An Apology

The tongue is the deadliest of all blunt instruments.

“Remember, you must never use your position to lord it over the people. Instead, you must humble yourself and earn their respect through your own quiet faith and the power of the Holy Spirit. The missionary must seek nothing for himself, no seat of honor or hope of fame. Like the cabhorse in London, each of you must wear blinkers that blind you to every danger and to every snare and conceit. You must be content to suffer, to die, and to be forgotten.”
― Nikolaus Zinzendorf

It's raining here in Colorado, and there isn’t enough gratitude we could have for it. It was an abnormal winter, with snow in short supply, and our reservoirs in desperate need of replenishment. But I must admit, it is adding to my melancholy today. On Saturday, in what can only be described as an impatient and ill-thought-out post, I let my own shallowness and sinfulness get the better of me. I had spent the week with a lot of young people who were lamenting the moment they found themselves in, and something about their parade of frustrations got to me, and made me look to the wrong places to point my anger. My kids are all leaving for other parts of the country for college this fall, and as I look at my horizon, I likely spend too much time in self-pity about the changes coming that I have little interest in being a part of. All of it combined into a post that took my frustrations out on the wrong things, and it was overly negative about what we all are facing. In reality, we live in a country where our mistakes and even our lashing out can be said with little fear of recourse — and that is amazing. So, even in my weakest moments, I will not find myself in prison for lashing out against a government or its foundations. I find myself frustrated with the current iteration of government in the United States. I want people to understand the depth of the Declaration, how profound a shift it is in human history, and why we should be calling people into a space of understanding it. Jefferson’s words changed everything for mankind. I want people to know and love the form of government that the Constitution helped establish. No other form has ever given people as much opportunity to flourish under self-governance as the one those men put to paper in the late 1700s. I want people to demand that our leaders live by the wisdom of both documents and stand firm in the principles they establish. When our government doesn’t, sometimes it’s easy to think that tossing it all out and starting over is best. Especially when it seems apparent that the men and women of the Potomac have long ago abandoned what was established as the rules for a robust and flourishing society. It is easy to get angry at them for cheating us out of something we know could be better, and to blame the system for failing to protect us from the criminals in Washington.

When I see our debt and our strange relationship to war or realignment of global interests, I get discouraged that we are too far from the founding principles to ever return to them. When I hear the heartbreak in the voices of our youth, it’s easy to tear things down and get angry. To point at anything that looks like Washington and rip it apart. I stand by the fact that what we have in Washington is nothing like what the documents say it should be, that the government that rules over us is only a husk of what it should be.

On Saturday, I blasted the documents and the country for failing to meet the needs of our youth. At the end of the day, though, it isn't the documents that are flawed; it’s us, the citizens, who choose not to look more deeply at them and hold the leaders accountable for failing to follow them. It is because we, as Americans, don’t even know what they say or why it matters. We probably couldn’t tell the 4th ammendment from Article 4 if we’re honest with ourselves, and that leaves us unable to ask the leaders to live by them because we don’t know them well enough to keep account of their abuses. We don’t understand the principles of the Declaration. We can barely remember the preamble, let alone the richness of its theological underpinnings, or its wholesale realignment of mankind to rulership. So we fight in the theater realm, the shallow pool of political pettiness, because we can’t engage in anything else. That failing is on us, and it’s especially on me when I let anger overrun my own capacity for logic.

I don’t like what is going on in some of these congressional races, and I'm really bothered by how much power national congressional battles are given. The people of Kentucky should be worried about Thomas Massie, not the people of California or New Mexico. By all accounts, though, the problem is not with the system; it is with us. We are the ones who lack the moral accountability to sustain the republic that the founders drafted and put in place. We fail to see that the framework they created, we have a duty to uphold. My lashing out and blaming other generations, or bad politicians, for the flaws of the Constitution were misplaced. I attacked the wrong thing and used language that caused people to doubt that this country is as good as it is.

The good news about recognizing my mistake is that it means there are truths beyond myself, and, thankfully, that means there are opportunities to fix our situation if we allow ourselves to lean into the fundamentals at the core of America. Beneath all of this is the call to become more than just political hacks who argue on the surface about the details. We can actually ask the deeper questions about what makes a republic possible, and what we can do to fix it.

I love the quote at the top of this piece because it reminds me that my job is not to proselytize about a political party or a politician, but for the gospel. My time on earth is closer to the end than it is to the beginning, and it seems a grave error to spend it on anything other than the good news of Jesus. I have been a reluctant participant in a deeper personal faith. It is always easier to fixate on the temporary and to placate spiritual hollowness with light and inconsequential actions. This politician is the problem, or this fundamental is why we have a broken democracy, etc. But beneath all of that stuff, which is much easier to talk about, is the need for my own repentance and belief that the God of this universe has something much more in store for all of us than whether or not the income tax is ever eliminated, or the Strait of Hormuz is opened up in June, or we end up in World War 3. I fixate on those things because they scare me, and it's easier to talk about than my own spiritual depravity. Those dramatic scenes on our glass pocket portals toy with the worst of my soul. Each new reel or piece of breaking news begs me to spend my time on those things rather than the good news of Jesus. Fear always leads to unnecessary destruction and ultimately to isolation. There may be no better example than the culture we currently find ourselves in. That magnetic draw to fear will never benefit the republic, or my friends, my parents, or my children.

The truth of the moment is that without Him, it matters not what the policy from Washington is. The government is too big, but we are the only ones who can fix it. It won’t be at the ballot box either. It will come when we repent and decide that our morality is surrenderable to the greater truth of the universe, and that forgiveness and kindness, and a love of justice are more important than temporary financial gain or the love of power that helps us bludgeon other citizens. If we were somehow able to do that, the Declaration and the Constitution would once again come to life in the hearts of the citizens, and we might have the chance to live upon a plain of liberty.

I messed up in my placement of ire. It isn’t America that needs attacking; it is the morality we have so comfortably surrendered to the faux-religion of government. In my own desire to see something fixed, I forgot the fundamental principle of living a good life, which is to take the plank from my own eye before I call out my neighbor for their speck.

I don’t think it's helpful to engage in the political theater we're currently in. Instead, over time, my writings and the content on this site will reflect a deeper dedication to sharing the good news of a life lived under the grace and goodness of God. My children need a better example than a negative spiraling about the pitfalls of power. They need to see a man who loves his neighbor and his enemies more than he loves a like or a comment on a Substack post. I don’t ever need to be famous for my political commentary. I am a no one in this conversation. Which, as I have recognized this weekend, I am deeply thankful for.

I am hopeful to have the chance to read the Declaration together and break it down. My dad has done that for decades now with me and countless others in our community, and it has given many of us a depth of understanding about it that I am forever grateful for. It has helped me recognize when things are off course in our politics, and in my own thinking about a life of liberty.

I also want to talk with you about the parables in the gospels. Look deeply into the words of Jesus about what the divine saw in the human experience, and shared with us about the kingdom of God. It will be a much better use of all of our time than to sit around complaining and berating a country that has given me too much to count.

I will still advocate for the right things in politics, but it will be tempered by something much deeper than the temporal needs of comfort, government behaviors, or financial success. The country needs a great awakening again about what it means to surrender our own successes and elevated statuses to the greater morality of Christ.

My apologies again - sincerely.