A spark in the darkness

I'm trying not to get sucked in to the past week's vortex about a person who died and the person accused of killing them. There are too many unknowns, too many voices, and too much adamance. At the edges of my consciousness I feel a dark force laughing at the ferocity of our collective outrage, and the sheer volume of vituperation spat across the chasms of division. My opinions aren't needed by others, and the darkness is gleeful enough without further fuel.

But in the face of this new level of gloom a light sparked. It took place in my fiction critique group. Our conversation turned then, as it has everywhere, to the topic of the murder. One of my writer friends is working on a novel about a young person's faith deconstruction process. The story mirrors the author's own journey. We're all a bunch of woke lefties, and my friend voiced a sentiment so many are struggling with. She'd been raised in church and steeped in the language of conservative evangelical Christianity and the Bible, and therefore is very familiar with the teachings of the god-man Jesus. After conveying her astonishment at the things she was hearing all around her, she added "I keep thinking that's not what being a Christian looks like. Have I come full circle? Am I becoming Christian again?"

Her statement is profound in it's potential. Imagine hundreds of thousands of souls shaking their own heads and saying "Hey, wait a minute! Is that what Christianity looks like?" Envision a transformative wave of people rising up and demonstrating The Way in defiance of the religious experts who claim to be Christ followers while preaching words which oppose the Jesus-vision of the world.

I'm going to continue trying to stay out of the fray on this subject, but I did want to share with you this small vision of hope. If you pray, pray for those who've deconstructed. May they all speak on behalf of the Christianity Jesus modeled.

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 Suzanne DeWitt Hall (she/they) is the author of the Where True Love Is devotional series, the Living in Hope series of books supporting the loved ones of transgender people, The Language of Bodies (Woodhall Press, 2022), and the Rumplepimple adventures. You can find a full list of her work here: https://amzn.to/3vVPF