“Moral Decay” and Christian Alarmism

I’ve always been a little confused about what the phrase “evangelical” means, but never more so than during an election season.

It seems like every pollster and pundit has an idea about who is getting the “evangelical” vote, who is pandering to “evangelicals,” and who is more in touch with their “evangelical” base.

As a Christian deeply interested in politics, it’s always amusing and often confusing to listen to what the “evangelicals” are apparently saying and doing.

From transgender bathroom bills to the upcoming presidential election, there seems to be one reoccurring trend that Christians across denominational lines are embracing: panic.

Everything is lost, the apocalypse is upon us, and all our leaders are going to hell.

For the less extreme, it sounds more like this: crying “moral decay,” pronouncing God’s judgement upon a sinful nation, bemoaning the declining Christian influence in America.

But it all boils down to this: panic. We’re freaking out, and while our solutions are varied, our alarmism is not.

So what do we do with our mutual doomsday-prophesying?

We try to fix it all. We try and pass all the moral legislation we can sneak under the noses of our sinful leaders. We use every resource at our disposal to squash out the outwards signs of “moral decay.” We’re running around with a couple buckets, trying to stop leaks from every room of the house.

But here’s the truth: it isn’t working.

We know the God that gives life and we’re selling band-aids at the morgue.

We keep trying to patchwork holiness together in sinful people, instead of counting on Jesus to transform their hearts.

When are we going to wrap our heads around the fact that the world is going to act worldly?

No, everything is not getting worse. It’s always been sinful and broken and lost. There is nothing new under the sun, after all.

When we spend all our time criticizing the world for being the broken place we already know it to be, we forfeit the precious time we have to tell it about the one who can heal it, the one who is constantly in the beautiful process of redeeming it.

We are supposed to be about the work of bringing heaven to earth and being His hands and feet so His will can be done, but instead we’re bickering about which color to paint our rotting house. We can’t give it life, only He can.

Is this a reason to give up on politics? No. It’s a reason to pick our battles wisely.

I’m not saying there aren’t some battles worth fighting, I’m saying that maybe they aren’t even battles at all.

Maybe it’s time to lay down the weapons.

Jesus was all about bring change to His culture and questioning the power of the ruling government. But He did it in all of the weirdest ways. He hung out with the broken and the sinful, He didn’t wage a war against them. His model was one less glamorous than pundits arguing on TV and much less efficient than starting an online petition. He loved people and He gave them life. And then those people told other people. And they loved each other. Honestly, they hung out with each other. They kept loving and eating and talking and living together. And it happened over and over again for thousands of years. And it’s the only thing that has ever truly changed the world – people who love Jesus loving other people.

We keep telling a sinful world to stop sinning, but instead of telling them about the one who can free them from the bondage of their sin, we’re trying to ban as much of it as we can.

Am I advocating for a world with no laws against immoral behavior? (Nice try, I was a debater in college and I can smell your skepticism from a mile away.)

No. I’m advocating for political platforms to take a backseat to loving Jesus and loving people. I’m all about just legislation and good political involvement, but I’m sick and tired of us thinking it can truly change people. And I’m sick and tired of us acting surprised when a broken world is broken again and unsaved people keep on sinning.

We worship an omniscient and omnipotent God, but we act baffled when earthly solutions fail again and again.

We’ve bought into the lie that talking the loudest means we’ll be heard, that having the most powerful people on our side will give us influence, that “taking back our country” will be for His glory.

Our Jesus never launched an effective marketing campaign. He ignored crowds to talk to children and He warned people not to follow Him if they wanted an easy life.

Maybe it’s time we stopped fighting “culture wars” and started following the example of the God who became man – loving God and loving people, over and over and over again.

 

 

 

pretty sins.

I’ve been treating some of my sins with kid gloves.

Mostly fear, insecurity, doubt, and whatever combination of the aforementioned keeps me up at night, tossing and turning.

Maybe this is normal, but right after all the graduation celebrations, it hit me like a brick: I know nothing and I have no idea what I’m doing. I guess I just thought that once I had passed the exams, walked across a stage and had a diploma in hand, I’d suddenly have more control. I’d wake up the next morning, bursting with confidence and wisdom, and take on the world. Instead, I’m more scared than ever. I have no idea what I’m doing.

But instead of dealing with this fear, I’ve been treating it like a positive attribute or a badge of honor that proves I really know how broken and fallen I am. Somehow, women have been taught that insecurity looks good on us. So we pull it on like a sweater and wear it around for a while.

I always come to find that some of it has rubbed off on me a little too deeply. But I keep putting it back on, because the real problem is that I don’t think there’s a problem.

All this fear and insecurity and doubt have one thing in common.

They’re pretty sins. They look nice and presentable. They’re usually masquerading as strengths, and they’re very socially acceptable.

There are quite a few of these, but my particular brand of pretty sin seems to be a fake humility that I wash over everything to make sure I never try too hard and fail. I’ve convinced myself that as long as a keep a sufficiently low view of what God can do with me; I’ll be pleasantly surprised instead of crushingly disappointed.

I’ve been taught a brand of humility that looks strangely like uncertainty and insecurity. I’ve been taught to not take up too much space or make too much noise.

If we were talking about lust or pride or thievery, it’d be easy to call it like it is. But these pretty sins are masters of disguise.

He tells us over and over and over again: do not fear. And I keep doing it anyway.

In this year of brave, I don’t have time to dress up my insecurity as bogus humility and my fear as “common sense.” I’m naming names and calling it like it is, not like I see it.

I’m calling my fear what it is: a lack of faith.

It’s so easy to move from believing I’m incapable without Him (a beautiful truth) to believing I am incapable of being used by Him (a dangerous lie).

So I’m not treating my insecurity like a little kid that just doesn’t know any better, I’m treating it like the passion-squelching, joy-robbing, God-doubting problem it is.

I’m not going to harbor it like a well-kept secret or display it like a hard-won award. I’m giving it to the God who provides ability and wisdom and strength. I’m repenting of the sin that is a sin – the insecurity that is really a lack of faith in my God.

I’m not just going to clench my teeth and try harder to not be so scared. (I’ve learned that doesn’t work out so well.) But I am going to be honest with myself and the God who knew what was going on this whole time. I’m going to stop asking for confidence or a stomach with a few less butterflies, I’m going to start asking for the faith that only His grace can give.

I’m going to repent of my wavering heart and fickle faith.

I’m going to take the faith He gives and keep asking for more.

What Competitive Debate Taught Me

It hasn’t really sunk in yet that this time, I’ll be leaving for good.

 

So far, it’s ending the way every semester ends – dorm rooms littered with haphazardly packed bags and dirty paper towels. A few long nights, piles of books from the library, and a couple stressful exams.

And now it’s all over and I’m wandering a mostly empty campus.

Even that isn’t too unusual for me: debaters are used to being on campus when everyone else is on break.

But as graduation nears, it’s slowly dawning on me that this time, I won’t be coming back.

 

 

When I think back to four years ago, it’s hard to remember who that person was.

I remember my parents tearfully dropping me off at the main academic building for my first debate meeting. I remember slowly climbing the stairs to the entrance, terrified of basically everything.

Only a few weeks later, I would be spending long nights at that same building and walking back to my dorm full of dreams and goals for my debate career and my life.

 

I didn’t know how much I would change. I didn’t know how much I needed to.

 

I complained about debate a lot this year, unfortunately. I wrote about it a lot, too – about how it turned me into this overly competitive, success-obsessed person; about how it pitted me against my friends; and about how I was constantly frustrated with the way our community treats people.

 

I don’t think I was wrong about all of those things, but as I prepare to leave my undergrad behind me, I’m realizing just how much I owe to debate.

 

I was competitive before debate, and I’ll be competitive after debate. I still struggle with the idol of success, and I’m still learning how to love people. I can’t blame debate for my own sins or the sins of others.

 

I don’t give it enough credit for what it has meant to me or how it has shaped me into the person I’m still in the process of becoming.

 

The truth is, I have no idea who I would be without the Liberty debate team.

 

I bounded onto Liberty’s campus a naïve and mostly ignorant kid (not that too much has changed there).  I thought I knew all the answers. My beliefs, whether religious or political, had never been questioned. I could have spent the rest of my four years at Liberty constantly having my own presuppositions “confirmed” by an endless sea of nodding heads.

I could have ended up right where my freshman year Five Year Plan intended me to be, and more importantly, I could have ended up right where I started: with a distant and undernourished relationship with Jesus.

 

It’s entirely possible that all of the changes that occurred over the last four years would have happened without the debate team, because God was going to work in my heart with or without the mechanism He happened to use.

But the one He chose was so incredibly perfect. (Shocker there.)

Here are some of the ways debate changed me and the things it taught me.

 

Debate forced me to confront the deepest and most crushing sin in my heart: the idol I had made of success and the affirmation of others.

 

It had always been there, but I’d never had a name for it. Debate put a shiny trophy on the pride I was harboring and a crushing “L” on the insecurity I was concealing.

It took an amorphous concept and made it concrete.

I spent a good chunk of time blaming debate for my sin. It made me feel better to shift the focus from my sinful heart to the activity that had brought it to light.

It’s amazing how much easier it is to find something to blame than it is to fall on your knees in repentance.

But as I’ve watched the same patterns repeat themselves in other settings, I’m realizing that it’s not debate’s fault. I actually owe a lot to debate – I could have spent my whole life never learning the words to describe this sin. I could have suffered from its crushing hold on my life without ever understanding what was holding me captive. Debate took something silently driving my life and exposed how loudly it was calling the shots.

 

Debate taught me to think well.

 

It taught me to question. It taught me to consider the benefits of positions I couldn’t imagine agreeing with. It gave me friends who were incredibly intelligent and kind….and disagreed with practically every fundamental belief I held. It taught me that very little is as cut and dry as I had been led to believe. It taught me that “because that’s what I’ve always thought” is a terrible reason to think anything.

As a freshman, this whole process terrified me. The idea of constantly having my beliefs challenged was freaky enough to scare off quite a few of us. Perhaps the greatest lesson debate gave me was overcoming that fear. And I’m eternally grateful that debate squashed my fear of disagreement and often refused to give me the affirmation of my own ideas I wanted to hear.

 

Debate taught me to love well.

 

Loving any large group of diverse and different people is hard. Add in an argumentative spirit in all of them and it’s even harder. Add in competition? You’re toast.

Debate forced me to spend basically all my time with a group of people who fought for fun. We spent long hours on bumpy buses and empty airports together. We saw each other at our absolute worst – when we were stressed, hungry, and exhausted.

You don’t always get to pick the people He asks you to love. Our little ragtag group was not exactly together by choice. We all loved debate, but that didn’t mean we would have chosen to do it with this exact group of people. There were days all I could do was ask Him to give me the compassion I couldn’t muster on my own.

There were days when my only prayer was “Lord, break my heart for what breaks yours, because these people make me want to break something else.”

Debate made it so I couldn’t just pick up and leave people that were frustrating or difficult. I couldn’t just live with a different person or hang out with a new group of friends. I had to learn to love people that He so clearly was asking me to love. (And for the record, I’m sure they also had to learn to love me.)

There were times when this was easy – late night ice cream, playing Catch Phrase for hours on the bus, seafood in Boston and pictures by the Gold Gate bridge.

But there were also times that were hard and dreams that were crushed and feelings that were hurt. And those lessons were the most valuable part.

 

This all is pretty specific to me. Not many people “get” debate – how it works or why it matters to us so much.

But everyone has something like it – something you’re passionate about, something that you dedicate a significant amount of your time and energy to, and something that has changed you.

None of this was really about debate, it was simply the mechanism He used to teach me what I needed to learn.

So at the end of this season, I’m celebrating the weird and wonderful things He has used to mold me into the person He wants me to be.

I don’t know what He’ll use during this next chapter of my life, but I have confidence that He will continue working in me. Because if He can use the unusual things He has been using, He can work in anything.

So I guess if there’s one thing I’ve learned the most, it’s to look for the odd and unexpected things He is using in my life, because they’re always there.

God Doesn’t Need You

I was a terrible prayer leader.

For those of you that don’t know, at my school a prayer leader is part of the leadership structure. They have a group of 3-6 students from their dorm that they meet with on Wednesday nights, pray with, and encourage.

And I was a terrible one.

The reason is simple. It’s not that I didn’t love those girls, it’s not that I didn’t wholeheartedly want to serve them, it’s not even that some of the expectations made me uncomfortable (that’s another blog post).
It was this: I was stretched too thin. I had too much on my plate. However you want to put it, I was too busy.

I was trying to finish my last semester of undergrad, apply for scholarships for grad school, work 20 hours a week, travel to debate tournaments every other weekend, teach a weekly Bible study, plan community service activities every free weekend, mentor the freshmen, and write two blog posts a week. And then I added on a weekly campus event, prayer groups, and leadership meetings. It was too much.

I talked a big game this semester about choosing my “yeses” carefully and saying no to anything less than what my God was asking of me.

Psh.

That sounds nice, but typing flowery sentences and forcing a cramped “no” out of your mouth are totally different ballgames.

I wrote about my human limitations while nurturing a sneaking suspicion in the back of my mind that I was different. Other people couldn’t do all of this, but I was special. I could take on so much more than other people. I had this whole thing figured out, and adding any kind of ministry or spiritual thing had to be a good idea, right?

Wrong.

Now I know the words I wrote out of my smarty-pants attitude, gushing with wisdom and knowledge, were…actually right. Darn it.

Like so many other things, the words I spoke so confidently in the abstract were coming back to bite me in the real world.

(Now I’m a little more cautious when I come up with some great idea for a new blog post. What great idea is going to become a little too real in the near future?)

But here is what I’ve learned now that the fluff has hardened into biting truth:

God doesn’t need me.

I had heaped responsibilities onto an already-bulging calendar because I thought it was my job to save everyone. I had been so miraculously changed by my God, I wanted everyone else to experience what I had. But I had also twisted the good command to make disciples into a success-seeking desire to take credit for everything He was doing.

But it’s true: He doesn’t need me.

Seriously. It’s so hard for us to get this, because we are constantly playing the game of humanizing God, and we’ve never met anyone who didn’t have needs, especially for other people.

But it’s true – He doesn’t need us. And He sure as anything doesn’t need me. (It only takes a few fall-flat-on-your-face catastrophes to remind me of that.)

But after enough fiery Hell sermons, we think that if we don’t go out and save the world, no one else will. We think it’s up to us to be the savior.

Which is so unbelievably silly, because THE SAVIOR OF THE WORLD HAS ALREADY COME.

He came. He conquered death on a cross and He tore the veil and He redeemed and restored and reconciled His lost people to Himself again.

He told us to go out and make disciples, but He didn’t tell us to save anyone.

He didn’t tell us to save anyone because we are small and sinful and we complain a lot. He knew that He would be doing the saving and we would be the ones either choosing to obey or to ignore the glorious invitation He so graciously offers.

He has commanded us to make disciples and He often asks a lot of us, but there is only one job that is ours: obedience.

(That’s kind of the theme of my semester, here’s more on that.)

It’s not a question of if the job will get done, because He will get His way.

We have far too small a view of our God and an oversized a view of ourselves if we think we can stop the plans of the omniscient, omnipotent, Creator of the universe.

We can’t.

It’s really just a question of if you’ll miss the opportunity to be a part of His plan. (And that is NOT an excuse to go right back to stressing, it’s a reason to get your booty moving and leave the heavy lifting to your heavenly Father.)

Him not needing you is good news. He isn’t a needy God, waiting on His people to do what He says. He’s not like earthly rulers, hoping the people follow their commands and nervously holding off revolts. This King of Kings is gracious enough to invite us into His glorious redemptive plan, but He doesn’t need our help.

 

This is reason for a sigh of relief, people.

This is reason for wholeheartedly tackling the dreams and goals He has placed in our hearts, because we have the freedom to make mistakes.

This is reason for a fearless fall into the work He has given us, without the strain of unmet expectations, the anxiety of finding your value in your work, or success-driven exhaustion.

This is reason for wholehearted worship of a God who does more than love us, He asks us to be a part of His glorious worldwide redemption.