We recognize that there is nothing particularly deficient about German genetics that makes them predisposed to evil. Furthermore, while we understand that while German culture certainly played a part in giving rise to the evils of World War II, we also acknowledge that the cultural history of Germany isn’t substantially different from its Western neighbors to single out one thing that sets Germany apart that makes it intrinsically more capable of Genocide than other nations. Unless, of course, that thing is the presence of an almost supernaturally evil being like Adolf Hitler.

The name that we give the Evil that led to Holocaust and War is “Hitler.” And in so naming this evil, Hitler takes his place among the pantheon of modern Western civilization. If our society collectively recognizes supernatural beings–if we have gods–Hitler is one of them. He may play the part of the evil god, but he is a god nonetheless. To many, he has taken the place of Satan.

To illustrate my point (that Hitler is our culture’s evil god even to the point of usurping Satan), let us suppose you are in an argument with a friend over the ethics of veganism. Your friend (let us suppose) is a vegan. You, however, are an omnivore. The argument escalates to the point that your friend yells: “Every time you eat bacon, you are the same as Adolf Hitler!” Would that upset you more (be honest) than if your friend said you were the same as the devil?

If you are like me, you’re likely to feel offended at the former, and may even chuckle at the latter.

And so, the first commonality of Jesus and Hitler is that, in our modern mythology, they are both gods.

Another thing that Hitler and Jesus share is that they are both scapegoats. Jesus’ status as a scapegoat has been explored in numerous writings–most notably in the work of René Girard. Generally, Christians believe that our sins have passed to Jesus (in some way or another) so that when he is sacrificed, he is being sacrificed in our place. This grande “transaction” has led many to a “cheap” grace–one where not only are your debts cleared, but Jesus’ heaven-credits get wired to your account, providing the necessary funds to buy your ticket to heaven.

It is interesting to me that the thinker best known for exposing this Christian tendency towards “cheap grace” did so in the shadow of Nazism–Dietrich Bonhoeffer. How ironic that we can easily read Bonhoeffer and agree that we shouldn’t treat Jesus as a mere scapegoat only to turn to Adolf Hitler to propitiate our sins! Let me explain.

It is generally held that Adolf Hitler is the reason Nazism arose in Germany and proceeded to commit acts of genocide. Hitler becomes the Cause of Evil–an almost supernaturally sinister being. However, a different view of the rise of Nazism is that Hitler was focusing and manifesting the larger zeitgeist of the German people–or at least of a growing movement within the German people.

When we blame Hitler for what happened in WWII, we fail to name the larger conditions and trends that brought Hitler to power and enabled the horrific deeds of the Holocaust. And thus, Hitler becomes a scapegoat for the horrors of the war.

But he is much more than simply a scapegoat for the Germans. He serves a larger purpose in western society. To invoke his name is to invoke evil, and to assume that he is significantly more evil than we are. To liken someone to Hitler is taboo. When, in the course of internet conversation Godwin’s Law comes into effect, it is an instant conversation ender. In other words, nobody is as evil as Hitler, and to suggest so is as much of a taboo as we have in our culture.

So, when we say that American treatments of Native Americans was like a “Holocaust” or that modern day Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinian people, etc., the conversation is over. It doesn’t matter how wicked a nation’s behavior is–nothing could ever rival the unspeakable evil that is HITLER. And, thank Jesus, Hitler is such an anomaly that we could NEVER do something like that again. We are simply incapable of such evil–we have progressed beyond it. We are, in comparison, good.

And so, Hitler is the evil scapegoat who takes away the sins for our own atrocities–our modern injustices, our past genocides.

And, for everything else, Jesus is there to take away our remaining sins.

In the end, we find that we don’t have to follow Jesus’ way, nor do we have to sufficiently name the evil that resides in our own hearts, our own societies, our own world. Because of the pure sacrifice of Jesus and the evil stain of Hitler, we’re fine just the way we are. Status quo affirmed!

Note: This is an adaptation from an earlier post on JesusRadicals.com.

Don’t buy it, brother. Don’t get snared, sister.
As for you, Do the prayers you do…
In the quiet place. Simple words. Unclenched.

Like little kids call for papa and cry for your heaven-momma.
Yes, abba shaped the universe in secret,
but still closer to you than you are to yourself.

Release your held breath and pray:

“We need a regime change!
Not Obama, O, abba-momma.
We need liberation,
From this Bush generation
The violence must stop, O, abba-pop.
An end to this administration
To a divine nation.
A Divinization.

We don’t need laptops and lattes,
Macbooks or machiattos.
We don’t need Ronald McDonald
Or Little Debbie
Famous Dave or Colonel Sanders.
The Red Barron, Jack-in-the-Box, and
The Burger King living in their White Castle.
With subjects fat and starved…
We dull eyed slaves…
consume our liberties.

All we need is what we need…
Bread…
right now.
You.

We beg
For debt forgiveness.
Our bedrooms are wallpapered with past due notices
Homes built upon a mountain of bones.
Cars in our three-stall garages run off the fumes of oppression.
Our lawns fertilized with speeches of leaders.
So we declare bankruptcy!
As the sheriff bars windows and doors.
And we step out over the broken picket fence
To join the protestors occupying the street.

Decrying destitution! Denouncing debt!
Dreaming of democracy.

But, when opportunity arises,
When we too arise to power
And cross back over that fence to take back houses with new mortgages
And lawns
with pesticide purified pristinity
in grids of cement
Cracked people.
Happified by dancing pixels.

Abba.

Deliver us! From delicious diversions that dirty our divinity!
Deliver us! From discontented devouring.
Deliver us, to delight.
To love. Together. To see spirit, swimming in our shared space.
Singing a new song of sensuality.
Abba. Between us.
Abba. In us.
Abba. Above us.
Abba. Beneath us.
Abba. Here.
Abba. Now.
Abba.
Abba.
Abba.

Amen.

Jesus’ vision of the (un)Kingdom of God is beautiful. He shows us a new way of being human–where alienation can be destroyed. The distance separating us from each other and our God need not remain.

Jesus imagined a world where alienation had ended, where all people could be a part of God’s family. He saw a world where love reigned, where all good things were shared by all and there was even some left over. He saw a world where people could know and be known by God. A world filled with joy.

Let’s be honest. When have any of us ever really experienced this world that Jesus came to inaugurate? Rarely have I experienced this thing Jesus called the “kingdom of God.” Usually, things fall short. Alienation remains. Injustice persists. Even (or perhaps especially) among Christians.

If we compare the promises of God with the reality of most of humanity, it would seem that either God does not exist, or God has abandoned us.

Yet I keep hoping. I hope for the (un)kingdom to become enfleshed in my own life and actions, but also in real flesh-and-blood communities. And while there are glimpses of the (un)kingdom all around us, they are rare specimens.

Hope is a strange thing. Often, it is expressed as naive optimism–a sort of stubborn wishful thinking that usually only works out for people in movies. Hope is wanting something that we don’t have, and somehow believing we’ll get it. Hope is experienced by both the hero and the fool. And, it would seem, the only difference between the two is that the hero gets what he or she wants.

So, is Jesus a hero or a fool? Which are we? The vision Jesus offered of a divine kingdom is beautiful. If anything is worthy of hope, it is that vision. But to all observers, Jesus failed in his quest. And those of us who are transfixed by that vision have failed too. Those of us who put our faith in Jesus rarely, if ever, experience what he promised.

Yet we keep hoping. We are fools, longing for a world that exists, if at all, in fragments.

To continually long for something that is beyond your reach can destroy your soul. Eventually, unfulfilled hopes bring a sort of death. After a lifetime of disappointment, many become a broken, sad, resigned people. They accept the world as it is, not because they find it beautiful, but because they no longer expect anything else. They settle in the same way an old dying man might lay upon his sick bed awaiting death to come for him.

Others become delusional. They experience a death of reality. They can’t bear to live without hope, so they deceive themselves. I know a man who constantly tells himself and others of his successes. After a while, it became apparent that he was completely full of crap. I’ve met a lot of men and women like that–who constantly lie about themselves. It is tempting to disdain them, but holding to a false reality seems at least as valid as the sort of slow death that may come from honesty. There is a sad courage in accepting a painful truth. So too is there a sort of courage in believing in something even when the whole world disagrees with you.

By all appearances, we live in a world abandoned by God. I have enough faith to see flickers of the divine in rare moments. But I lack faith to see the inbreaking of the (un)kingdom of God. The world marches towards death. Some argue that the American Empire is in a state of perpetual war. Yet, at least statistically speaking, Christianity has never been stronger.

In light of this reality, some people simply walk away from faith–not in a bold way that converts to atheism do; rather, they simply give up hope. Others simply enter into a repeating cycle of positive self talk, rejuicing weekly listening to platitudinous sermons and loudly singing happy Jesus music. Perhaps their joyful piety is born of sincerity. But I believe that all worship devoid of lament is based upon falsehood. Such worship is a sacred distraction–what Marx called the “opiate of the masses.”

There is, I believe, a middle way.

Am I a fool for believing that the (un)kingdom of God will come in full? Am I delusional for seeing the movement of the Holy Spirit when I see two enemies become friends? When I feel love stirring in my soul towards someone I am tempted to reject, am I lying to myself? And am I lying to myself when I conclude that I’m becoming more like Jesus…whose divine presence I sometimes experience?

Perhaps. But, in the words of Jacques Ellul, “hope is the rejection of [the] real discrepancy between the eternal plan revealed in Jesus Christ and the concrete situation of the present…”

If it is delusional to hope in something that doesn’t exist, then I choose to be delusional. If it is foolish to believe in the (un)kingdom of God, then call me a fool. The middle way is willful delusion. Seeing the world through eyes that refuse to be shielded from pain and brokenness, but refusing to give up hope.

Willful delusion is the only path available who long for a better world. Like those sad lot who give themselves over to the world as-it-is, we need to be honest about the real brokenness we encounter in the world. But, like those delusional people who embrace lies in their attempts to cling to hope, we too need to be stubborn in our refusal to accept that the world as-it-is remains the final word.

Perhaps this is enough. As Cesare Pavese writes,

Basically, the secret of life is to act as though we possessed the thing we most painfully lack. In that lies the whole doctrine of Christianity. To convince ourselves that everything is created for good, that the brotherhood of man really exists–and if that is not true, what does it matter? The comfort of this vision lies in believing it, not in whether it is real. For if I believe it, and you, and he, and everyone, it will become real.

But I believe we must go a step further in our willful delusion. Instead of simply trying to “be the change” we want to see in the world, we must shake heaven itself with our cries of lament. Rather than living as orphans, we must cry out to our God. This is the subversive path–to live into the world with delusional hope as we cry out to our Creator to make good on his promises. As Jaques Ellul writes (in his excellent work, Hope in Time of Abandonment):

Hope comes alive only in the dreary silence of God, in our loneliness before a closed heaven, in our abandonment…God is silent, so it’s man who is going to speak…It is a demand. When God is silent, he has to be made to talk. When God turns away, he has to be made to turn back to us again. When God seems dead, he has to be made to exist. It can take the form of an anguished appeal, a complaint, a lamentation, or a prayer of repentance. It can also take the form of daring protest, of violence against God, of accusation…Hence, in a sense, it could be said that hope is blasphemous. It actually rejects the decision of God’s silence.

Our response in the midst of abandonment is to willfully hope when all evidence tells us it is foolish. We must become those people who refuse to accept the injustices and pain in this world. Instead, we must cry out and reject God’s silence as we live into the (un)kingdom.

* * *

Image from Jonathan Inkman.

I spent my late teens caring for my dying mother. After years of struggling with emphysema, my mom’s lungs failed. Thankfully, with the help of medication and an oxygen tank, she was able to survive for the few years it took to get a lung transplant. Her surgery was successful, but the anti-rejection meds made her puffy, and she always seemed dangerously close to death. But she was alive…until she started smoking again. Within a few months of lighting up for the first time in years, she was dead. She died when I was 19.

During the time in life when other teenagers were getting drunk in ice-houses or playing CB tag, I took care of my mother. The depressingness of those years seemed to fit the spirit of early nineties. My life read like an over-wrought script about a young man’s struggle with depression-laden absurdity. I was Gilbert Grape. I smelt like Teen Spirit. Gone was the optimism of the 80s, only to be replaced with the cynical honesty of the early 90s.

I didn’t go to college after high school, even though my ACT scores were the best of my graduating class. Family first. I didn’t have many friends–many moved away after graduation. I was afraid to leave my mother alone. I was terrified that she would die while I was gone. In those rare occasions I’d go out with friends, my mother would shame me for staying away too long. “It is a good thing I didn’t die while you were out with your friends,” she would say.

My mother did let me have a part-time job, however. I needed money for a car and clothes, and the money she got only covered the basics: rent and food. I had what is perhaps the most soul-numbing job imaginable. I worked about 15 hours a week sweeping a warehouse. It was a 40,000 square foot freezer that housed only one thing: McDonald’s french fries.

I was supposed to take a break every hour, because of the cold. I recall one time my supervisor asked me “Why don’t you ever take breaks? It is freezing in there, you’re supposed to take a break sometimes.”

I responded: “What’s the point?”

And then I would get into my car and drive home. My car was as sad as my job. It was an old Datsun 200SX with failing breaks. It was pale blue and rusty. The driver’s side seat was propped forward by a broken hard-shelled suitcase. There was no muffler. But the stereo worked.

Since my job gave me a lot of time alone to think, my mind would often ruminate over my miserable lot in life. I felt abandoned. I was the youngest of six children, yet I was left to care for my dying mother. I was a bright kid, yet I stayed in my small town while friends left for college or career. My church, which had once given my life meaning, was going through a split. I felt abandoned by family, friends, and church.

I felt abandoned by God. The earlier years of my faith had been marked by deep feelings of conviction. God had seemed close to me–sometimes overwhelmingly so. But during this season, I felt nothing. Only drab loneliness.

One day, I drove home to my dying mother in my death-car after sweeping a freezer that held little slivers of frozen potato which would later get a hot oil bath and be eaten by fat faces. It was a cloudy day. This was my life.

My mother and I lived in a subsidized apartment near the trailer park on the north side of town. The walls were white, the carpet beige. I did my best to keep the apartment clean, but my mother was a hoarder. Soda cans (she drank Squirt) were strewn around the couch, my mothers nest. She had a bedroom, but she only used it for storage. She preferred the convenience of the couch–with its proximity to the television and the refrigerator–to the privacy of a bedroom.

Normally when I got home, I would go to the fridge, grab a soda, and proceed to sit down in my chair to watch television with my mother. It was the closest thing to bonding I had with her; we watched Days of Our Lives together.

But on this day, I only mumbled to her as I walked directly to my room. Earlier, as I swept dust off of a cold concrete floor, I had reflected upon my sad life and decided that I would formally renounce Christ.

I wanted to do it properly. I cleared space in the middle of my bedroom floor. I stripped naked and lay down upon the beige carpet of my bedroom, eyes staring up at the ceiling. After a time of silence, I began speaking words of rejection to God, committing intentional acts of blasphemy. If God had forsaken me, I would forsake God.

I’ll spare you all of the blasphemous details. I blasphemed, forsook, and un-prayed for about an hour. When it was over, I was tired and numb; there was no release. No closure. I was just a naked depressed teenager laying on the floor.

But then, in the silence, something happened. I felt the presence of Christ. It wasn’t accompanied by joy; it was accompanied with deeper feelings of sadness. In my soul, I knew that this deepening sadness was not my own, but the sorrow of Christ. Christ had come to commiserate. In those moments I knew he felt as I felt. He seemed as fed up, as angry, as depressed. He was with me in the midst of my grey season.

As I lay in silent sadness, Jesus said: “Let it all go. Forsake it all. But you can’t forsake me, because I haven’t abandoned you. You can reject everything–the church, your theology, everything, but I’m still here.” And then things drifted back to normal. I was left on the floor in silent sadness.

My life continued in the same sad way, but something small had shifted. I look back upon that day as the reason I’m a Christian. By forsaking Christ, I found Christ. Or, to be more precise, he found me.

Luther taught that the Turks were tools of the Devil who, along with the wicked Pope, would bring Armageddon. According to some scholars, the first stanza of A Mighty Fortress is Our God was written against the Turks.

Originally, Luther saw the Ottoman Empire as being used by God to bring judgement. He advocated non-resistance because to resist the Turks would be resisting God’s will. However, as Luther gained increased backing from the German princes, his views changed. Eventually, he saw the war against the Turks to be a holy vocation (though he never saw it as a Holy War).

With the Holy Roman Empire being threatened by peasant revolts and the Reformation, the war with the Turks was in jeopardy.

This makes Sattler’s trial particularly amazing. When asked, essentially, “whose side are you on?” He replied:

If warring were right, I would rather take the field against so-called Christians who persecute, capture, and kill pious Christians than against the Turks for the following reason; The Turk is a true Turk, knows nothing of the Christian faith, and is a Turk after the flesh. But you who would be Christians and who make your boast of Christ persecute the pious witnesses of Christ and are Turks after the spirit!

Being found guilty of heresy and treason, he had his tongue ripped out and was burnt at the stake.

Sattler reveals a sort of radical middle grown between the liberationist violence of Thomas Muntzer and the conciliatory nature of Menno Simmons. Sattler added a rather substantial “Fuck You” to his pacifist witness.

In our own days when American Christendom is battling with terrorism, when evangelical churches are (as Jin Kim suggests) providing “foot soldiers for the American Empire,” I find myself reflecting upon Sattler’s witness and the implications for such a bold form of pacifism in our own imperial context.

So, I’m not a vehement anti-voter; rather my big issue is with folks who buy into our societal myths about political power and change. If we want change, we should be exploring all sorts of tactics, voting being the least direct, most costly, and most exploitative.

Voting is a small thing we can do. I think it can be a sometimes helpful tactic. But it is so abstract and broad and limited. We vote for who “they” let us vote for…at least at the higher offices. And I have no faith at all that our system can bring about justice anymore.

But I vote to restrain injustice. That is, as I see it, the only justification I can find for voting at all, given the state of imperial affairs. I can give a few hours on a Tuesday to that. But I must give my life to sowing seeds of justice and peace.

That is the vote that I have to cast every day. And, to be a bit grumpy and cynical about it, it really pisses me off that I’ve seen more tweets and statuses and blog posts about this damned choice between Obama and Romney in the past few months than I’ve seen about justice-doing and peace-making or anything good and noble in the past year.

If you care for the least of these, vote. But if you go through the rest of your life only donating a dollar here and there to help the poor, then you don’t care about change.

If you care for the homeless, vote. But if you have never entertained the idea of giving folks a place to sleep…or explored options with your church or friends beyond simply pointing people to a shelter (which is not a home, nor is it usually safe), then ask yourself if you really care about homelessness.

If you care for the migrant, vote. But if you buy your clothes or food from places that exploit their labor, then what do you hope will happen?

In the end, our politics is determined by what we do more than who we vote for.

A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’”

“All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

The Gospel of Luke (and its sequel: Acts) isn’t an ethereal philosophical text. Luke doesn’t deal with wealth and poverty abstractly, rather in Luke we see poor people and wealthy people engaged directly.

We learn in this passage that it is seemingly impossible for the rich to enter the Kingdom, for probably a number of reasons including the simple truth that the kingdom belongs to the poor (Luke 6:20).

Perhaps it is Luke’s assumption that there are no “innocent” independently wealthy people. Rather, Luke’s approach to poverty and wealth must be understood in light of Jubilee. According to the Hebrew Jubilee (which at the very least informed Jesus’ approach to economics), if someone has amassed wealth, it doesn’t NECESSARILY matter if it is directly at the expense of the poor. Hoarding would be seen as INTRINSICALLY stealing from the poor. And, as such, it would have been unjust. Take a look at Leviticus 25 to read more on what YWHW was going for with the Jubilee.

I’m not advocating that Christians practice Jubilee exactly as understood in Leviticus 25 (and elsewhere). I don’t believe we should just cut-and-paste the Torah into our contemporary Christian lives and try to live it out as-is. However, when Jesus begins to call people into the Kingdom of God, he raises the bar on Jubilee, rather than watering it down. If you read through Christ’s teachings on wealth and poverty, it becomes apparent that Jesus wants people to live in an ongoing practice of Jubilee. The early chapters of Acts show this in practice. And we can also assume that, given early church practices and teachings on wealth and poverty, they extended their Jubilee-inspired economic practices to aliens and stranger who were, in Leviticus, excluded from Jubilee.

Whenever I talk about Jubilee, people push back. Especially if they have money. The modern USAmerican understanding of justice is quite different than the justice of Jesus. Nowhere can we find in Jesus’ jubilee vision that a wealthy person needs merely to give alms to be justified, since wealth comes from the Land, and the Land, which ultimately belongs to God, is granted to God’s people. In light of this, the call of the wealthy isn’t simply to be charitable. Charity doesn’t get at justice. Even when Jubilee ceases to be rooted in the promised land, it is still assumed that, in Christ, everything belongs to the Lord and should, therefore, be redistributed to those in need as an act of justice–not as an act of “charity.”

Before I dive back into the story of the Rich Young Ruler, I want to make a quick statement about an understanding of Jesus that often gets in the way of a healthy reading of Scripture.

We often use Jesus as an example of the downwardly-mobile. It is assumed that, in Heaven, Jesus was kinda wealthy…and that he left that all behind to slum it with the poor folks. But Jesus isn’t simply someone who decided to serve the poor. He was poor. He didn’t speak as the affluent who advocates for the poor…he spoke as a representative of the poor. I wonder if, to Jesus, it was a more condescending act to address the poor or to address the Rich Young Ruler? Maybe he looks at everyone the same–but I wonder if he held more pity for the Rich Young Ruler than he did for the poor Lepers he sometimes healed.

Whether Jesus addressed the wealthy or the poor, his goal was to call folks into a righteous relationship with God and neighbor. Jesus’ sermons and acts serve to convert the marginalized into human beings. His are acts of liberation for the oppressed and the poor.

But what of the rich and the powerful? In this encounter with the Rich Young Ruler, we see the way that they are to enter into the Kingdom. They also need to be converted into human beings.

If the poor become marginalized and dehumanized because of oppressive power and the crushing weight of social, economic, and religious systems, then the ones who wield that power and create or support those systems also become dehumanized, but in a different way.

In fact, if you read through Luke/Acts carefully, it becomes apparent that Luke isn’t simply rejecting the wealthy (it is valid to believe that Luke himself was wealthy at some point), but is instead deeply interested in the salvation of the wealthy, which requires them to divest of their wealth.

But let’s get practical. What is, ultimately, the goal of the wealthy divesting of their wealth? The goal is to share possessions…which is what we see in the early chapters of Acts. When wealthy people come to faith, they are to share everything with the poor, who receive it. But the poor and the wealthy don’t then go their separate ways, rather, they live as family. The goal of downward mobility isn’t mere charity, but solidarity.

To Luke, and to Jesus, Mammon (money) is like a false God who woos away the Rich and keeps them from being a part of the People of God. Mammon isn’t a neutral thing–it is a perilous tool that can either purchase solidarity or serve as a wall dividing the wealthy from the poor.

So, like the Rich Young Ruler, we USAmericans are being asked to embrace the Christian Jubilee.

So, given the way the early Church ran with Jesus’ economic vision (which was inspired by the Hebrew Jubilee), how should we live?

Since Jonas was an infant, Amy and I have taken him along to protests, occupations, and actions. He’s seen FBI raids, cop-watched, and trespassed as an act of foreclosure resistance. He’s even started getting into protest sign making.

Some folks commend us for this; others have criticized us for it. One of the most common criticisms I’ve heard has been that we’re “indoctrinating” Jonas.

Well, yes, I am indoctrinating my son. When I take Jonas to protests and tell him that fracking is “poisoning the land”, or when I limit his access to toy police cars and tell him that “the police are mostly naughty and sometimes nice” (unlike the firefighters who are mostly nice), or when I teach Jonas that “Jesus lives in the struggle of the poor.” I’m clearly trying to impart upon Jonas a set of beliefs and principles that are at odds with the mainstream. In large and small ways, I’m indoctrinating my kid.

I know some parents who shy away from such indoctrination. They simply let their children come to their own conclusions without too much influence. They may teach them how to read and write and tie their shoes and how to cross the street without dying, but they leave religion and politics up to the kid. And so, the kid is left to form their own opinions about things as they sit watching the Little Mermaid for the tenth time.

But, despite our best efforts, our children are being indoctrinated whether we like it or not. The dominant convictions and values of our society are embedded in billboards and cartoons and juice boxes and Happy Meal bags. Kids learn from Nickelodeon and Disney and McDonald’s how to think of themselves as consumers. They learn from public education how to accept authority uncritically. They quickly learn from their parents that those homeless people on the street are simply “the way things are.” They learn that their lives are normal–with their grass lawns and multiple cars and their plastic stuff.

Eventually, usually in school, they’ll learn that there are other little kids like them in the world who don’t have all of this grass and cars and plastic and they’ll be told that it is sad. They’ll learn that we should recycle and that they should vote when they grow up to make the world a better place. They’ll learn they should go to college, get a good job and do their best to help others (but not so much that they have to give up their grass lawns, multiple cars, and plastic stuff).

Our children are being indoctrinated whether we like it or not.

At least we can be intentional about it. Of course, I try not to be overbearing about it. I can’t force my kid to be what I want him to be; I can only show him the world and hope he navigates it well.

Folks often joke that, when Jonas hits his teen years, his rebellion will be to embrace republicanism. I hate when people make that joke (which I usually hear a few times a month). I suppose that it is possible that when Jonas grows up he’ll be a wealthy jerk with an SUV. I can’t force him to grow up into an anarcho-Christian. But I can teach him to see the world. I can show him the nature of injustice by taking him with me on protests and actions. I can show him what hospitality looks like by practicing it in our home. I can teach him how to share by sharing with those who come into our home. I can help him understand how the world used to be by reading him history that doesn’t white-wash the sins of the past. I can teach him what wild plants are edible. I can teach him how to mill grain and can food and make yogurt.

In other words, I can show him that another way is possible. That he doesn’t have to have a grass lawn, multiple cars, and plastic stuff. I can show him that some people challenge injustice, share with strangers, and build community. I can show him the good and the bad in the world without justifying the bad to maintain the good. Most people live feeling stuck on the path that they’re on. Even if they wanted to life differently, they wouldn’t know how. I can’t control how Jonas chooses to live his life, but I can show him how to live the sort of life I think is most just, loving, and beautiful. Whatever path he takes in life, he’ll always be able to find his way to the radical path.

Perhaps that is true. It may even be likely. I don’t have a problem with folks voting for Obama, though I’m electing not to vote for him.

Most of my friends are voting for Obama. Most of these friends are frustrated with Obama’s militarism and erosion of civil liberties and more. Drone attacks and dead children and human rights violations are bad, but it always can be worse.

This may be uncharitable, but I am suspicious that folks aren’t really that offended by the violence and oppression perpetrated by the president, his regime, and our system. I suspect that these things reside merely as abstractions in the imagination. Until people are willing to take to the streets to protest or begin to entertain revolution (preferably nonviolent), then I assume that most folks who vote are pretty content with how things are, and merely prefer one president to the other.

If people truly believed that drone strikes and assaults on civil liberties and increased corporatocracy are bad, then they should do something about it. Not just give lip service to those realities, shrug, and then just vote, as though that is discharging their primary political duty.

So vote. It may avert a deeper disaster. But it isn’t your primary political duty. Your duty is to stand against injustice and foster justice in its place. It is to share all good things rather than accepting consumer capitalism as “the best we can do.” It is to confront violence, build community, and cut ties with those things that you enjoy at the expense of others. It is to sow, in small ways, seeds of a new world…seeds of revolution. Our obligation is to reject evil, not simply to choose the least evil.

Unfortunately, due to a decrease in available funds, my financial support will end in April. Although I’m discouraged, I am grateful for what support I’ve received. Few people are given such freedom to experiment into the way of Jesus with such open-handed generosity.

Please pray for us. I’d like to continue in my work but don’t know how we’ll make ends meet after April. This will not only affect us, but also our community, which is also going through a time of transition as we seek to secure sustainable housing for ourselves and our guests.

Though the timing isn’t ideal (since we’re going through a housing transition as we lose Sattler House and are raising funds for the new house), I feel as though this may be an invitation from God to focus my sense of vocation. That’s a fancy spiritual way of saying “I think God wants me to stop doing so many things and pick just a few to do really well.”

So, if you’re someone familiar with my work–with Missio Dei or Jesus Radicals or the Iconocast or my teaching at Bethel Seminary or my speaking/writing,etc., I’d appreciate any insight you may have about what you’ve most appreciated. How has my work blessed you? What do you think should be my priority in the coming season?