Aliens in America: Day 29

Rebuilding Trust 

‘As aliens, live in reverent fear’ (1 Pet. 1:17). 

Trust in public life is at an all-time low. The grand canyon between word and deed is too much for many to scale.  

Maybe this started with church life; after all, we claim the grace-filled capacity for better living, morally speaking. Our failures could have invited a deeper reception of the grace that unites a divided heart and makes way for others to do the same.  

Instead, it becomes worldwide news. Certain watchdogs and bloodhounds may well want to protect the faithful but are merciless to fallen leaders. Regardless, the amplified divides of otherwise good men and women erode trust in the corporate body.  

Political life is something else. This election was a master class in the artful dodge. Neither candidate admitted a mistake nor a weakness. Ok, ok, it’s politics: dog-eats-unguarded-dog. But the tireless tirades against the other? What each refused to own (s)he flung with force across party lines. I’ve never experienced such vitriol. The candidates may not declare their own mortal sins, but they do the other’s.  

The result is a din of half-truths. Sure, Trump was a womanizer like many ‘old-school’ males and athletic in fending off charges for doing so. But Kamala was no chaste flower. She did more than prosecute criminals to ascend Willie Brown’s political ladder in San Francisco.  

Got it. The DC swamp is a swamp: more Macron than morally chaste. Don’t dress the schemers up in white linen.  

What can we do? Act like Christians. And don’t use other people’s subterfuge, including big leaders in Church or State, to hide our responsibility.  

Peter alerts us aliens: ‘As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you live in ignorance’ (1 Pet. 1: 14). This helps me understand the link between ignorance and conformity to lust. Not knowing Him, I couldn’t fully be reconciled to myself. Yeah, I realize we can know something of God’s order without the revelation of Jesus, e.g., through the witness of creation, including our own physical design.  

But the experience of being valued as a son of the Father who had mercy for his wound and vision for the more woke me up, turned on the light, and ignited a fire for authentic moral aspiration. Jesus forged a strong link in me between spiritual intimacy with the Father and that which empowered obedience. What pleased Him pleased me, too.  

I came to understand ‘evil desires’ as misdirected longing that frustrated the Father’s best for me. My (homo)sexuality couldn’t achieve relational maturity. It revealed a need for integration in route to outer directedness toward the other. The Father freed me to refuse conformity to the world’s schema. His transforming love provoked real growth.    

All well and good. But we aliens face a double whammy. Our fellow pagans whom we love may not love this new love of ours, this Father that Jesus reveals to us. They deride us: ‘You don’t party with us! You don’t worship the same sexy idols anymore! You think you are better than us!’ Peter details how aliens are alienated by old partners in crime who accuse them of self-righteousness and hypocrisy (1 Pet. 2:1; 4:1-4).  

The truth? We set boundaries with old friends because we are weak, not strong or superior in the least. How hard to lose our old sensual and emotional lovers; how arduous to sober up! When pinched and pressured, we crave the old deities and their devotees.  

We aren’t yet the chaste saint who can suffer well and long with old companions. Out of humble self-awareness, we must let go in order to take up Christ.  

We need to become better witnesses of personal weakness, we who have stumbled in false confidence. We are not that chaste. If we, the Church, could admit that—you, me, small voices with big testimonies—we would go a long way to make a way for other aliens like us.  

We might also rebuild trust with a watching world that wants reality. That must include the higher truth of what Jesus can do but also the real struggle saints endure to get there. 

New Trumpers need that witness. There’s nothing more damning than those who seek to ‘legislate’ chastity while living divided lives. Let’s invite all sinners to heal. Let’s offer preventative strikes for all the vulnerable. And let judgment begin with the new conservatives.    

“Thank You Jesus for freeing us for reality. We are chaste and we are becoming chaste; kind of whole, but not that much, still reaching and at times falling. Free us to be real in private and public and so do our part to restore trust in what it means to be Christian.’     

‘Jesus, You are the King, and we are first citizens of Your Kingdom. Would you free us for You in this election season, not to hide but to shine? You’ve always asked nothing less from Your elect whom You have made ‘strangers in a strange land’ (Ex. 2:22). Here we are, a people who don’t know what to do but who look and listen to our King.  

“Father of all holiness, 

guide our hearts to You. 

Keep in the light of Your Truth 

all those You have freed from the darkness of unbelief. 

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son.”’ 

Amen