We love Jesus in the way we like prescription medication...

We love Jesus in the way we like prescription medication;

we expect him to improve our outcomes.

We say the “way to financial peace,” is “to walk daily with the Prince of Peace….”

and read past “the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

We say Charlie Kirk “knew if he could get all of you rowing in the streams of liberty, 

you'd come to its source, and that's the Lord.”

Faith as “worldview” or antidote to sin (by which we mean embarrassment)

complete with exhortations to persuade your friends and family.

A friend once felt dismay a minister “so sound on other things”

concluded Genesis 1 didn't speak of 24-hour days.

My friend had less concern about how much 

his own interpretation borrowed from materialism.

We're more ready to pronounce on others’ soundness

than to examine how we're making that assessment.

When pastors abuse the people in their care,

we preach “forgiveness” to the victims.

In order to defend the “cause of Christ” 

by which we mean publishing, platform, and personality.

It's handy to believe “Jesus forgives” 

without a public reckoning.

We say God made marriage between one man and one woman.

And then we act like legislators can revise what God has made.

That's when I started wondering 

if we actually believe in God.

We were taught—because that's how God made marriage

we should not have sex outside of it.

Some pastors' preached against “emotional promiscuity,” 

by which they seemed to advocate emotional detachment.

Which on reflection looks less like loving God and neighbor, 

more similar to keeping sex as casual as possible.

We say on some occasions, if public figures can't keep their marriage vows, 

how can they keep their oaths of office?

Then when we think we need to vote for that kind of character,

we say, “we're not voting for a pastor.”

We liken presidents to King David, 

but we erase the prophet Nathan in our story. 

We say we're voting for someone “who is going to defend our way of life,

versus someone who is going to try to end that way of life.”

We say we celebrate the resurrection,

but we prefer “people who weren’t captured.” 

Which are statements of belief in politics and power:

Faith as garnish for a favorable Supreme Court.

We use the Conquest of Canaan in defense of Wounded Knee,

which I can only think to mourn.

The loss of life and the hardness of heart that also made Mosaic law

accommodate wives being put away and slavery by a people God emancipated.

How does this serve the God who calls himself 

a “father to the fatherless and a judge for the widows”?

We don't imagine how Jesus the crucified would see 

photo opportunities in front of caged inmates.

The unborn, we understand, are made in God's image,

but we act like the undocumented aren’t.

We imagine angels protecting presidential candidates

and leap to conclusions in favor of regimes that kill our neighbors in the streets.