Hello fellow wayfarers, 

Welcome to a newsletter that is not about news. Well, let me start over. This newsletter will not be about “news” in the sense that we usually think of it—namely whatever is being debated on cable networks and Facebook feeds right now. Sometimes, of course, we will interact with things that might also be showing up in those places, but that’s not what this letter is about. This newsletter is about “news” in the sense that the gospel is “good news.” It will be, as Walker Percy might put it, a “message in a bottle” seeking to remind you, and myself, about those “signposts in a strange land” that can remind us that there’s another king and another kingdom. 

That means that this newsletter will not be about “here’s the Christian position on…” whatever is raising blood pressures right now, but will instead be “Here are some things I’m thinking about or wrestling with right now; what do you think?” And that means we will wrestle with all sorts of stuff—from biblical passages to church life to books and music and film and, well, almost everything. Those Williams boys, Hank and Roger, they still mean a lot to me, see? 

Dueling Life Verses 

This week I was on a podcast in which the host asked me to mention a Bible verse that I would choose as a “life verse.” I couldn’t choose. Part of me wanted to say the verse that I have chosen to have inscribed on my tombstone: “And he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom’” (Lk. 23:42). And that makes sense because it encompasses everything—the centrality of Christ, the already/not yet of the kingdom of God in him, the overwhelming mercy of God for even the worst of us, and the grasping empty hand of faith. 

But another part of me wanted to say, “You are my beloved Son and with you I am well pleased” (Lk. 3:22), since my pastor once pointed out that he thinks this is the verse I have quoted most often in all my preaching and teaching. I’ve never measured it but I wouldn’t be surprised because it’s the verse that, as it applies to me, I have the most trouble believing, the verse I have to remind myself over and over again is true. 

In the end I chose both. The question was for a podcast and was low-stakes, but I wrestled with it, and couldn’t decide why that was. Then it dawned on me that both verses are about the same reality—one frames the start of the Christian life and the other frames the end. In the first case, Jesus identifies himself with sinners, in the waters of baptism, and is received by God with a verbal affirmation. In the second, a sinner identifies himself with Christ, and is received by him. In that case, what God said was true of Jesus is now true of this executed criminal. 

My gravestone will echo that crucified thief, because that’s, I pray, what my whole life will be about: by the undeserved and mostly invisible mercy of God in Christ, seeking first the kingdom. And my only hope is that my life will be found not in that tomb but hidden in Christ, where I expect, by faith, to hear: “You are my beloved child in whom I am well pleased.” 

For some people, it is hard to believe that we are, like the crucified criminal, deserving of judgment, that we are spiritually and morally bankrupt on our own. For many others, it’s hard to believe that God is not angry with us, that he really loves us, that he is as pleased with us as he is with Jesus. But both are true. Both take a lifetime to learn. 

So, for now, I will choose both verses. 

The Death of a Hero 

Speaking of gravestones, the Coronavirus pandemic meant that I couldn’t get to the funeral of a man who was, and is, my hero. His name was M.L. Faler, and he was my boyhood pastor. He might have been the calmest person I have ever known, which was odd for preachers in our kind of church at the time. One woman said in my hearing, “Brother Faler’s more of a teacher than a preacher,” and even as a twelve-year-old I knew she meant that he didn’t scream in the pulpit, and that he actually engaged with the text of Scripture. He had gravity and weight, and he thought the Bible and the Spirit were enough. I never saw him use bullying or intimidation, never saw him sacrifice his convictions for his ambition or his self-protection. 

He was real. And, as one who was spun out into a spiritual crisis seeing so much inauthenticity in the racism and violence and sexual hypocrisy of Bible Belt Christianity, his very existence was an argument. He never knew that I, and others, were watching his integrity and his cross-bearing. But we were. 

Not one day has gone by when I haven’t thought about M.L. Faler. He is the first image that comes to mind every time I step behind a pulpit because it always seems to me as though he ought to be the one behind every pulpit. I thought about him often when I taught preaching years ago because, on the first day of class, I would ask the students to go around the room and say who most influenced their preaching. I would be saddened by how few of them would mention the name of anyone they had ever met in person—mentioning instead a disembodied voice they had heard on the Internet or read in print. 

I think those “far off” voices are necessary. They certainly were for me. I needed C.S. Lewis and Frederick Buechner and Carl Henry and Walker Percy, and all those columns every month from Chuck Colson and J.I. Packer and Philip Yancey in Christianity Today. I needed the music of Michael Card, one of the most influential shapers of how I learned to read the Bible. These were a kind of “Radio Free Bible Belt” for me, messages in a bottle from the big, broad world of Christianity out there, reminding me that the gospel is not some aspect of local culture right along with the right pronunciation of “Biloxi” (Bill-uck-see, not Bill-Ox-see) and the proper wording of the second-person plural (which is “y’all”). I needed all of that. 

But I also needed someone whose life I could “test” close-up, to see if there was something “real” there. I needed to see someone who I knew would fold his hands when he was ready to leave somebody’s house, someone who could be exasperated but not throw a fit, someone who didn’t care a bit for his personal branding, and wouldn’t have known what that was, but loved Jesus. 

In the 1980s, I was really thrown by the sexually and economically predatory television evangelists who were revealed to be what they were on television. One of them, Jim Bakker, is back on television and back in the news, over his selling of freeze-dried food for the Apocalypse and a special cleanser that he claimed would kill Coronavirus, if you just sent him a check. But every time I saw one of those hucksters on television, I could turn around and see M.L. Faler. He was never on television, and now he’s gone. And, even now, especially now, he’s the one whose life I would rather have. 

SBA Loans and the Mission of the Church 

I wrote earlier about why I don’t think a church that applies for Small Business Administration-backed loans is in violation of an entanglement of church and state, any more than a church that accepts FDIC protection of their bank accounts would be. Dave Ramsey thinks otherwise. Ramsey, of course, has well-known views about debt of any kind, views that I think are reasonable and in good-faith. I don’t think it is true that acceptance of these loans invites government interference in the church, and I say why here, but I do think there are reasonable arguments as to why a church should or should not apply for these loans. 

The best argument as to why I’m wrong about this is, in my view, Bart Barber’s, which can be found here. 

The main thing is that we affirm together that government funding of the church or its mission is wrong. Most of us are agreed on that. We just disagree about whether this is that. And, on this one, let’s extend, as most people already are, Romans 14 charity about encouraging everyone to act according to conscience.

Quote of the Moment:

“Worship power—you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need every more power over others to keep that fear at bay.”

--David Foster Wallace, This Is Water