He struck again.

A couple of months ago, my middle schooler expressed to me that he thought following God was hard because there were so many rules. I said, Well, Jesus said all the rules in the Bible were summed up in just two: Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. So anytime you’re wondering what the right thing to do is, ask yourself, is this loving God? Is this loving others as I love myself? That is your guide.

For my final project in the Spiritual Formation class I am taking this semester, I was asked to come up with an essay or video explaining spiritual formation. I chose to compare our spiritual formation to the formation of a tree. When we come across a big, beautiful, mature tree, we never assume the tree appeared there out of nowhere fully grown. We know that trees start as tiny seeds that fall onto or are planted in good soil. In order to grow, seeds must have adequate sun and water. They must build strong roots. Some trees also need additional tending from a gardener.

A few weeks ago, I had coffee with a female pastor from my area. She told me that her church had become a refuge of sorts for people who have been hurt by religion. Some have been hurt by pastors or members of churches. Some are angry at how their faith has been hijacked by Christian Nationalism and far-right politics. Some are reeling from rejection by their conservative brothers and sisters in Christ. They grieve the days when you could open your news app and not be bracing yourself for whatever the bad news of the day would be.

In my spiritual formation class, we’ve been talking about suffering. My professor said that we should develop a theology of suffering, as this is an issue we'll be confronted with repeatedly in ministry.

Last holiday season, I had a difficult time being grateful. Trump had just won the election, and 80% of the evangelical vote went to him. Again. I felt like everything I had been saying over the previous five years, not to mention many other more prominent and popular voices than myself, had really fallen on deaf ears. Useless. How was it possible we were going to go through it again?

Are we raising sheep? Or are we raising shepherds?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this: Our identity is intricately intertwined with our spiritual formation.

I suppose another title for this blog would be, "Loving Your Enemy: Part II." It is certainly related. If you haven't read the blog "Loving Your Enemy" about Christian Nationalism, you may want to read that one first.

In our country today, you see two very different visions of America emerging. There are many ways we could define this, but I want to focus on just one: immigration.

Recently, I read the book "Disarming Leviathan," by Caleb E. Campbell.