January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month. This is my field of work and want to share a few thoughts about it.

The sordid story of Epstein, his people, and the victims who survived his sex tourism industry is the stuff of American entertainment and weaponry of political takedowns. It’s another outrage. Another meme. Another opportunity for performative moralizing.

Given our national curiosity and propensity to sit in the scorner’s seat, it is rarely about the survivors. If it was, there would be justice in the high places as well as the low.

The strength of the demand for more proof that Trump and his boys are womanizers and sexual abusers reflects many people’s craving to bring down shame on their political and cultural enemies. Some people’s public pity for survivors fan the flame to score political points. We can treat news, and photos, and survivors’ stories like gladitorial combat. A game we watch. Are we not entertained?

As for Trump and Epstein–their desire and entitlement and access to young girls is old news. The survivors have been talking about it right under our noses. They have been shouting. They have been demanding accountability. And instead of believing them, we demand more proof. We have proof. We’ve had proof, and yet, Trump remains as free as ever.

This is how the game works: Men and women use their power to take advantage of and control others with little to no accountability.

The story of the super rich super connected party guy who can buy you the moon and supplies his friends with all the sex with whoever and however they want is a story as old as time. Whether it’s condemnable depends on their position and place in the world they inhabit and they have groomed the world to believe that they are too big to fail.

Do we, as a society, have the collective will and courage to believe survivors about what they are saying happened to them, and will we hold offenders accountable no matter who they are? No matter how powerful, how beloved, how important, how intertwined into the fabric of our community.

Sex trafficking of minors is child abuse.

It’s child sexual abuse. When a minor receives money or something of value as a payment for sex, it’s called sex trafficking. Anyone under the age of 18 cannot by law consent to commercial sex. Those that do are considered, by law, victims and not criminals.

This reflects the responsibility of adults not to pay for sex acts with minors. It reflects that the burden of keeping minors safe is on us adults which is why those with knowledge of minors who are sexually harmed are just as responsible to stop the harm from happening or recurring. Adults are responsible for keeping abusers accountable for their crimes.

Children and youth who experience child sexual abuse, such as sex trafficking, usually suffer silently for a long time, learning to patch over the trauma of that abuse with the resources available to them.

When survivors do break silence, they can face shame, accusations and abandonment by the very ones who ought to care for them. Research shows us that the healing process begins at the point of disclosure when there is immediate and nonjudgmental emotional support. Withholding support can compound the trauma.

That’s why we say “Believe Survivors.” It doesn’t mean survivors tell the truth exactly as it is and was in every situation. It means they are the experts of what happened to them, and they are saying things, or attempting to say things at great cost to themselves emotionally, physically and even materially. Believing survivors is how we show our love for fellow humans.

All survivor stories are unique, but all survivor stories of child sex trafficking have these things in common: a perpetrator, and an exchange of something of value. There was an agreement. An offer. An acceptance. A promise made and a promise kept, and the understanding–vaugue at first–became very very clear eventually. Whether the exchange is floated on the corner downtown, in someone’s house, club, DMs, gold club, nightclub, slum, yacht, public restroom or private island. The plain looking kid in the gray hoodie and jeans at the bus stop looking for a safe place to stay and the glammed up fourteen year old agreeing to go to a party with her “friend” to meet “famous people” are the victims.

Child sex trafficking happens all around us, but most of us have been enculturated to associate it with curated and time-bound crime show episodes. We have also been enculturated to sexualize young girls who dress or behave a certain way, so we cannot see that child, who lacks the brain development to sense danger, in any other way than fast and loose.

To the outsider they are troubled kids, at risk youth, fast girls looking for free drugs. Bad girls hanging around older men. Or girls on the up and up, networking for their careers. They are hiding in plain sight.

The Epstein survivors were “hiding” in plain sight. Their stories are not a political football, but a call to action to end sexual violence, whoever the perpetrators.

A Challenge

Next time you have the opportunity to listen to someone’s story whether it is shared in a personal conversation, or at a press conference, or gossiped about by your friends and family–you are ready to listen, to speak up, and to believe them and educate others.

And I promise you, the survivors who are certainly in your circle will notice and perhaps get the courage to speak up to someone about what happened to them. Perhaps it will be you, and you will be ready to believe them.

As for Trump, I do believe a reckoning is coming, but I don’t know when or how. The whole Bible talks about how it usually doesn’t end well for people like him.

If you are a survivor of any kind of sexual abuse, please know there are people who are ready to hear you and believe you: Click here

Act 1

Oh how it groans

Under the feet,

Around, above groans of

Creation, whose Creatures,

Commissioned with its care

To hold and keep in love–

As the Creator made, saw, and named it Good–

Did not do.

What was meant

Men bent

To gold and land lust

Sold souls, bodies

With earth’s exploitation forsaking

Original commission, taking

For self: rape

Sea and soil foundering, and founded

Kingdoms fiefdoms stolen lands huge

Babbling golden towers where words become unmade.

Where those who breathes God’s air

crown themselves, Nebeduchadnezzar like, best biggest adored worshipped golden icon molten lust and steal and steel and grope and grab and revile

furthering the curse on

Beast oppressed.

But.

Act 2

The Man

of promised first fruits

Arrived laid

Lowly loved

Embodied

Meekness mercy

Now with

Future winnowing

Will lay low

The mighty haughty vile blasphemer destroyer of words with antispeech

Boasting massive huge worshipped towering golden to the stars reviling

Whose name

Will be unremembered

When returns the Man

Act 3

When returns the Man

To reign over the destroyers

To reverse the curse

And heal the groaning land,

Answering the stricken rocks,

weeping waters, Soiled waters and Sorrowful trees

Answering the Broken mountains and Barren seas

Who mourn, crying out:

HOW long oh Lord?

When will we be released

From the insolent men?

NOW,

Breathes God,

Now

Proclaims God

Now

Louder than the angel heralds God NOW IS OUR TIME

And you will grow rest breathe thrive drink expand upward downward

To the stars and deeps to feed and be fed again on earth

as it is In heaven

As it was meant to be

May it be so-It shall be so-

Be so.

For those familiar with Charles Dickens’ story A Christmas Carol, what comes to mind when you hear the name Ebenezer Scrooge?

Could it be an image of a miserly man who refuses to give, lend, love, or share? Is it an icy cold businessman who withholds fair wages to his impoverished employees? Could it be his deeply cynical “humbug” response to all good things?

The American novelist, William Faulkner, often gave his detestable characters names that begin with “Sn–” such as Snope, which has the same ring as the words snake, snitch, snicker, snoop, and snot. For Dickens’ part, the word Scrooge reflected Scrooge the man and his morals. For the naming, Dickens was able to draw from England’s rich lexical heritage. Consider:

Scrooge: generic for “miser” was in use by 1905 due to Dickens’ 1843 story “A Christmas Carol.” Scrooge, an 18th century variant of the word Scrouge (to squeeze, press or crowd someone) and Scrudge, a 18th century provincial word that is the source of Scrounge, which means to acquire something by irregular means, This was a 1915 alteration of the word scrunge, which means to search stealthily, rummage, or pilfer. Scrunge may have come from Scringe, meaning to “pry about” and to “push or jostle” which was also a 1755 Cockney slang for a crowd. Source: https://www.etymonline.com/

All that to say, the English “Scr” words describe, well, Ebenezer Scrooge.

Dickens describes him as a sad, wealthy, mean, lone man who rejects others and their stories of suffering and loss. He rejects his own family, because he believes they are only after their money. He rejects himself by living in cold and isolated austerity, friendless and joyless. He even rejects his money, as misers do–rejecting its purpose and saving for literally nothing.

The word “humbug” refers to deceptive or false talk or behavior. ES’s constant use of the word reveals how he sees everything as false and deceiving: good masking the trick and trap he will not fall for. He will not be taken advantage of–he sees it a mile away, and sits satisfied in his own denial of humanity. Humbuggery is a cowardly choice, and often borne out of a self-righteous need to be right at everything rather than risking rubbing elbows with others who may reveal that one is not right after all.

We have considered the Scrooginess of Scrooge, so what about the Ebenezer part? Some may be acquainted with the line from the hymn “Come Thou Fount” that has stumped church kids for decades: “Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I’ve come.” That line is rooted in the time described in 1 Samuel when the hearts of God’s covenant people turned back to the Lord. It was a time of repentance and faith, which resulted in God delivering them from their enemies.

So the Judge Samuel “Took a stone and set it up…and named it Ebenezer, for he said, ‘Thus far the LORD has helped us.’” The word refers to a token that testifies to the LORD’s help and kept promises. It is a strong statement of faith and commitment to following the Lord.

So why “Ebenezer” for such a Scrooge? And why in the world is the story named “A Christmas Carol?”

The answers to both questions are in the name itself. Scrooge was faced with the certainty of his judgement and death at his future gravestone, revealed to him by the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come. It became his own stone of remembrance, signifying Ebenezer’s repentance and transformation.

It was at the grave that Scrooge could no longer reject the truth as “humbug.” He, undeceived, renounced his own cynicism, burying it in his own grave, and believed in a Good that the shrewd businessman was not able to obtain or to bargain with. Released from the death grip of judgment, he completed his repentance by restoring Shalom to all those lives he impoverished.

The Christmas Carol was told in five chapters which Dickens called staves. A staff refers to the five lines on which musical notes are written. Ebenezer’s transformation is told in the fifth “stave,” completing the staff on which the carol notes could then be written.

This last stave is a celebration of light and laughter: Ebenezer embodies the Christmas Carol as he moves through church, town, and homes with the lightness and uninhibited joy of a child, making restitution as best as he knows how and affirming the full humanity of each one he meets.

And suddenly, Ebenezer is no longer alone.

Come Thou Fount (Official Music Video) | Celtic Worship

Sept 30, 2024 , The Times News posted my letter to the editor, and for the record, that I wrote, though they supplied the unsavory title, “Morrow would be disaster in state office.”

To the editor:

Michele Morrow is running for state superintendent of public instruction and wants to oversee the education of 1.3 million children yet refuses accountability for her calls for insurrection, “death to all traitors” and pay-per-view public executions of her political enemies. She tears down North Carolina public schools and mischaracterizes teachers and students as indoctrinators, groomers and criminals who must be surveilled, subdued, and removed. She threatens to refuse education to immigrant children. She is loyal to the plan that would create a “credentialing body to certify teachers who embrace patriotic values” that mimics oppressive regimes where “death to traitors” actually happens. And all in the name of God. There is a counterfeit version of Christianity that relies on power and conquest rather than service and love. The night before the Lord Jesus’ crucifixion he said, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another,” and by loving one another “everyone will know that you are my disciples.” This love blesses, it is courageous, meek and good. A christo-patriot who regularly calls for violence on one another is not doing God’s work. God bless America is a prayer, not a pass. We can acknowledge failure and where reform must take place. We can respond to bad actors in the system, and we can acknowledge where change must happen. But we cannot excuse violence and chaos as a means of repair. Ms. Morrow lacks the temperament, character, resolve to represent all North Carolina K-12 students, and respect of the office of N.C. Department of Public Instruction superintendent.

Why did I write this?

Because there are many like Michele who openly practice bigotry, racism and nativism while claiming the name of Christ and because Michele is a public figure who craves power over a system she clearly despises, and that will harm marginalized students and their families.

I am convinced our witness as Christians hinge on these very issues and I believe it’s time to speak out against christian nationalist bullies who mischaracterize the ways and words of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Onward and upward!

This religion is of a sort that is public, and not private; plenty abroad, but none at home; plenty without, but none within; plenty in the tongue, but none in the heart. They are altogether unprofitable, good for nothing, they bear no fruit. — J.C. Ryle

This attempt at a story says what I’ve been trying to say for a long time. My friends, I am intensely grieved at the constant scapegoating of marginalized communities in our country to cover our own spiritual wastelands. But as I write this, we have entered another chapter of the cruel and demonic attacks on a group of our fellow image bearers in Ohio. Please read here and here.

Not only does the racist and xenophobic celebrity incite violence against children and their families, he further vows to do this.

I don’t know how I can reach the hearts of my fellow Christians who use pro-life arguments to be silent and willfully ignorant about the treatment of innocent life.

Friends, have you ever talked to the boomers who regret their inaction during the Civil Rights Movement? The silence and happy ignorance in their churches? Their regret of not marching at Selma? I have. And it motives me to continue to lift this up. Hand to God, as a white Christine, I believe my witness depends on it.

So here’s my story.

PART ONE

Family driving to church and passing a man with a sign: “Homeless, Hungry”

DAD: Doesn’t he see all the help wanted signs down the road?

MOM: [shaking head] I bet he got participation trophies when he was a kid.

[Dad laughs.]

CHILD 1: Our school makes you earn trophies!

[Mom, nods approvingly.]

DAD: That’s right honey. That’s why we sacrificed. Mother canceled her gym membership so you can attend that school so we can afford a school that teaches real history and biblical economics.

CHILD 2: Didn’t we get big government checks?

MOM: That’s — -

DAD: (talking over Mom)The checks are reimbursements for choosing not to send you both to government controlled racist indoctrination centers.We are actually saving the state tax money, so the checks are reimbursements for our wise choices.

MOM: It’s NOT welfare.

CHILD 2: Cool, because being on welfare is wrong. It ‘s because you’re lazy and don’t want to work–that’s what my teacher says.

DAD: Yes son, that is right. Responsible hard working people are not poor. The Bible says if you don’t work….

FAMILY: [in unison]You don’t eat!!!

CHILD 1: [pointing] Like that guy with the sign!

DAD: [self assured] Exactly!

PART TWO

Family passes a community center with a sign “All Are Welcome” and a pride flag. Dad snorts. Mom shaking head.

CHILD 1: I’m glad that OUR school doesn’t allow those flags.

DAD: That reminds me, Karen, did you remember to order my Honor Our Heritage Dixie flag car magnets?

MOM: Yes dear it’s on your desk.

CHILD 1: [recognizing the truck in front of them] Look! Mr Robbie Lee has one!

CHILD 2: We learned about the real reason for the War of Northern Aggression. It was–

FAMILY :[in unison] States rights!!

[The family stops at another light. Mom glanced nervously at the row of buildings with a coin laundry, thrift store, outreach ministry and a walk in recovery center. A sprawling homeless encampment occupied the corner. A mother sits on a box, holding a baby and feeding a little boy. Recovery center staff were moving boxes from a delivery truck.]

DAD: [snorting] Probably drugs.

MOM: [shakes head]Those illegals are destroying our country.

DAD: [without any context whatsoever]Our tax dollars at work.

CHILD 1: Dad, this place is really sketch.

MOM: [checks door locks] I wish it weren’t so close to the church. I worry about our children.”

CHILD 1: [whispering to Child 2] I think I saw a harlot.

DAD: [aggrieved] Our hard earned taxes down the drain.

PART THREE

Family sitting in car in church parking lot.

DAD: Ok everyone, grab your bibles!

MOM: [in judgy whisper] Look at what that girl is wearing. I can’t believe her mother let her out of the home.

DAD: [eyeing her closely] Let’s make sure we don’t sit behind her. We don’t want to tempt Child 2.

MOM: [eyeing her closely] Absolutely. I’m going right now and tell my sunday school class to pray for her, and for our men not to be tempted.

DAD: Don’t forget to pray that that woman who wants to put porn in our local school doesn’t get elected.

[Mom nods seriously, Dad sighs deeply, both caring for the children.]

DAD: I’m right behind you, I just need to get this call from work.

[Dad glances around furtively, and spends a few minutes in the car with his favorite website. Mom walks across the parking lot, slips a pill in her mouth and chases it with her Starbucks. Waves to her pharmacist.]

MOM: [waving] We need to have a golf day soon!

PART FOUR

Family in the car, driving out of the parking lot.

MOM: David and Sandy want to play golf. I’ll text him saying we are free next Saturday.

Mom takes Dad’s phone and searches for a messaging app. Dad accelerates, wanting to beat the Sunday lunch crowd at The Meat Cleaver. Mom suddenly screeches, startling Dad, who swerved into the parked truck at the recovery center. Mom, bleeding from forehead, Child 2 with broken collarbone, Child 1 crying and wailing loudly, Dad, unharmed, finds his phone.

Helpers poured out of the laundromat, and recovery center, gently helping them out of the car, bringing blankets and bandages. The mother of the baby and young boy hovered over Child 1 and Child 2, comforting with low sweet words. Her little boy laid hands on them both, mimicking what his little heart had soaked in from his community, and began to pray. A woman with a name tag and lanyard with her photo helps his bleeding wife out onto the sidewalk.

DAD: [startled] That’s my w — -

HELPER: [meeting his gaze] Sir. I am a nurse and first responder.

Dad’s phone dinging with texts from church folks who were going to stop, but all had places to be, texted they’d pray for him. Robbie Lee from church slows his truck to a stop.

ROBBIE LEE: [eyeing the crowd] You okay? You need some back up?

Dad shakes his head as an elderly man brings him an icepack and styrofoam cup of coffee.

Who were the neighbors to this family?

LAW EXPERT: The one(s) who showed (them) mercy.

JESUS: Go and do likewise.

— Luke 10:36–37

There was a woman who was also a gardener and lived in a happy neighborhood where people walked their dogs and rode their bicycles. The gardener tended a patch of land, behind an old shed painted yellow, where she raised heirloom roses and loved them dearly. Neighbors on their evening strolls or morning power walks stopped to admire the roses in the morning and evening light. The gardener loved the “over the picket fence” conversations with fellow green thumbs, and giving advice to those who aspired to be.

One year the gardener decided to share her beautiful roses with her friends, so she transplanted a few of her favorite rose bushes to a specially designed bed closer to the sidewalk. She painted a sign with bright green letters, and staked it securely into the good soil: Neighbors, please take a rose or two to brighten your day.” The gardener sat at her window and watched children, elderly ladies, and couples stop to take home cuttings.

The next year she refreshed the sign with a new coat of paint and offered roses once more to her dear neighbors. But word got out about the free flowers and people came by and took more than “a rose or two.” One enterprising soul harvested every single rose, and sold them at her floral shop, turning a 100% profit. At the end of the season, her beloved rose bushes were decimated.

This so distressed the gardener that she decided not to set out the sign the following year, but unfortunately, the people came anyway, including the enterprising shop keeper. The gardener wept when they said “What did you expect after you gave away roses for free?” She dug up the sidewalk rose beds and threw the violated rose bushes in the garbage. She didn’t even want to salvage them, so bitter was her heart.

The next spring the gardener quietly tended her beloved roses behind the old shed painted yellow. But oh, when those greedy thieves didn’t see the roses where they ought to have been, they trespassed and trampled down the lovely beds in search of what they felt entitled to.

That last year, the roses did not thrive and struggled, neglected, beneath mats of bindweed and beetles, no longer so tempting. The people walked by, searching for any sign of a well-tended rose bed. She sat at the window, joyless.

“At least I am safe,” she said.

Oh Rose thou art sick.

The invisible worm, That flies in the night

In the howling storm:

Has found out they bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

-William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, 39th Plate, c. 1789

Plot

Remember the book The Help? It was a great read, and a great movie with a stellar cast, featuring one of my favorite literary structures of a book within a book. Remember how the Black “help” and “white trash” woman from Sugar Ditch who married into money were kept in their places on the lowest rungs of the social ladder? Remember Skeeter, who bucked the social norms and used her place and resources to persuade the nannies and mamas and housemaids to tell their stories of raising the white babies who grew up to hate and oppress them?

We loved watching Minny get back at the sad white lady on the top rung who got a taste –literally–of her own medicine and we loved how Skeeter wrote it all in her book in a way that ensured the sad white lady’s silence.

It was risky work for all of them, and while Skeeter risked a mother’s disapproval, losing a boyfriend and social status, the real heroines of the story risked losing so much more.

Then came the beatings, the arrests, the destruction, the burnings, jail time and death. We were shocked. We were sad. We shook our heads, but did we remember, as the story unfolded, that the whole plot hinged on a white porcelain toilet?

Remember the Minny pie? Minny made the ultimate statement against the health initiative that determined segregated bathrooms were healthier for White folks and their children. So in the story, the white families had to build or arrange for other separate bathroom facilities for the Black help who worked in their homes. Friends, what goes into the toilet? Urine, vomit, blood, and feces. But racist imaginations and science determined that the skin of Black people was dirtier.

Consider the legacy of the late Senator Byrd, 1917–2021, who enjoyed a long and successful career despite his strenuous attempts to withhold liberty and justice from the entire Black peoples.

Segregation of public facilities — including water fountains and restrooms — was officially outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964, after a rare cloture vote in the U.S. Senate. (Sen. Robert F. Byrd, D-W.Va., a former Klansman, spoke against the bill on the Senate floor for 14 hours, 13 minutes straight.) — When did segregated water fountains end in Southern states?

Do you think Sen. Byrd suddenly changed his racists priorities and values once segregation was repealed? What roots remain?

I remind us of the above to say this: one of the reasons given for the Confederate monuments to remain standing (and guarded) before courthouses and other bedrock institutions was to remind us of history so we won’t repeat it. So if the statues must remain, so should the whole history of these United States. The parts that offend white people should nevertheless be remembered, memorialized, and taught to our children.

Pivot

If we want to publicly shame, demonize or control a group of people, when we want others to beg for their removal or displacement, say they are disease ridden. Say they bring disease into the places you live. Incite fear and disgust. Use lies to dehumanize them and use words and images to paint pictures of plague ridden rodents, pouring out of a hole, climbing over a wall, coming after your women and children and infesting your community.

Tragically, this is familiar and standard language for Donald J. Trump and those just like him. This is how Donald J. Trump (and those just like him) regularly describe fellow humans who are immigrating to the United States: insane, disease-ridden murderers and rapists who are pouring out of prisons and invading America.

There are always people who take advantage of vulnerable people fleeing or living in desperate situations. The US is full of them. And of course the lack of sensible border screening and security provides opportunities for traffickers and those carrying fentanyl to slip in and ruin lives, but that is not the case with all border crossers. Such broad brush assessments are cruel, childish, and ignorant. Unfortunately, many would rather parrot narratives that support internal and unexamined bias.

The political dog whistles that Trump and his followers love to use is frightening because we’ve been here before! People who fear his impact have been there before. They know what is at stake.

There is not a Minny Pie big enough to deal with it all.

Participate in Change

Can we commit to kindly and candidly challenge narratives that dehumanize our fellow image bearers, whoever they are?

In the end, it really is all about loving your neighbor as yourself. It’s not that complicated.

I would like to recommend these resources to help us be better informed about immigration and border crossing:

The first is let’s learn some helpful vocabulary so we’re all talking about the same thing: Terminology — Freedom for Immigrants

Justice In Motion whose mission is to Protect migrant rights by ensuring justice across borders.

Interactive World Migration Report 2024- Fascinating!

Green Card Game, an online, interactive ‘choose your own journey’ game created by the Cato Institute. Great group activity.

Immigration Coalition Providing clean drinking water, food, and essential items to Immigrants, Migrants, and Asylum-Seekers along the Southern Border.

And fold in a generous dose of humility

We Americans love a good military, good guys vs bad guys framework, so “foreign invasion” is a favorite description when a lot of people, goods, or rock bands enter United States territory from the same region. So we may as well be honest about the foreign invaders of this country who actually DID bring disease and death.

When the Europeans arrived, carrying germs which thrived in dense, semi-urban populations, the indigenous people of the Americas were effectively doomed. They had never experienced smallpox, measles or flu before, and the viruses tore through the continent, killing an estimated 90% of Native Americans. — PBS

Thanks for reading! I’m also available for feedback, pushback, or conversation!

The Wise Woman builds her house but a foolish one tears it down with her own hands. Proverbs 14:1

This verse has had a tucked in tight place in my heart that has borne me along in the ebb and flow of my life. The extraordinary and unexpected picture it paints sticks to the brain: it is a stark saying full of promise and warning.

The Old Testament Proverbs is of the genre of ancient wisdom literature, and must be read as such or else we could draw some pretty weird conclusions!

Proverbs are sayings that capture truth in memorable figures of speech. The Old Testament Proverbs often set before the reader a path to be taken and a path to be avoided. They do not hold much nuance or complexity, nor are they prescriptive “thou shalts”, but descriptive of the ways the world normally goes for the “wise” and the “foolish.” They are intended as goads to the conscience, to provoke or avoid certain behaviors and actions. As King Solomon writes at the outset, his proverbs are “for gaining instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity.” Proverbs 1:2

A vivid word picture plus the use of antithesis aids learning and memory by setting extreme opposites beside each other: Wise women build households, foolish foolish women tear them down.

Not all proverbs are gendered, but this one is, and it communicates the power women have to bless and create or curse and destroy. Unfortunately, the verse has been subjected to a lot of spinning and enculturation that lays extra biblical burdens on women in the name of being “biblical.” A narrow interpretation of this verse has been shaped into a discipleship tool that requires women to fit into a man-made mold of evangelical traditions. For example, it assumes the nuclear family (two parents plus kids) with a stay at home wife and mom is the only structure to raise children “biblically.”(1) This approach fails to account for the complexities of life in a fallen work which often dictates something different than such a narrow conception for faithful, godly women.

I have spent time in China and alongside Chinese friends in the States through which I learned and unlearned many things. For one thing, it also changed the way I read the Bible. It helped me to see that ideas I once held as “biblical” were often the result of being born in a particular place and time.

The writings of our Old and New Testaments were collected and canonized by Christians across several centuries and lands with the Divine intent to make them universally applicable, as the spiritual Kingdom of God is not tied to one nation or generation.

It takes work and the illumination of the Holy Spirit to understand the text without the trappings of one culture in place and time. It also takes work to apply the principles without forcing them to fit our dearly held traditions, or knowledge gaps of global history that lie outside of one’s direct experience. For example, books on “church history,” often leave out what was happening in Ethiopia, or other non-white histories and cultures. See Vince Bantu’s book A Multitude of All Peoples: Ancient Christianity’s Global Identity.

Turning back to the Proverbs 14:1, let’s look at the words written in its original language

In the original language of the Old Testament, the word “house” is translated from the Hebrew word “bayith.” Bayith refers to a dwelling place, a habitation, home, or a generation of people. For example, bayith describes a house that a person is born into, a house that is entered, the wombs of the household of Abraham, God’s house, and a mother’s household. The Hebrew word also refers to a jail, court, or prison.

To get beyond the roof and four walls idea to a more universal application, we can think of the domain: a place of activity. Historically and globally, homes and households are busy places of communal rest, feasting, industry, and economy that supports the household. It is the place where people primarily reside, where others also reside with us, gather with us at the place we find ourselves: homeless encampment, military barracks, or shop, no matter how simple or grand. Home, as the saying goes, is the place you hang your hat.

So pulling together these pieces, we see that a wise woman builds her dwelling place. She uses her generative resources of knowledge, strength, fertility, and ingenuity to construct a dwelling place for generations. Households and dwelling places are built to be sound, lasting, a place of nourishment and a place of refuge from evil. It is a place of gathering and belonging, relationship and community. Building adds to, it gives, and it fortifies.

A foolish woman in this verse does just the opposite. She literally tears down her dwelling place, her household, her generation and breaks it into pieces. She doesn’t delegate its destruction, she does it with her very own hands. Tearing down as an end to itself takes, dissolves and disperses the household, and it impoverishes.

Proverbs 14:1 describes the action of both women as intentional and personal. There is effort, exertion, will and intent. The building or tearing down is an embodiment of the builder and the destroyer. They are naming actions: Builder, Destroyer.

The question, then, becomes: what is our relationship to our household? Do we build, or do we tear down, or is there a middle ground of neither or both? We can ask: what is the overall outcome of our participation in our households, especially according to those who know us best?

We tear down our households by religious hypocrisy.

D.A. Carson writes

“…The worst possible heritage to leave with children: high spiritual pretensions and low performance.”

When we prioritize maintaining an outward glow of godliness before others while simultaneously freely practicing rage and violence we tear down our homes. When our households are marked by coldness and malice while pretending we have a happy home, we tear down our dwelling places.

When we freely slander the same people our children also see us smiling at, we communicate hypocrisy. When our parenting is focused on our children appearing acceptable and impressive to the outward gaze, while covering cruelty, we tear down our house. When we excuse our family’s “eccentricities,” but revile against another family’s choices, we create little legalists who later will see more clearly what was going on. A place where children are not protected, where harsh, loveless retaliation is disguised as enforcing biblical authority, we tear down our generation.

We can turn a blind eye, shut down, and talk over testimonies of injustice and suffering. We can whitewash memories and legacies while our children secretly tell a different story. When we are never wrong, never ask forgiveness, never accept accountability or any outside counsel, we reject the gospel and the testimony of Christ, and we will reap what we have sown.

Church going and bible reading does not cover us.

Let’s broaden the idea of the religious hypocrisy of individual households to look at an example of generations of religious hypocrisy to see how Proverbs 14:1 applies to one as well as to many. I want to briefly talk about the impact of the violence of slavery that was embedded in a white Christian culture.(2)

Recently I’ve been considering a piece of history that has been highlighted in Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers’ book They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. A body of research does away with the assumption that white women were passive and powerless in the slave trade when in fact they were active participants in it. It highlights the fact that a significant percentage of enslavers in the United States were women. The enslaved were given as wedding presents, inherited as property, given to white women’s children as gifts and playthings. Women who did these things also filled the churches each Sunday, Bible in hand. These women tore down their own households and generations with their very own hands.

Human beings who should have benefitted from every right these United States were founded upon were dehumanized in every way. It has grieved me how so many speaking for Evangelical Christians resent any reference to the historical record that recalls how slavery (and later the Black Codes) was institutionalized, legally enforced, and sanctioned by the main protestant denominations that strenuously worked to keep the institution alive. Church goers and bible readers forbade the enslaved to marry, learn to read, gather for worship, keep their children, or retain any sexual purity that was only reserved for white women.

“If I could be allowed to live like a Christian, I should be glad,” Harriet Ann Jacobs told the man who considered her his property. “No wonder the slaves sing, — -Ole Satan’s church is here below/ Up to God’s free church I hope to go.”

Some may say “but look at all the good we still did, the things dreamt and accomplished, the things built and achieved.” No truly good thing should be set aside, as long as we are mindful of the multitudes of unpaid labor of the enslaved that empowered and enriched generations of white people then and now. Faithfulness to Christ demands an honest account of things.

Today, we try to have this conversation, but are demanded to stop being divisive, woke, marxist, or communist. Instead, be a peacemaker, they say. Well I say that when we refuse to see or acknowledge our violent legacy of institutionalized slavery we are not ready to be peacemakers. Our houses are torn down.

Dynasty, Philanthropy and Respectability as diversion.

Those considered great in our culture don’t have households, they have Dynasties. The Sackler name was famous for vast philanthropic projects across the globe. These are the same Sacklers that created OxyContin, promoted as a powerful painkiller that was also safe and non addictive. They built enormous wealth on that lie, and have now been exposed as responsible for generations of murder and the misery of millions, while using their wealth as an attempt to cover their evil. The Sackler Dynasty is a reminder that celebrity, influence, and “good works” can never hide the vandalism of human souls. There will always be a reckoning eventually.

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” 1 Timothy 6:10

Many have testified and traced out the story of the rising Evangelical Dynasty. (Read the cultural history of Kristin Kobes Du Mez’ Jesus and John Wayne.) We are witnessing a great reckoning among evangelicals for generations of abuse covered by an appearance of orthodoxy and greatness. We are uncovering a generation of harm by harsh standards and traditions that continue to benefit those in power but not “the least of these.”

This generations bears witness to the harm women have caused by their participating, benefitting, and covering up the bullying and abuse. Their houses have been torn down by their own hands.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” Matthew 23:27–28

However, I stubbornly believe mercy and repair is always possible. There is always a next chapter extended to us: during the consequences, during the guilt, and during the shame.

It is righteous to consider people’s testimonies of injustice and the outcomes of generations of violence and disenfranchisement. It is righteous to take responsibility for our actions, to welcome accountability and to offer restitution to the ones who were harmed. It is here where we rebuild.

We build our houses with mercy and generosity.

Meanings are rooted in all the ways God shows himself to be in scriptures. Loving God and loving one another sums up all of the ways and words of God. Building a household, therefore, is an action and intention rooted in love. It is as expansive and as generous as the Lord himself.

We can build our house through countless acts of kindness.

We can be mothers to many that we did not physically bear, extending our household to those who need a place of belonging. We can build dwelling places for the new comer, the elderly, immigrants, or young people that tend to gather around us.

There are single women, childless women, who open their doors to lonely and wounded people. There are aunties, mentors, friends to the friendless, who are building their households and leaving a legacy of love and belonging.

There are grandmothers who raise the neighborhood, aunties those without biological children who are mothers to nieces, nephews and their best friend’s children, women who run orphanages, who build foster and group homes. Incarcerated women who gather together and build a community of love and kindness.

There are those who flee violence, who are homeless with many cares, who sustain and nurture those with them who look to her for strength and belonging. There are women who open their arms to communities who are bound together for survival. They built their dwelling places amidst displacement and abandonment.

Creativity, resourcefulness, ingenuity, and mission.

Those who build possess a special way of seeing the negative space, or carving out space for humanity in inhumane situations. I think of Corrie Ten Boom’s legacy told in the book The Hiding Place in which their household was a place of refuge and survival from the Nazis, and even when the household was dispersed, it continued in the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Corrie and her sister created a community among the forgotten, tortured, starved, and condemned to die.

A thousand acts of mercy.

In the New Testament book of Acts we learn about a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. When she died, some disciples heard that Peter was nearby and they sent two men to him with the request “Please come to us without delay.”

When Peter arrived, “All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made white she was with them.”

I often imagine this beautiful and stirring scene of grief for all the dear women who had twice suffered loss, and how they eagerly showed Peter proof of Tabitha’s love to them, probably forgotten by many.

Peter prayed and told her to get up. She did. Many believed in the Lord. She had built her household with her own hands by a thousand quiet non-impressive acts of mercy that probably went unnoticed by the great but did not go unnoticed by her household of faith, who pleaded for her release from death. Tabitha returned to continue building her house.

All these women build their households in love.

What name does our household give us?

Here are the translated Hebrew names of different houses or places in the Old Testament remarkable in the vivid pictures they paint:

The Place of the lioness, a leopard, and the depression, the House of a creative one, the House of God or Baal, House of apples, a rock, of binding, of quiet, recompense, the desert, Terebinth of the house of favor and Place of the vineyard.

What is the name of your house, your dwelling place of influence and care, your place of activity? Is anyone sheltered, do they know they belong, and are they nourished by our presence? What name does your house give you?

The good news is that the gospel promises that every moment is an opportunity to begin again, no matter how great the burdens of our failures and destructive choices because with God, all things are possible. He is in the business of changing names.

Grace and peace.

END NOTES

(1) I am not speaking of the benefits of a two-parent home, but the enforcement of it in churches.

(2)The orthodoxy and orthopraxy of slave-era Christianity is not my focus here, but I do have thoughts.

(3) See also https://www.whitehousehistory.org/press-room/press-backgrounders/slavery-and-the-white-house

December 22, 2023 marks the Winter Solstice: the time when our part of the hemisphere tilts farthest away from the sun, which will make its briefest appearance as a low arch in the west, followed by the longest night of the year. It sounds so dismal except for the fact that the very next morning the days begin to lengthen again, like a hope fulfilled and a promise kept.

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.

Psalm 19: 1–2, King James Version

I, like many, love to gaze at the vast and majestic “firmament,” and lose myself in its bigness. The knowledge that it was founded on Wisdom and Love, and that I know the Creator’s name comforts me like nothing else. I feel my problems and my pain cast and beaten into a fine chain: “not yet/A breach, but an expansion,/ Like gold to airy thinness beat,” binding God’s heart to mine. These lights, set in the deep dark and each one named, bear witness to the Creator’s love.

In this same firmament, there once appeared a blazing light that astonished wise men from Persia and Babylon, and set them traveling to worship the prophesied one. A king, they sought, but one who came wailing, swaddled, and worshiped while the surrounding terrible empire became suddenly troubled, and trembled.

Bearing Witness to the Light

There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John. He came for witness, that he might bear witness of the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came that he might bear witness of the light. -John 1:6–8

John’s wilderness witnessing brought clarity, illumination and guidance to the crowds that gathered around him. He had to get everybody ready. John warned the religious powers of the day to stop depending on their ancestry as proof of their righteousness, but to practice acts of mercy and justice from sincere, repentant hearts:

“Out of your abundance, share clothing and food to those who have none, “ he admonished.

“Stop using your appointed positions of power to enrich yourselves and falsely accuse others,” he preached.

John showed the way to God which was not a map, a set of coordinates, gps signal, or stages of self awareness, “but a body prepared beforehand.” The light-bearer, John, bore witness to “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” who was “the true light, even the light which lighteth every man, coming into the world.” His name was Jesus.

John’s Longest Night

When Herod Antipas, the Roman ruler of the region and his secret lover, who was also his sister in law, hatched and carried out the plan to divorce each other’s current spouses to marry each other, the fiery and fearless John the Baptist spoke truth to power that that was not ok. The wilderness prophet dared to speak out against the sexual appetites of the rich and famous. His words struck and stuck, and eventually cost him his head.

He was bound, set in stocks and kept in the heavily fortified palatial castle Macherus. Here he had the opportunity to hear from his own disciples what was going on outside his prison walls, where Jesus drew, taught, and healed crowds who followed him. Maybe they told him that Jesus traveled north to Galilee after he heard about John’s imprisonment. Maybe John struggled with that, because at some point, John falters.

Was he forgotten? Did the Lamb of God, baptized and named by the Baptist, forsake the foretold forerunner? Once he fulfilled his purpose, was he to be tossed aside on the garbage heap?

John sends two of his disciples to Jesus with the question:

“Are you the Coming One, or do we look for another?”

Did John, who taught his disciples that “he must increase and I must decrease,” forget? Doubt? Lose faith?

“ARE you the one?”

And yet, here, in the night, waiting, Jesus sends him proof of promises kept:

You go tell John:

The blind see, and the lame walk; The lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; The dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who is not does not stumble on account of me -Matthew 11:6

Jesus then testifies to the multitudes who followed him that “among those born of woman there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist.”

And yet, he leaves John in prison.

Like the time he had Lazarus wait in the darkness of the grave three days before he came and brought his friend back to light and life, Jesus had John wait too.

Did his message comfort John? Did it sustain him in the longest night of incarceration? And in the waiting, did he recall the Psalm:

Vindicate me, O God, and plead my case against an ungodly nation; deliver me from deceitful and unjust men.

For You are the God of my refuge.

Why have You rejected me?

Why must I walk in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?

Send out Your light and Your truth; let them lead me.

Let them bring me to Your holy mountain, and to the place where You dwell.

Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my greatest joy.

I will praise You with the harp, O God, my God.

Why are you downcast, O my soul?

Why the unease within me?

Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.

— Psalm 43

Did John wait out his days in joy that the kingdom of God has come, and that he faithfully fulfilled his part? Did he have hope that dawn would soon break, even as his executioners approached?

I think so.

Brothers and sisters, can we endure this Longest Night till the last morning dawns, when the sun rises to set no more?

Hope in God, my friend. Morning is coming and that swiftly.

Please listen to Sandra McKracken’s soulful rendering of Psalm 43 ​​Send out Your Light (Psalm 43) It will encourage your soul.

There is a sort of sad longing each autumn for me as I watch the brilliant dying of flowers and foliage that brought so much joy all spring and summer. But sadness with hope, for the certainty of resurrection is firmly rooted in my heart.

And yet, for now, the world’s experience of death remains:

• Rapid decline of health
• Cancer, covid, dementia
• The loss of a beloved pet
• Depression
• Waiting for children
• Hollow anniversaries of a child’s death
• Sudden loss
• Panic attacks
• Devastating prognosis
• Oppression and violence near and far

These have been the recent experiences of those dear to me and have drawn me to meditate on what it means to comfort and be comforted.

Comforting one another is the calling to respond to our neighbors in ways that reflect Christ’s heart, and in a way that draws others to see him more clearly. We are to give and receive it. It does not belong solely to the “professionals” -clergy, pastoral staff, certified counselors-it is the holy calling of all who are in Christ.

The ways of comfort

Comfort eases grief or distress. The Apostle Paul often mentions it as the purpose of his plans and travel, of sending someone in his place to alleviate distress, or to check on believers who might be struggling.

To comfort someone means to come alongside to give aid in a time of need. Like Job’s friends at the beginning of the story. They sat with him and entered into his lament and suffering. They were comforting friends only until they opened their mouths.

It is the urgent heralding of news that brings great joy:

Comfort, yes comfort my people

Speak to their hearts, crying out that

Her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned;

For she has received from the LORD’s hand

Double for all her sins. Isaiah 40:1–2

and

Sing, O heavens!

Be joyful, O earth!

And break out in singing, O mountains!

For the LORD has comforted His people

And will have mercy on His afflicted. Isaiah 49:13

In the new covenant, these promises are fulfilled by the presence of One named “the Consolation of Israel” that old Simeon waited to behold with his eyes and hold in his arms (Luke 2:25–29).

We receive the encouragement, calling, and means of comforting one another in the well-known passage :

Blessed be the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our tribulation

THAT we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction

With the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God

For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation

also abounds through Christ. 2 Corinthians 1:3–5

We are called and equipped BECAUSE we have experienced comfort. And by Christ’s death, we are enabled to give it to any who are in trouble.

The manner of comfort

Comforters draw near another with words or silence to the end that souls and bodies are not abandoned in their suffering.

Many are cynical of the empty-sounding wishes of “thoughts and prayers” that are often just words unaccompanied by felt acts of love and mercy. We all have experience of others unwisely rushing in with mild reproach, or to dispense lessons learned at the very beginning of grieving, or those who are so persistent “to help” that they make everything about them.

Growing in the grace of comforting one another drives back the cynicism of this world by learning to get oneself out of the way in order to open channels of empathy, relationship, and healing.

“A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.” Isaiah 42:3

This will be the nature of the coming Messiah and the nature of his spiritual kingdom: his holiness, greatness and power will exist alongside the very weak and lowly in such a way that they are not overwhelmed or consumed, but gentle and lowly. What if we were known for having this mind and this manner of Christ?

The acts of comfort

Comforters decrease the distance that sufferers feel from all the rest.

They lighten the darkness that pulls in and around like a great thick cloud.

They care for the humanity of the one needing comfort and do not dismiss or minimize expressed pain.

Comforters give space for lament. They set aside schedules and expectations and timetables of healing, of closure, or getting “back to normal.”

The wisdom of comfort

And as Jesus grieved and wept over loss and the lost, he gave full expression to his humanity. Comforters are not embarrassed by the humanity of others.

They know that not knowing what to say doesn’t mean staying away or filling the space with empty speech. They know the power of the words “I am here with you and for you.”

They come alongside: not in front of to investigate or challenge. Not above in condescension. Not from afar in judgment. Not from behind with reproach.

Comforters are aware of soul wounds and know the strength of the enemy who whispers “you are utterly forsaken.” Their presence is an answer to the Lying One and stops the mouth of the Destroyer.

Those who give comfort at times step in between those who would add shame to sorrow–as Christ did to the one washing his feet with her tears–encircled by those watching in contempt. At times those who give comfort also say to them: Leave her alone.

When we live in community with one another, comfort is not given in isolation of other acts of love, but it is dependent on our Lord’s expectation of us to have the same care for one another. “And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it (2 Corinthians 12:25–26).”

None are more deserving of comfort than others. This is the way Christ’s body cares for itself, without partiality, and builds itself up in love.

The comfort of the living Christ–his presence apprehended by faith, strengthened by past mercies–is by far what our souls need most, and the world cannot contain the multitude of such testimonies. In his incomprehensible plans for this present age, he ministers comfort through his people. Sometimes the person who shows up at just the right time, who cares and listens deeply, can quite literally save a life.

Comfort is a dear ministry we give and receive. It is the work of Christ, and I believe are those fragrant offerings we make, ordained and enabled by him.

The promise of eternal comfort

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” Mathew 4:4.

Jesus’ words remind us that the day nears when there will be no more need for comfort for death, our enemy, and everything that is associated with it, will die:

“It is an enemy–

but an enemy whose end approaches, and

Whose assault can inflict no lasting wound.”–Douglas Kaine McKelvey*

Therefore, take comfort with these words and with them, comfort one another.