On Our Fascist Rulers

 Donald Trump, the convicted felon fascist guilty of sedition against this country, in thrall to his uber-fascist advisor Stephen Miller, has set out to deport every "illegal" in this country. Never mind that doing so would bring American agriculture to its knees. Never mind that doing so would bring the American construction industry to its knees. They ignore, or deny, the truth that our contemptible immigration laws are in place not to continue the American tradition of welcoming people from other parts of the country who come here seeking a better life but to bar the gates and keep what is "ours" ours, the rest of the world be damned. Never mind that everyone who is here without proper documentation is still constitutionally entitled to due process of law. Never mind that no president has ever nationalized the National Guard for the purpose of suppressing people's constitutional rights, both those the ICE detains and those who protest ICE's unconstitutional actions and has done so without the consent of the governor of the state in which the president has nationalized the Guard. (Kennedy did it without the consent of racist southern governors to protect civil rights not to enforce violation of them.) 

How are we to understand what's happening in our country? Here's how. Look at what Hitler did toward Germany's Jews right after he came to power in early 1933. There were actually very few Jews living in Germany. They were not the cause of any of Germany's problems. Yes, some of them were successful in business, academics, the arts, and other areas of human endeavor, but that was a good thing not a bad one, for these good people had found ways to use their abilities for their own good and for the good of their country. 

Now, translate what Hitler did into an American context. Trump surely knows that using the Jews for his fascist purposes wouldn't work in this country. But using immigrants in the same way just might. It is, after all, true that there are a lot of people present in this country without proper immigration documentation. It is also true that a great many of them are people of color whose native language is not English. Attacking "illegals" plays into American racism and xenophobia. Those great sins of American culture will assist Trump in his effort to because an authoritarian fascist ruler. Trump hasn't actually enacted new laws against America's immigrants the way Hitler did against Germany's Jews, but he hasn't had to. He can use the bad law we've got, and he can ignore and violate the good, constitutional law we've got, to accomplish what he wants basically with the law be damned if it gets in his way. Trump's tactics aren't exactly like Hitler's, but that's not because he isn't trying to do the same thing Hitler did. It's because Trump is operating in an American context not a 1930s German one.

One thing is certain. Trump doesn't really give a good God damn about people being here illegally. Legality has never meant anything to him. It does matter to him that most of the people he attacks aren't white and aren't native English speakers. But mostly what matters to him is that he can use immigrants and Americans' bigoted fear and dislike of them to advance his goal of becoming an un-democratic dictator just as Hitler used Germany's (and Poland's and Hungary's and Austria's) historical anti-Judaism to advance his goal of becoming an un-democratic fascist dictator. 

That's what he's doing, folks. We have to stop him. I wish I know how to bring the entire federal government to a screeching halt to force him to knock it off, though of course I don't. And I will never advocate violence as to way to make him stop. But we need to start, nonviolently, throwing sticks into the spokes of the federal government. Trump will bring American agriculture to its knees if he can, though that may be a consequence of what he's doing that he isn't smart enough to see. We need to bring the federal government to its knees--nonviolently of course. Doing it would get lots of well-intentioned people arrested and attacked. It would provoke violence on the part of American fascists the way the nonviolent civil rights movement provoked violence from American racists. 

So be it. Something has to be done and waiting for the next off-term and presidential elections isn't enough. Trump's actions call for massive, nonviolent civil disobedience. It's the only solution we have. I'm a writer and a speaker not a protestor. I'm 78 years old, and I must confess that I almost certainly won't do anything to get myself attacked or arrested. But civil disobedience is what we need. I just hope and pray that enough Americans will do it to stop the American fascist Donald Trump from destroying our country.

On Memorial Day

 Today, May 26, 2025, is Memorial Day here in the United States. People nearly always get what this day is supposed to be about wrong. They say it is for commemorating everyone who serves or has served in the American military. That's not what it is. There are other days for that. Memorial Day is for remembering and honoring all of the American soldiers killed in battle or perhaps otherwise killed while in the military. Now, what I'm going to say here won't be exactly popular with most Americans, as it so rarely is these days. So let me say this first. I mean no disrespect toward American service personnel who lost their lives in combat. I do not deny, in fact, I emphasize the tragedy of those deaths. Please don't get me wrong about that.

And yet. There is something that happens not just on this day but always in my country. We don't say military personnel died in battle much less that they were killed in battle. We say they are "fallen." We say they "gave their lives." We call them "sacrifices." The truth is that each and every one of those ways of referring to military deaths is a euphemism. They are ways of avoiding the stark truth of military action. No soldier or sailor who died in battle is "fallen." They didn't fall down. They were killed. They didn't "give their lives." Their lives were stolen from them. They weren't "sacrifices," or at least most of them weren't. They didn't die as a sacrifice to some god. They didn't die voluntarily, with the possible exception of a few winners of the Congressional Medal of Honor. None of those things is what happened. What happened is that the lives of mostly decent Americans were cut short, take from them, robbed from them by military action.

Why do we use all those euphemisms? We do it because we have to brainwash the American public into believing that military service is noble, never mind that hardly anyone in the military ever does anything truly noble. And never mind that mass killing, which is what the military exists for, is never noble. We have to convince people that all American service personnel are great patriots willingly putting their lives at risk when many if not most of them these days join the military for entirely different purposes. Some of them join the military because they come from military families, and being a soldier is essentially the family business. Many young American women and men join the American military because they see it as a way out of poverty. Or they see it as a job they can get when they can't get any other. Or because they want the financial benefits we offer to military veterans. All of those reasons for joining the American military may be perfectly understandably, but they aren't particularly noble. They are men and women trying to make their way in life as best they can. Are these men and women noble? No, they aren't any more noble than the rest of us are, which is to say, not much.

And there is one other euphemism we use when we talk about our country's military. We say our military exists "to defend our freedom." That statement is nothing but pure bullshit. We haven't used our military to defend any American's freedom since the Civil War well over a century and a half ago. In our past we used our military to oppress, displace, and kill American Indians. We used it for imperialist expansion of our country. We used it for imperial purposes against Mexico and Spain. We used it to take Hawaii from native Hawaiians whose people had lived on those islands for centuries at least. We used it take the Philippines from Spain. We used it to bail out allies in both World Wars. Our enemies in those two wars were hardly any threat to American freedom at all. Yes, they were horrific threats to other people's freedoms, but neither Germany nor Japan ever had any reasonable possibility of invading the US. Hell, Hitler couldn't even invade Great Britain, and the Battle of Midway proved that Japan couldn't remotely invade the United States except for the Aleutian Islands, which were never important for American freedom. No, the American military has never, or at least hardly ever, had anything to do with defending American freedom.

Now, we aren't using our military these days to conquer and take other people's lands like we did so often in the past, but that doesn't mean we don't use it for imperial purposes. The United States is today's world empire. We're a new kind of empire. We have a few colonies--Puerto Rico, Guam, and others--but we don't have colonies on anything like the scale of the British Empire, or the Spanish, or the Portuguese, or the French empires once did. No, what we have is economic interests and claimed political interests all over the world that we think we need to defend. We pride ourselves on being today's dominant world power, and dominant world powers always use their military to defend and to project their power. That's what we use the American military for, to project and defend American power the world round not to defend American freedom.

So how are we to understand the American military? It isn't what we always say it is. It doesn't do what we always say it does. So is there any reason for its existence at all? No. Not really. They only way actually to justify its existence is to say that it is a tragic necessity at best. The world is a dangerous place. There are people and perhaps even countries in the world who wish to do us harm. That doesn't mean they are actually capable of doing us much harm, but some of them would if they could. Terrorists have done it in the past though, as tragic as what they did was, they have never been a real threat to our freedom. It may be, though it isn't certain, that Russia and China, countries that don't like us much and that have significant nuclear arsenals, would try to conquer us if they thought they could (though all they would probably do is displace us as the major world power, which is hardly the same thing). In an ideal world, that is, in the Kingdom of God, no one would have a military. That's why if our military is necessary at all, which I'm not quite prepared to concede, it is only a tragic necessity.

So let's knock it off with the euphemisms about what happens to soldiers. Let's knock it off with the lies about what we use our military for. Let's stop making something that exists to kill and maim human beings and destroy their property noble. It isn't noble. It's brutal. It's about death and destruction, and, though we may use military personnel for humanitarian purposes on occasion, death and destruction are its reason for existing. The powers of the world convince most of the rest of us that the military is an honorable, noble thing. It isn't. The world would be a much better place if we'd stop letting the powers get away with it.

On Christian Nationalism

This is an entry I made in my journal this evening, Sunday, March 25, 2025.

Something interesting happened at church this morning, church being First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Bellevue, Washington, USA. The church’s two pastors were doing they answer questions routine that they do on three day weekends. One of the questions was what they thought of Christian nationalism. Pastor Lisa Horst Clark quoted UCC General Minister and President Rev. Dr. Karen A. Georgia Thompson as having said don’t call it Christian Nationalism. There is nothing Christian about it. She then developed that idea. Pastor Stevi Hamill disagreed. She said she hates it when someone says she’s not Christian because she does not believe like they do, and she is uncomfortable calling anyone not Christian because they believe differently than she does. It’s an interesting question, I guess, but I agree with Lisa. Christianity isn’t what anyone claims it is. Christianity is a commit to follow Jesus and to live one’s spiritual life according to what he taught and showed us. He taught and showed us love not hate. Inclusion not exclusion. Hope not fear. Anyone can claim that anything is Christian, but that doesn’t make it Christian. Christianity has been so horribly bastardized over the centuries that few people today understand what it really is. It’s not about doing and believing the right things and non doing and not believing the wrong things so your soul goes to heaven after you die. It’s about living the kingdom life that Jesus taught and showed us in this life not in some posited but unproven next life.

Jesus absolutely rejected the values of the Roman Empire, and doing so got him crucified. The empire values he rejected are still the values of empire, the US empire included. Empires are violent. Jesus taught and lived nonviolence. Empires favor the wealthy and powerful. Empires oppress the poor. Empires exclude, that is, they determine who is in with them and who is out. Jesus said the last shall be first and the first shall be last. He included everyone, symbolized in large part by his acceptance of the Samaritans most Jews of his time hated.

No ideology, whatever it calls itself, is Christian if it embraces empire and rejects Christian peace, justice, and nonviolence. That’s precisely what today’s Christian Nationalism does. It claims to be Christian, but it just flat isn’t. It’s adherents can proclaim Jesus and pray in his name all they want; but as long as they get him as wrong as they do, and as long as they pray for the wrong things the way they do, they are not Christians. So our General Minister and President is right. Don’t call it Christian Nationalism. It just flat isn’t Christian. Rev. Dr. Thompson is right, and this morning Pastor Lisa was right. That’s just how it is.

On the Shooting in DC

 Last night a madman shot and killed two employees of the Israeli embassy in DC. The murderer shouted “Free Palestine” after he was arrested. Trump, Netanyahu, and others are blaming that murder on “antisemitism.” But the murderer didn’t shout something like “Death to Jews!” He didn’t necessarily shoot those two young people who were about to be engaged because they were Jewish. He shot them because of what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza and on the West Bank. The way most Jews and most other Americans don’t differentiate between antisemitism and anti-Judaism drives me nuts.  

I am staunchly anti-Israel. The Netanyahu regime is committing crime after crime against humanity in Gaza. Yes, Hamas is a terrorist organization; and yes, it has committed crimes against humanity in its attacks on Israel. I understand Israel’s desire to eradicate it. But that is no excuse for how Israel has responded to Palestinian terrorism. I despise what they’re doing and think Netanyahu and others should be brought to justice as war criminals.  

But I don’t hate Jews. I don’t hate Judaism. I have immense respect for the ancient Jewish faith, which is, after all, the mother faith of my Christian faith. I find Christian antisemitism, which is really anti-Judaism, to be Christianity’s greatest sin, and that takes some doing. The Holocaust has a little bit of competition for holding the title jointly with that genocide, but it is clearly among the greatest crimes against humanity anyone has ever perpetrated. The state of Israel today, however, is not synonymous with  Judaism. Judaism is about tikkun olam, healing the world. The Israelis are not healing the world, they are creating a gaping wound in it. So bring the DC shooter to justice. What he did is despicable, and he deserves whatever he gets. But don’t call what he did antisemitism. That monster may be antisemitic, but he shot those innocent young people because he hates Israel and what it is doing to Palestine not necessarily because he hates Jews or Judaism. I sure wish people would stop equating the two hates. They are not identical. 

We Live Under a Fascist Regime

 This is the text of a letter I just sent to our local newspaper.

There is no doubt about it. Donald Trump's presidential administration is in reality a fascist regime. Trump is following a fascist playbook. He has set about destroying the established institutions of the federal government and making them subservient to his personal command. He is using immigrants in precisely the same way Hitler used the Jews early in his rule in Germany. He is conducting a broad attack on the rule of law. He is having people arrested and deported with no due process of law whatsoever. He is refusing to comply with orders from the United States Supreme Court. He is using the Department of Justice as his personal law firm for prosecuting his political opponents for imaginary criminal offenses. He is attempting to change state election law to make it harder for people who do not support him to vote. Perhaps Trump's voters didn't intend to create an American fascist regime, but that's what we've got. Will the rule of law survive? Will our democratic institutions survive? I can only hope and pray that, once Trump is out of our public life, we will be able to resurrect them, but whether we will or not remains to be seen. May the American people wake up and turn on Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters. It is the only way we will be able to save ourselves.

Meditation on Pastoral Ministry

 Meditation on Pastoral Ministry

It is commonly said that there are three aspects of pastoral ministry. They are said to be the priestly, the pastoral, and the prophetic aspects of the call. I would add that there is often a seemingly less holy part of the call, the administrative. Perhaps it would be worth reflecting a bit on each of them here. I don’t know that most pastors have them specifically in mind as they go about their work a church pastor. Still, they designate important parts of the work of a traditional church pastor.

I’ll start with the priestly. In the priestly part of the call, the pastor leads worship, preaches, and presides at the sacraments, the Protestant traditions the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. I found this to be both the easiest part of pastoral ministry and at least one of the most rewarding. No matter how many times I’ve done it, leading Christian worship fills me in a way nothing else does. Presiding at the Eucharist is one for me one of the most powerful experiences of my ministry. When I do it, I stand in an unbroken line of faithful men and women who have celebrated that sacrament with the people of the church from very early in the Christian tradition, at least since 50 CE. They haven’t all understood it the same way of course. Tragically, and in a very un-Christian way, they have even fought wars over it. Nonetheless, in presiding at that sacrament I connect the people of my church with the ancient Christian tradition and, I hope, with the good parts of it not the bad parts of it. I often feel closer to God when I am presiding at the Eucharist than I do at any other times of my life.

The priestly aspect of parish ministry also includes preaching. In the more liturgical traditions, the Eucharist is the center and the high point of every service. In the Reformed Protestant traditions like My UCC, the sermon takes the place of the Eucharist in most worship services. I tell myself, perhaps in delusion though I truly don’t think so, that I am a damned good preacher. As I’ve mentioned, a very fine retired UCC minister called the first sermon I eve gave one of the best sermons he’d ever heard; and that was when I was practicing law (or at least trying to) and it had never occurred to me actually to become a preacher. I rarely have trouble coming up with something meaningful to say. I rarely if ever quote anyone else in my sermons. That may or may not be a good thing, but I don’t need other people speaking my truth for me. I can do it perfectly well myself.

Preaching, as I think I’ve already said, has some things in common with giving a closing argument to a jury. In both exercises, you are trying to convince the people you’re talking to of some truth. In court it may be that your client is innocent of the crime with which she is charged or at least to find her guilty only of a lesser included offense or, depending on which side of the case you’re on, that the defendant is indeed guilty as charged. In a civil case you are trying to convince the jury to rule in your client’s favor, most commonly on the questions of liability and damages. I always found giving a closing argument to a jury both exhilarating and exhausting.

I used to react to preaching the same way. It would take me days to come down from the high I experienced after preaching. I come alive when I’m preaching. I open up, expose emotions and deep feelings, and I get to tell church people things that I hope are meaningful to them, much of which most of them have never heard before. In my retirement I still jump at every chance I get to preach. It is, I think, the meaningful things I do these days.

Then there’s the pastoral aspect of the call. To “pastor” means to tend the sheep. As pastor, the ordained minister is mostly simply present with his parishioners in whatever is going on in their lives. Few people understand the power of presence, yet just being present with a parishioner who is experiencing difficulties in her life is often the greatest gift a pastor can give a parishioner. To pastor is to listen, but it’s not to listen so you can formulate a response. It is to listen for the sake of listening. It is listening to understand. It is setting yourself aside truly to listen to what your parishioner is saying to you without filtering it through your own experiences and, especially, not through your own hot button issues. It may be listening to respond by encouraging the person to say more. It is rarely if ever to respond by criticizing what the person is saying unless that person asks you to. In my experience, parishioners are reluctant to take up their pastor’s time talking about themselves and what’s going on in their lives. When I hear someone say that, I want to say: “What do you think we’re here for?”

Pastoral care may occur in the pastor’s office only rarely. The setting may be a parishioner’s home. Perhaps more frequently a hospital room. It may be with a parishioner with good prospects for recovery from an illness or accident. Or it may be, it rather unavoidably will be, with a person nearing the end of her life. Depending on the degree of the person’s dementia, she may or may not know that her death is near. Either way, the pastor’s call is still mostly just to be present. It may be to assure a parishioner of God’s unconditional love and grace if she has concerns about her fate after death. Tragically, the Christian tradition has instilled that concern in people for two millennia even though God’s love truly is universal and unconditional. The fate of our souls after death are not something we need to be concerned about, and some parishioners need reassurance about that. offer it to a person is one of the pastor’s more rewarding tasks.

Pastoral care may not be with the person who is actually experiencing difficulty in their life. It may be with that person’s family or others close to him. Some of my most powerful experiences of providing pastoral care had been with people who have just suddenly and unexpectedly lost a loved one to death. Here’s the thing though. You can’t make their loss go away. You can’t make their loss alright. All you can do is be with them and, much more importantly, to help them know that God is with them and their departed loved one too. Doing so is indeed a powerful experience of pastoral ministry.

Next there is the prophetic aspect of the parish pastor’s calling. This is the one that often gets a pastor sideways with her congregation. The people of any congregation are people from the culture and the society in which the congregation is located. At least some, if not many, of them will come into the church with the prejudices and cultural, social, and political common wisdom of that culture and that society. The problem is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is nearly always, if not, indeed, always, in opposition to those prejudices and that common wisdom. At least some, and perhaps many if not all, of the people of the church do not want to hear their pastor preaching Jesus’ gospel of nonviolence, peace, distributive justice, and inclusion. Any number of pastors have been driven out of their pulpits by congregations who would not tolerate things like sermons against the Vietnam War or in support of the Civil Rights Movement. They may not tolerate being told that the gospel calls them not just to acts of charity, which most of them will accept, to acts of justice. To the transformation of social, economic, and political structures from their current unjust ways to the much better ways of justice. They probably won’t accept any hint that they are racists, even though essentially all Americans are racists the pastor included. It is woefully easy for a pastor who feels God call to prophetic ministry to lose the support of her congregation.

Is it possible for a pastor to preach prophetic sermons that his people don’t want to hear and still keep his job? Not always. The pastor can try to be in good with the parishioners through other means. A mentor of mine once told me: If you want to be prophetic, make lots of pastoral visits. Making lots of pastoral visits is, of course, good pastoral practice in any event. It may or may not be enough to keep the congregation from wanting to fire the pastor.

Being a pastor isn’t easy. One of the powerful dynamics of pastoral ministry is that the pastor almost certainly needs the income she receives from the church to cover their living expenses and maybe even save up a little bit for retirement. Doing things as pastor that the church’s people don’t like can be a good way of losing that income. A parish pastor is sometimes faced with the difficult choice between preaching and teaching what he knows to be the gospel truth on the one hand and remaining employed on the other. No other person can tell any pastor how to deal with the conflict between proclaiming the truth of the gospel and what the pastor’s people are willing to hear. I didn’t have this problem much in the first church I served. I had it with several of the people in the second church I served, and it was one of the things that drove me to resign from that call.

Then there is the administrative part of the pastor’s job. How much of a administrator the pastor must be varies from denomination to denomination and from church to church. The pastor’s call agreement is likely to make her the immediate supervisor of other church staff, perhaps the music director, the Christian education director, and the office administrator. I know that I can do administrative work, but I don’t like it. I doubt that very many other people who have responded to a call to pastoral ministry have gone into ministry so they could be administrators. It’s work that the pastor must do. Not many of us love doing it.

No one should go into any ministry unless that person cannot deny that God is calling her to that ministry. Discerning that call will almost certainly change your life in ways you can’t even imagine before they happen. You will face difficulties. You will fact opposition. You might be called things you never thought you’d be called, as when that Hispanic evangelical minister I mentioned above called me apostate because I don’t hate gay people. If you’re lucky, you will receive praise and appreciation. Even if you do, you will still face criticism and displeasure with what you’re doing and what you’re not doing. Parish ministry isn’t easy.

It is, however, by far the most rewarding thing I have ever done in my professional life. There is a sense of fulfillment and wholeness that comes from doing, as best as you are able, what you God is calling you to do. There is peace in knowing that you are responding to a call from a congregation of people; but there is much deeper peace in knowing that you are responding to a call from God. I would never recommend parish ministry to anyone lightly. No one should go into it without a long period of prayerful discernment. And then you should go into it only if can’t not go into it. If that is true of you, it can be the most rewarding thing you ever do.

On Christ and Fear

 

On Christ and Fear

April 24, 2024

Next Sunday, April 27, 2025, is the second Sunday of Easter. Or at least for us western Christians it is. The Orthodox celebrate Easter on a different day, so next Sunday isn’t that for them, but never mind. For us it is. And for churches that follow the Revised Common Lectionary or, indeed some other lectionaries as well, that means it is “Thomas Sunday.” As much as I might like it if that Sunday were named for me, it isn’t of course. It’s called Thomas Sunday because every year on the first Sunday after Easter the gospel reading is the story of Doubting Thomas from chapter 20 of the Gospel of John. That story has it that on Easter Sunday, in the evening, the disciples, or at least most of them, are gathered in a room behind a locked door. Thomas is not there. The risen Christ appears to them, locked doors be damned. The first thing he says to his disciples is: “Peace.” Some other stuff follows that doesn’t matter for my purposes here.

Some time later, the disciples who had seen the Jesus tell Thomas that they have seen the Lord. Thomas, who, like me, is a twin (so maybe this Sunday is named after me after all?) says something like “Yeah. Sure. I don’t think so. Unless I see his wounds and put my hand in his side, I won’t believe that he was really there.”

So, the following Sunday, the disciples are again gathered behind a locked door. This time Thomas is with them. Again Christ appears among them. Again he says to them, “Peace.” Christ says to Thomas see my wounds and put your hand in my side. Do not doubt, but believe. People often assume that Thomas does reach out and touch Jesus at that point, but, actually, he doesn’t. He just acknowledges Jesus as Lord. He apparently saw Jesus’ crucifixion wounds, but he doesn’t reach out and touch them.

The author of John almost certainly told this story, which appears nowhere else, to tell his community to believe in Jesus, whatever that means, without having seen him. For, of course, none of them had ever seen him, John having been written at least six decades after Jesus’ death. Certainly, none of us has ever seen Jesus, at least not in the way people who saw him during his life or after his resurrection before he departed this earth did. So sure, believe in Jesus even though you’ve never seen him.

There is, however, another point that this story makes that is, if anything, even more important for us today. Consider this. In this story, the disciples gather behind locked doors because they are afraid. John says they’re afraid of “the Jews,” but that’s anti-Jewish hogwash or a metaphor that mentions a different farm animal. They were afraid, but they weren’t afraid of the Jews. They were afraid of the Romans. No Jews ever crucified anyone, but the Romans did it all the time. No Jews crucified Jesus. The Romans did. Jesus’ disciples had every reason to fear that the Romans would come after them next. Crossan may say the Romans didn’t execute the followers of a popular movement leader if the movement was nonviolent, which the Jesus movement certainly was. But these disciples, of course, had never read or heard Crossan. If I’d been one of those disciples, I’d have been afraid too.

It is precisely in the midst of their fear that the risen Christ appears to his disciples. It is precisely in the midst of their fear that the risen Christ says to them: “Peace.” Certainly, the disciples were feeling anything but peace. Fear is not peaceful. Fear is not serene. Fear is disturbing. Fear is upsetting. Fear is no fun at all. And Jesus says to his friends: “Peace.”

Now, we don’t live under the threat of Roman crucifixion the way Jesus’ disciples did or at least thought they did, which amounts to the same thing for our purposes here. We do, nonetheless, live in a time in which one of the things a great many of us feel is fear. Our fear is caused by the presidential administration of Donald J. Trump. It is beyond comprehension how this country could make Trump president once much less twice like we have; but we have, and we have to live with the fact that we have.

Donald Trump personally, along with the obviously incompetent, unqualified people he has put in charge of essentially every sector of the federal government, is doing a great many things that create fear in enormous numbers of Americans. We needn’t rehearse all of the horrors of the Trump administration here. They are well known, or at least they are well known by all Americans who have not sold their souls to Donald Trump for the false sense of security and promise of prosperity that Trump’s MAGA movement gives them. I’ll just say this much: I can’t speak for anyone but myself, so I’ll just speak of myself here. I fear the loss of everything good thing this country has always claimed that it stands for, never mind that those things have never been as fully realized as most Americans like to think they have been. Still, this country stands for democracy. Representative government. The rule of law. Freedom of speech. Freedom of the press. Freedom of academic inquiry. Freedom of assembly. Freedom of religion. I fear losing the Social Security income my wife and I depend on for our ability to sustain life. I fear losing my constitutional right to speak my mind including the right to criticize the government and to point out all of its failings. I live in fear like I never thought I ever would in what claims to be the freest nation in the world, and it’s all due to Donald Trump. I feel called to resist Donald Trump in any way I can, though always nonviolently, and that sense call definitely comes with a sense of fear.

And in all of that, I believe that Jesus comes to me and to all people and says “Peace.” And I also wonder: What can “Peace” possibly mean to us in these frightening times? To answer that question we have so start by considering what Jesus’ “Peace” does not mean. The peace Jesus bids us to find does not mean that all of our problems go away. It doesn’t mean that bad things won’t happen to us and to our loved ones. It doesn’t mean we won’t get sick. It doesn’t mean we won’t die. It doesn’t mean that the Trump administration will magically disappear, as wonderful as it would be if it did. We will still have to deal with all of those things standing in the peace Jesus offers us.

What we won’t have to deal with is existential fear. Existential fear is fear about our very existence, and it is much more than fear about this life. It is fear about the nature of our being. It is fear about what will happen to us in this life, and it is also fear about any posited next life. It is the fear of meaninglessness, that our lives and the lives of everyone else may, in the end, mean nothing. It is fear of falling into nonbeing. It is fear that this life is all there is, that it is all we’re ever going to have. It is fear of not having a meaningful connection with the ultimate reality that people of faith call God.

Existential fear is much deeper than ordinary fear, than fear about our personal safety or the safety of our loved ones. It probably operates at the subconscious level in most people. Most people probably don’t even know they have it. Which doesn’t mean they don’t have it. It means that it is functioning in and from the unconscious and is most likely expressed in unhealthy ways. We must all deal with it whether we know it or not.

The peace to which Jesus calls us, the peace that Jesus offers us, is how we deal with it. That peace is a peace much deeper than any mere worldly peace. It is a peace deep within us that tells us that no matter how unsafe we feel, no matter how unsafe we may be in a worldly sense, we are in fact existentially safe with God. It is a peace that looks to the cross of Jesus Christ and says that no matter how Godforsaken we may feel, we are never Godforsaken at all. Never. Ever. It is a peace grounded in scripture passages like Romans 8:38-39, which assures us that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is the peace of the martyr. Not of one who seeks martyrdom, for seeking martyrdom is morally and theologically indefensible. It is the peace of one with the courage to enter the most difficult and dangerous earthly situations for the gospel of Jesus Christ aware of the risk and willing to take it on because of their deep awareness of the unfailing love and grace of God, lost and grace with them and with everyone.

Consider the situation of the disciples to whom the risen Christ said, “Peace.” They were terrified. They were hiding behind a locked door. Once they went out into the world, they all engaged in the highly risky work of proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ against the power of Rome. We have no historical sources on what happened to them, but the Christian tradition says they all died as martyrs for the gospel. It says that both Peter, who was there when Jesus said, “Peace,” and Paul, who wasn’t, died in Rome. Thomas himself, the doubting one, may have gone as far as India to spread the good news of Jesus Christ, something that could hardly have been safe for him.

Those men, and probably women too, who heard Jesus say, “Peace” knew the dangers. They knew they were risking their lives when they proclaimed a good news as anti-imperial, as anti-Roman as the good news of Jesus was—and is. Yet they went. They took the risk, and they paid the price. I’m sure it’s not that they no longer felt fear; but, then, courage is not the lack of fear, it is ability to act despite one’s fear. The inner peace necessary for one to act in dangerous circumstances despite one’s fear is precisely the peace to which the risen Christ called his disciples and to which he calls us.

I don’t know when or even if I will be called to act in physically dangerous circumstances as I resist the fascism of Donald Trump and his administration. I am an old man, 78 years old. I have long thought of myself as more of a writer and preacher than as an activist doing work out in the world. I may never need to put my life in danger in resistance to Trump. But I have to ask myself. We all have to ask ourselves: If we do have that necessity, will we have the courage to act? Put more theologically, will we have the inner, existential peace that Jesus offers us, the peace that may well be all we have that can enable us to act? To cause good trouble? Truly to stand up and speak out for truth, justice, and peace against Trump’s lies, injustices, and attacks on our peace? I like to think that my answer is yes, I would have that peace and therefore would have that courage. Yet I also know that I can never know for sure that I would until I’m in a dangerous situation that requires me to act despite the danger.  I like to trust that my trust in God would be strong enough so that I could do what needed to be done to advance peace and justice in the world. What do you think about yourself? Do you have enough of the peace Jesus brings to do what needs to be done for justice and peace? I certainly can’t answer that question. If anyone can answer that question, it’s you. So let’s all ask it of ourselves and hope we come to the correct answers.