurologist is tapering my steroid intake and shifting me to intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) treatments, which act as an immune system modulator rather than an immunosuppressant. It will take several months to a year to determine whether these treatments work.

In the meantime, I’m watching my body puff up like a sausage on the grill. A year ago, I’d lost 40 pounds and was still dropping weight, and I was more nimble on my feet and could perform simple chores without breaking a sweat. Now I can’t even walk to the garage and back without breathing heavily to the point of wheezing, and my heart racing.

Aside from the muscular degeneration and limited physical activity of the past few months due to my myopathy, I’ve regained a considerable amount of weight. I stopped stepping on scales at home, but I can’t avoid them at my doctor’s appointments, so I know I’ve gained back 34 of the 72 pounds I’d lost since July 2024. That’s highly discouraging.

I am also dealing with fluid retention in my body, and when I looked down at my calves this week and saw they were nearly as wide as my lower thighs, my first instinct was to laugh at how ridiculous I looked. Popeye the Sailor came to mind, except I don’t have spinach-derived super strength!

I’ve mentioned that my face is swollen also, a steroidal effect accurately described as “moon face,” and I see an old, fat man looking back at me from the same mirror that reflected my leaner, younger-looking self just a few months ago.

I suppose I laughed at my swollen legs because the alternative would have been to burst into tears. I am trying to be patient with the process because I understand the physiological changes happening to me and that it’s just the beginning of the journey. However, the intellectual grasp of my situation is competing with my emotional reaction to everything my body is going through, and I need to be careful that I don’t sink into depression, something I’ve battled with before in my life and never want to experience again.

I mentioned before that my eyesight has been deteriorating rapidly, and I learned that prednisone has an accelerating effect on existing cataracts and can also create new ones. I finally saw an optometrist on Monday, and she confirmed that my cataracts had expanded into the center of my field of vision in both eyes. She referred me to an ophthalmologist for a cataract surgery consultation, which is scheduled for the week after my neurological appointment. I assume they will recommend surgery because clouding of the central optical pathway can’t be corrected with a new eyeglass prescription. If that happens, they will do one eye at a time to ensure the best outcome.

It would be easy for me to let this weigh on me along with everything else, because, as my daughter-in-law told me in sympathy, it seems like I can’t catch a break. However, my research revealed something that actually excites me about the prospects of this surgery.

They are removing these cloudy lenses and replacing them with clear artificial lenses, and they can build the lenses based on my desired optical outcome. Since I spend most of my days in front of a computer screen and do a lot of smartphone viewing, I think I will opt for sharper near vision without glasses and sharper distance vision with glasses.

What really intrigued me, though, is that people who’ve had cataract surgery report not just sharper vision, but a brighter, more colorful world overall. Cataracts apparently create a haze over our vision that we don’t really recognize because the change is gradual and occurs over a long period. Now that I am aware that there could be a dramatic increase in the vibrancy and richness of everything I see, I’m looking forward to it.

The biblical analogies of this upcoming cataract surgery are numerous. There are so many stories and lessons about the state of our sight before and after Jesus that came to my mind after my research on cataract surgery.

The blind receiving sight is a central healing miracle of the Gospels, and it’s important to note that those afflicted by blindness have eyes but cannot see until Jesus removes the obstacles to their sight. The eighth chapter of Mark is particularly instructive because it speaks not only to physical blindness but also to spiritual blindness. Mark 8:22–25 tells the story of a man who was physically blind and healed by Jesus:

They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”

He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”

Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

One question that came to mind when I read this account is, “Why did he heal the man in two stages?” We know that Jesus can heal instantaneously, and there are numerous accounts in the Gospels of Him healing the blind, individually and, in some cases, in multitudes as they are brought to Him during His ministry. I was astonished to learn that Jesus was the first person in the Bible recorded as healing the blind, making this miracle unique to Him. After His resurrection and ascension, His disciples, through the power of the Holy Spirit, found themselves able to heal the blind as well. Many biblical scholars believe His association with healing the blind reflects His divine posture as “the light of the world,” bringing clarity and truth to a world blinded by sin and lies.

In the case of the blind man that Jesus healed in two steps, the passages that precede this miracle could shed some light on why He did what He did:

The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. “Be careful,” Jesus warned them. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.”

They discussed this with one another and said, “It is because we have no bread.”

Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

“Twelve,” they replied.

“And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

They answered, “Seven.”

He said to them, “Do you still not understand?” (Mark 8:14–21)

I chuckled as I pictured Jesus’ exasperated tone with the disciples. The “yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod” is the insistence that Jesus prove Himself to be who He claims to be through “signs and wonders” — “Do a magic trick, Jesus!”

However, the disciples missed the point and began discussing that they didn’t have enough bread. That’s not what Jesus was getting at. He goes on to admonish them for having witnessed His feeding of the five thousand and the four thousand, and the overflow of abundance from those miracles, yet still not understanding that, with Jesus, they don’t have to worry about bread. In a way, He was illustrating that even “signs and wonders” didn’t penetrate their limited perspective and way of thinking. He mentioned the attitude of the Pharisees and Herodians as if He knew where the conversation would go, and they did just as He expected.

With that as the context for His encounter with the blind man, some scholars say his two-stage healing was to illustrate to the disciples their own limited understanding, the first stage of healing, where people “look like trees walking around,” and the second stage of healing, where their eyes are open, their sight restored, and they can see clearly. The Gospels often show that the disciples didn’t understand Jesus’ mission until after He completed it, and once the Holy Spirit came upon them, they had absolute clarity.

Paul speaks in one of his letters to the church at Corinth of not seeing clearly now but looking forward to being able to do so in the future: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Simply put, our understanding is limited now, but once we are face to face with Jesus, we shall “know fully” as he fully knows us. In some respects, Paul is describing his own journey from persecutor of Christians to the faith’s greatest evangelist; he saw dimly until He encountered Jesus face to face, and even then, went through a time of sightlessness until Jesus directed Ananias to go to him:

Now there was a certain disciple at Damascus named Ananias; and to him the Lord said in a vision, “Ananias.”

And he said, “Here I am, Lord.”

So the Lord said to him, “Arise and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus, for behold, he is praying. And in a vision he has seen a man named Ananias coming in and putting his hand on him, so that he might receive his sight.”

Then Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he has done to Your saints in Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name.”

But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake.”

And Ananias went his way and entered the house; and laying his hands on him he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you came, has sent me that you may receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he received his sight at once; and he arose and was baptized. (Acts 9:10–17)

“There fell from his eyes something like scales.” Paul’s spiritual condition resonates with me in ways it didn’t before as I contemplate the physical condition of my eyes, and I anticipate the vividness and clarity to come.

How long have I been literally seeing the world “in a mirror dimly,” and what will I see when “something like scales” are removed from my eyes? And does this experience hold a spiritual lesson for me?

I’m excited about the world I’ll see after my surgery. However, even that pales in comparison to the world we will see as Jesus heals our sight, and we can see Him fully. As the old saying goes, that will be a sight for sore eyes.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

Besides, it’s a healthy thing to be self-aware, and it just took one look at the dictionary definition to confirm it was an accurate description of a central aspect of my personality - “a person who is extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable about a particular subject, especially one of specialist or niche interest.” I prefer that to “an unfashionable person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious,” but I can occasionally be “unfashionable” and “boringly studious” at times, too!

I’ve occasionally let my nerd flag fly, usually by sharing my passion for the tech gear that populates my home office. However, another of my “niche interests” is live-action superhero movies and television shows. I was an avid reader of many books while growing up. Still, I also loved comic book characters, especially those with superpowers or exceptional skills, who fought in the name of “truth, justice, and the American way.” Watching these amazing beings come to life on the big or small screen captured my imagination, and I’ve probably watched most of these depictions, no matter how good or bad others said they were.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize that the writers and artists who created many of the superheroes I enjoyed did so with a specific purpose: to uplift marginalized people and to provide representation for those the majority of society often overlooked or dismissed. For example, the two men who created Superman were sons of Jewish immigrants. Superman’s status as a stranger from another world who was sent to Earth, specifically the heartland of America, to escape the destruction of his home planet and make a new home and a life for himself, made him relatable to immigrants across the nation. One of the recurring storylines in Superman’s mythology is the antagonism between him and his arch-enemy, Lex Luthor, whose attitude toward Superman can best be described as xenophobic. The X-Men are mutants vilified by humanity for being different, and their story draws on civil rights movements around the globe, where minorities strive to be accepted as equals.

Although I consider myself more of a Batman fan than a Superman fan, I enjoy watching both characters in live-action adaptations. I keep up with movies and shows from DC Studios and Marvel Studios, the production studios of the two major comic book publishers, DC Comics and Marvel Comics. I don’t read the comics anymore, which is probably why I’m more tolerant of the live-screen adaptations of superheroes than the dedicated nerds who can spot inconsistencies between the source material and the onscreen depictions in an instant. That actually makes it easier for me to be entertained by these films and shows; I’m not watching with preconceived notions, and if I’m interested, I will go back and research the history of the characters I’ve just met onscreen.

One of my favorite Marvel TV series was Ms. Marvel, featuring Canadian actor Iman Vellani, herself a major comic book nerd. She got to play one of her heroes, Kamala Khan, the first Muslim superhero to headline a Marvel Comics title. While I enjoyed her charismatic, delightful take on a character I didn’t know much about before the TV series, I was also struck by the window this show opened onto a culture I had never seen before. Kamala is a typical nerdy high school girl from Jersey City, New Jersey, but she is also a Pakistani-American with a family steeped in the traditions of their homeland and religion. She would go from school to her room, filled with typical teenage-girl decor, plus lots of posters and pictures of Captain Marvel, her favorite superhero, and then to the local mosque, where she seamlessly slipped into the customs of her culture and faith. I marveled —pardon the pun!—at how effortlessly she navigated her life as a whole person. She blended seamlessly into American culture while also feeling completely at home in her parents’ world and the Muslim-American diaspora.

I even learned a little about Pakistan’s history from watching the show. While I was aware of the partition of India into what are now the nations of India and Pakistan, I didn’t realize how violent it was, how many millions of people it displaced, and how many people were killed, or lost and never found. A time-travel episode that placed Kamala in the middle of the chaos of The Partition was educational and revealing.

Kamala’s family came to the United States in search of a better life, and they not only found their place in American society but also added the richness of their culture and history to ours. When the show ended, I told my daughter how it showcased what America represents at its best. Few countries in the world allow someone to be regarded as a full citizen by embracing the ideals of the nation’s founding, while also preserving their cultural uniqueness and contributing to the nation’s diverse fabric. Moreover, I felt enriched by learning about the people of Pakistan and what they brought to America, adding their cultural distinctiveness to the American story without being erased, as if the Borg assimilated them. Star Trek nerds, you know what I’m talking about!

One of the questions I raised in a class I taught at Liberty University for over ten years was whether America was a “melting pot” or a “tossed salad” regarding race and immigration. I refined the question over the years, and when I left, this is how I framed it:

Is America a melting pot where people from all over the world come to these shores and melt into something that is uniquely American or is it a salad where people don’t change who they are but mix in with others who keep their own cultural heritage? In light of past issues with racism and immigration, which statement is most relevant today? Should our objective be to erase individual and collective diversity for some amalgamation called “American”? How does one define “American” and who defines it? Is there a path forward where people can retain the unique individuals and cultures God created and still come together as a nation?

Most of my students answered “salad” while wishing it were the “melting pot” they were raised to believe in. A 1908 play, The Melting Pot, written by British author Israel Zangwill, himself the son of Russian Jews who had immigrated to Great Britain, popularized the phrase. A line in the play encapsulates its theme: “America is God’s crucible, the great melting-pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!”

Conservative American classicist Dr. Bruce Thornton captured the essence of America as a melting pot when he wrote:

This image, then, communicated the historically exceptional notion of American identity as one formed not by the accidents of blood, sect, or race, but by the unifying beliefs and political ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution: the notion of individual, inalienable human rights that transcend group identity. Of course, over the centuries this ideal was violated in American history by racism, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and other ignorant prejudices. But in time laws and social mores changed, making the United States today the most inclusive and tolerant nation in the world, the destination of choice for millions desiring greater freedom and opportunity.

Dr. Thornton also indicated that immigrants had to make concessions to become part of the “melting pot,” to include surrendering the ways of their old homelands:

Of course, this process of assimilation also entailed costs and sacrifice. Having voted with his feet for the superiority of America, the immigrant was required to become American: to learn the language, history, political principles, and civic customs that identified one as an American. This demand was necessarily in conflict with the immigrants’ old culture and its values, and, at times, led to a painful loss of old ways and customs. But how immigrants negotiated the conflicts and trade-offs between their new and old identities was up to them. Moreover, they remained free in civil society to celebrate and retain those cultures through fraternal organizations, ethnic festivals, language schools, and religious guilds.

Ultimately, though, they had to make their first loyalty to America and its ideals. If some custom, value, or belief from the old country conflicted with those core American values, then the old way had to be modified or discarded if the immigrant wanted to participate fully in American social, economic, and political life. The immigrant had to adjust. No one expected the majority culture to modify its values to accommodate the immigrant; this would have been impossible, at any rate, because there were so many immigrants from so many lands that it would have fragmented American culture. No matter the costs, assimilation was the only way to forge an unum from so many pluribus.

E pluribus unum - “Out of many, one.” The traditional motto of the United States reflects our aspiration from the beginning to be a nation where many different people come together as one. Americans are exceptional myth-makers; we have promoted ourselves as “a nation of immigrants,” and we point with pride to the words inscribed on the tablets held by Lady Liberty in New York Harbor, taken from the poem, “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus:

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

George Washington, in a letter to a refugee from the Netherlands, wrote, “I had always hoped that this land might become a safe & agreeable Asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.”

However, as Dr. Thornton noted, our proud claim of being “a nation of immigrants” comes with a complicated and uneven history. Immigrant groups that have found success in America often try to close the doors behind them, preventing other immigrants from seeking the same opportunities they once sought—an escape from persecution, political turmoil, or poverty and a chance to start anew in a land that promises freedom and opportunity.

After the initial white European settlers - the English, Scots-Irish, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Swedes, Finns, Norwegian, and Danes - colonized what is now the United States of America, subsequent waves of white European immigrants, most notably from Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe, encountered social hostility, religious discrimination, and even violence. However, they were eventually accepted within a generation or two through gradual economic integration, intermarriage, and the assimilation process Dr. Thornton described previously as the price of admission. And they were white, which, as you’ll find out, was far from a minor detail.

Immigrants of color faced a vastly different reality. Excluding Africans who were brought here against their will and enslaved, then later freed but still forced into second-class citizenship under Jim Crow laws, racial segregation, and domestic terror marked by lynchings, the Ku Klux Klan, and the destruction of entire Black communities during race riots, immigrants from Asia encountered discrimination written into law. This codification included measures like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1924, the National Origins Act of 1924, and President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which led to the forced relocation and incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans—an act the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 later acknowledged was motivated by “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.”

Migrants from Mexico were caught up in the wax and wane of American labor requirements, granted legal status to work in the U.S. under one program, and deported back to Mexico under another. Even Americans of Mexican descent were snared in the dragnet created by anti-Mexican hysteria over scarce jobs and federal benefits from the New Deal that gripped the nation during the Great Depression, and several U.S. citizens were “repatriated” to Mexico, even though they weren’t born there.

According to historian Francisco Balderrama, the U.S. deported over 1 million Mexican nationals, 60 percent of whom were U.S. citizens of Mexican descent, during the 1930s. Balderrama toldFresh Air’s Terry Gross that the program was referred to as “repatriation” to give it the sense of being voluntary. In reality, though, it was anything but. (The Largest Mass Deportation in American History, by Erin Blakemore, History.com)

In the 1950s, with President Eisenhower’s blessing, the Border Patrol began Operation Wetback, using the racial epithet describing Mexicans who entered the United States illegally as the official designation of the paramilitary-style campaign to remove Mexicans from the United States. While the U.S. had a formal agreement with Mexico that allowed migrant workers into the country, employers who didn’t want to follow the rules on pay and benefits used illegal immigrants to pay less and undercut competitors. This situation eventually reached a breaking point, and the head of the Border Patrol, Harlon B. Carter, who later became a transformative head of the National Rifle Association, was personally frustrated with the number of Mexican immigrants in the U.S., regardless of their legal status, and he persuaded President Eisenhower to authorize Operation Wetback. He also enlisted the help of Mexican authorities, who had lost so many agricultural workers to the U.S. that they faced an acute labor shortage and wanted them back.

What we’re seeing in America today reflects the echoes of our history—racism and xenophobia, fueled by fears of cultural and economic decline, have empowered government authorities to enforce immigration bans on certain countries, halt all refugee admissions, strip refugee status from immigrants already here who are fleeing violence, and target and deport people based on race or ethnicity, using military tactics as if immigrants of color are enemy combatants.

Meanwhile, the president of the United States openly pines for immigrants from Norway rather than Haiti or African nations, declares third-world nations to be “s***hole” countries, and disparages entire non-white people groups like Mexicans and Somalians as criminals, even though the overwhelming majority of them have never been charged with a crime. He says immigrants from “South America,” “from Africa, from Asia, all over the world” are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Moreover, he makes one exception to U.S. refugee policy, inviting white South Africans as “refugees” from “genocide,” a claim the South African government and international observers have deemed completely unfounded.

Reporter and author John Blake made similar observations in the wake of the brutal ICE immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, and defines the true motivations behind Trump's mass deportation initiative:

But the events in Minneapolis have forced many White Americans to confront another possibility: Excluding racial and ethnic minorities is central to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

Trump has pushed to end birthright citizenship, the constitutional guarantee of citizenship to any child born on US soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status — a change that would disproportionately impact people from Asian and Latin American countries.

He’s also banned travel to the US from many majority-Black countries while fast-tracking the resettling of White Afrikaners from South Africa. He recently said, “Somalia stinks and we don’t want them in our country,” but has openly wished more “nice people” would emigrate to the US from Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

We are even lecturing European nations about how they are losing their identity to mass migration from non-white countries, and demanding that they stem the tide to help their cultures “heal” and reclaim their “heritage,” namely their white, Western, Christian identity.

The phrase “heritage American” has taken hold in our political lexicon, and I could do an entire article on how that phrase masks the racism, xenophobia, and even anti-Semitism and misogyny of today’s American white supremacist movement.

Even Dr. Thornton, whom I quoted previously, decried the loss of a shared American identity as far back as 2012, when he attacked “multiculturalism” as a philosophy that “idealizes immigrant cultures and ignores their various dysfunctional practices and values.” As a result, in his opinion, “the common identity shaped by the Constitution, the English language, and the history, mores, and heroes of America gives way to multifarious, increasingly fragmented micro-identities.” Back then, he at least tried to hide his biases behind academic language; now, a glance at his recent work shows he’s dropped any pretense of scholarship and aligned himself with the MAGA crowd, dehumanizing and belittling his opponents while proclaiming his own side as virtuous and beyond reproach.

As Solomon wrote roughly 3,000 years ago, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

I have said before that my objective in writing about the world, whether my own or the wider world before me, is to “think Christianly” about what I see happening in our nation and the world.

I want to be like Jesus, which should be the goal of every disciple of Christ: “Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did” (1 John 2:6). Therefore, I want to do what Jesus did. Being like Jesus is the motivation behind the “WWJD” movement - “What would Jesus do?” - but I contend that WWJD isn’t enough because we human beings have had a tendency, when asking ourselves what Jesus would do, to ascribe our own desires to the Savior. I made this comment last year in response to a fellow sojourner in Christ who had grown weary of people saying and doing heinous things in the name of Jesus:

I want to address the question of WDJD - what did Jesus do? WWJD - what would Jesus do? - didn’t seem to work so well, since millions of us think Jesus would be riding along with ICE agents, wearing a balaclava or neck gaiter while ripping hard-working, non-threatening immigrants from their homes, scheduled immigration hearings, or off the streets while their children plead with Him to let their parents go.

Or maybe millions of them think Jesus would be a condescending, contemptuous jerk of a public spokesperson while wearing a cross around His neck, choosing to let all kinds of unwholesome talk come out of His mouth.

Or maybe Jesus would literally tell more than half of the American nation that He hates them and wishes them ill, and commands His followers to do the same.

No, WWJD failed as a mass movement to make us more like Christ. His words and actions are no secret, and haven’t been for centuries. Let’s examine what Jesus actually did, eschewing the presumption that He would do what we want Him to do, and imitate Christ as he actually lived.

I want to write that piece urgently, but my health makes it challenging because I am more fatigued and less clear-headed than I want to be when I tackle such a weighty topic. Please pray that the Holy Spirit gives me the strength and clarity to put what I feel the Lord is laying on my heart into words.

Clearly, the world has proven incapable of solving the immigration issue because nationalism breeds partiality (James 2:9), hatred toward those they designate as enemies (Matthew 5:43), and enmity toward people who are not like them (John 4:9). Regrettably, the Church, meaning the global body of believers in Jesus Christ, hasn’t brought any clarity to the situation.

Some Christians believe national borders are lines drawn in the Earth by the finger of God Himself, and that these boundaries are to be aggressively defended as if the nation’s standing before God depended on them. This mindset has led to some of the most sacrilegious recruiting campaigns I’ve ever witnessed, equating the militaristic actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) against immigrants with the “peacemakers” that Jesus called “blessed” in the Beattitudes for seeking peace, harmony, and reconciliation (Matthew 5:9), or with the prophetic call to serve that God gave to Isaiah (Isaiah 6:8). Brian Kaylor, a Baptist minister with Ph.D. in political communication, has followed the devolution of American Christianity into a tool of the state quite extensively, and if you want to see for yourself how the DOJ, DHS, and DoD are misrepresenting the Scriptures to fit their own agenda, check out his work. Peter Wehner at The Atlantic also chronicles this shameless recruitment campaign in his article about “MAGA Jesus.”

What’s striking is less that the federal government is using Bible verses in its promotional videos than that the agency doing the recruiting is Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The videos, set to music, include militaristic images. They show heavily armed agents in tactical gear, weapons drawn, donning masks, looking through night-vision goggles, zip-lining from helicopters, breaking down doors, and conducting nighttime raids.

The message the Trump administration is sending is not subtle: ICE is doing the work of God. The brutal and sometimes lethal tactics being used by a growing number of ICE agents are divinely sanctioned. Come join this holy campaign.

Leni Riefenstahl would have approved.

The Leni Riefenstahl reference is notable, since observers have drawn strong parallels between the official messaging of the current administration and that of Nazi Germany:

The U.S. Labor Department is embracing Nazi slogans and tropes, the Pentagon’s research office is deploying neo-Nazi graphic elements in its social-media feeds, and the Department of Homeland Security recently posted lyrics mimicking a popular song by a band with ties to an ethno-nationalist social club.

The official social-media channels of the Trump administration have become unrelenting streams of xenophobic and Nazi-coded messages and imagery. The leaders of these departments so far refuse to answer questions about their social-media strategies, but the trend is impossible to miss: Across the federal government, officials are advocating for a radical new understanding of the American idea, one rooted not in the vision of the Founders, but in the ideologies of European fascists.

Other Christians are powerfully persuaded of Jesus’ love for “strangers,” a word which, in both the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New, equates to “foreigner,” “sojourner,” or “alien,” indicating a non-national residing in a land, a traveler, or an outsider. A bishop of the Episcopal Church, Rob Hirschfeld of New Hampshire, caused quite a stir when he said the clergy should be prepared for “a new era of martyrdom” in defense of immigrants against the government:

"I've asked them to get their affairs in order to make sure they have their wills written,…because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable."

Some took issue with his statement, saying that Christians should be about de-escalating tensions rather than seeking them out. Rev. Hirschfeld said he wasn’t inviting conflict, but said that, in the tradition of the disciples, he was foretelling the probability of the world reacting in anger to their Christian witness on behalf of the marginalized:

“What I said to the clergy (was) ‘I’m just asking you to live your life without fear of death. Be prepared. I’m not asking you to go look for that bullet,’” He said. “I’m simply saying be ready, have your affairs in order, have your soul ready, in case you find yourself in trouble.”

It’s a sobering thought; I don’t know where Renee Good or Alex Pretti stood in their beliefs, and there are plenty of people who think they know, but only they and the Lord truly know. However, I can’t imagine that either of them believed that their acts of protest would lead to their deaths. Rev. Hirschfeld reminds us that the Christian life demands that we deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus, however heavy that cross may be and wherever Jesus leads us, and that, sometimes, it leads to our demise on this side of eternity, as most of Jesus’ first disciples showed us.

Incidentally, the government’s response to his statement was predictable, painting the ICE agents as the vulnerable ones needing the clergy’s cover. They continuously cite the dramatic increase in threats to agents who are just doing their jobs, without acknowledging that they instigated the hostility toward them with their aggressive, bullying, and often illegal tactics.

Before this administration came to power, President Obama used the government’s law enforcement agencies, including ICE, to deport more undocumented immigrants than any other president before or since. However, he adhered to the rule of law and ensured that all immigrants received due process, as guaranteed by the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in the Bill of Rights. He prioritized the deportation of non-citizens with criminal records, and he expected law enforcement officers to conduct themselves appropriately in the field, or they were held accountable if they didn’t.

They weren’t wearing masks to hide their faces; smashing car windows, or breaking down the doors of people’s homes, and dragging them away; grabbing people off the streets who posed no threat to anyone’s well-being; challenging people of a particular race or ethnicity to prove their citizenship on the spot or be arrested; or gunning down people exercising their right to protest these jackbooted tactics. If ICE conducted itself in accordance with the law and police procedure, I am confident there would be far fewer threats against them. Those who, by the authority of the government, bear the sword have a high standard to uphold in a democratic republic that rules at the consent of the governed, and these roving bands of masked, armed people are the closest America has come to the secret police of authoritarian regimes in other parts of the world.

The other predictable government response is that those who question ICE or the administration’s immigration crackdown are on the side of violent criminals, when nothing could be further from the truth. There is a broad consensus on deporting convicted criminals from this country. However, DHS’s own records show that most people detained and deported had no criminal record, and even then, those accused of crimes are entitled by law to a day in court. That precedent was upheld by a Supreme Court whose most conservative associate Justice, the late Antonin Scalia, declared unequivocally when writing the majority opinion in Reno v. Flores, “It is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.” The rule of law exists to protect everyone from government overreach, and it is this administration’s disregard for that principle that draws opposition, not the offensive claim that Americans are seeking to harbor “the worst of the worst,” to use the administration’s parlance. I prefer to believe these spokespersons are aware of this and are merely hurling insults to satisfy their boss, President Trump, but I have an unsettling suspicion that I might be giving them too much credit.

So what is a committed Christian to do when you have believers on both sides of this contentious issue? I would start by asking whether our immigration policy and its execution respect the Imago Dei in all humankind. Jesus said that “all the Law and the Prophets” depend on loving God with all our being and our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:40), and the apostle John says:

Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. (1 John 4:20-21)

So, if human beings are not being treated with dignity, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done, that is not the way of Christ. A president who has called immigrants of color “scum,” “animals,” “savages,” or “vermin” who "pour into and infest our country" doesn’t see them as human beings, and far too many Christ-followers have given him permission with their support to dehumanize people made in God’s image.

But what if they’ve done bad things? I realized something in reading how Jesus equated our treatment of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the unclothed, the sick, and the prisoner - “the least of these” - with how we treat Him. Note that he never qualifies His command to show compassion and care for the prisoner - he doesn’t say that they are worthy only if they are unjustly or mistakenly imprisoned, or in some other way undeserving of their incarceration. The prisoner could very well have done something to deserve punishment, much like the men who hung on their crosses next to Jesus:

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:39-43)

When Jesus asks us to care for the prisoner, He makes no reference to how they came to be imprisoned, which would probably be foremost on most people's minds as we look for reasons to dismiss or disregard them. However, “love keeps no record of wrongs” (1 Corinthians 13:5). Jesus, quite simply, refuses to strip the prisoner of his God-given dignity because society demands it.

From His perspective, we are all prisoners metaphorically to sin, yet He visited us and showed us love and grace, ultimately sacrificing Himself for us to free us from captivity. He expects no less from us toward others in bondage, figuratively or literally.

The Scriptures on how we are to treat foreigners in our land are well documented (Exodus 22:21; Leviticus 19:33-34; Deuteronomy 10:19; Matthew 25:35; Hebrews 13:2) and have been shared so often that no American Christian is unaware of them. Those who know these commands and still choose to be belligerent toward immigrants are trying to serve two masters, which Jesus said is impossible (Matthew 6:24); how they reconcile this conflict is a matter between themselves and a just and righteous God.

Jesus reminds us that we, too, are exiles in a foreign land, men and women set apart by God to be His ambassadors in a world that no longer reflects who we are in Christ. We share a common identity with fellow believers in other nations, and that identity should be the central organizing principle of our lives, transcending man-made agendas and barriers. Moreover, as exiles, we are at the mercy of the nations where the Lord has placed us, and while we are fortunate as Americans to be in the majority and to have more religious liberty than any other nation on the planet, feeble claims of “persecution” notwithstanding, we observe and speak out against the maltreatment of our brothers and sisters in other lands. We should show the strangers in our midst the same mercy and love we have for our fellow Christians in other lands, because that is how Jesus becomes real to them, how disciples are made, and how we want the world to treat us. Besides, it is what the Lord commands, and that should be more than enough.

“But open borders…!”, some Christians will stammer, and they will use border security as an excuse to defend the most egregious acts against immigrants, even those who are faithful followers of Jesus Christ and thought they’d find a home in this “Christian nation.” There is nothing inherently wrong with borders; even the Lord used borders to set His people apart and establish order and safety within their boundaries. Acts 17:26 says, “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.”

However, when Jesus came to establish His Kingdom, He made it clear that it was not of this world and extended beyond the borders of Israel and the Roman Empire, and “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). At the end of days, heaven will be the most diverse place in history, and for those who spent their lives promoting the “paradise” of a homogenous homeland without the scourge of non-white, non-English speaking, non-Western cultured people, the prophecy in Revelation may seem more like hell than heaven to them.

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”(Revelation 7:9-10)