I have been silent on this page for months now.

Here’s why: I got completely swallowed up by the US election, and my fears about it. I prayed – although probably not enough. I organized – but probably not enough. I tried to share information in the face of misinformation – it didn’t penetrate, even if it was enough.

Naively, I thought that Christians – people onto whom I project courage and conviction and clear-sightedness – would save us from a Donald Trump presidency. I forgot that politics has taken over churches all across the country, and that in many places – and in many hearts – the gospel has become Republican.

Hear this: I don’t think the gospel is a Democratic one either. It belongs to no political party or government. My concern is that there’s an enormous amount of human beings out there, with enormous cultural influence, who believe otherwise. There’s a Facebook page called the Christian Left, and even if they share information which I find palatable and accurate more often than not, they are making a mistake by trying to balance out the Religious Right by claiming that God is on the Left.

Over the weekend, I decided to stop talking and writing and emoting at all of the human beings that were willing to listen to me, and do a bit more listening. So, it just so happens that the only people I know – personally – who voted for Trump identify as Christians. Consequently, I’ve been listening to a lot of self-identified Christians over the last 48 hours. I’ve also been reading all the social media comments and articles and blog posts. All the things.

And, it has been a discouraging and confusing exercise for me. I haven’t yet had the opportunity to hear someone quote the Bible accurately, nor contextually, re: their religious imperative to vote for Trump.

Hear this: I’m not suggesting that I know the Bible better than anyone else that has devoted their time and energy to knowing it well. However, I am suggesting that I know it well enough to be able to “smell a rat”, and I’ve run into an overwhelming amount of rat smells out there parading around as the “sweet fragrance of God” (2 Corinthians 2:15).

This makes me feel ill, and also makes me want to mobilize.

One of the biggest road-blocks for me in all of my writing endeavors has been about wanting to have a clear, unpolluted, unassailable message. I did not want to mix Jesus up with politics, and I did not want to mix Jesus up with personal opinions. I still don’t, actually…. BUT, it seems the time has come to start unpacking all the noise in my brain no matter how messy, because I feel convicted to do so.

Hear this: it will not be perfect.

I am confident that I will regret some of the things that I say or do or write or believe, but I am going to keep going anyways. And then I will apologize for the things I said or did or wrote or believed if my future-self discovers that they were reactive or uniformed. Yet, I think I will also pledge to leave them out there – unedited by my future self – so the process is honest, and the room for accountability is real.

Feel free to graciously part ways with me now, or later, or never. But here I go….