"I give you a new commandment, to love one another."
On this Maundy Thursday, the liturgical Christian calendar reminds us of Jesus' final meal with his disciples, and his instructions to them—to love and serve one another.
On the very next day, soldiers of the occupying power executed him—but not before they took the opportunity to mock him and beat him.
Which of these behaviors—the conduct and instructions of Jesus, or the treatment he received at the hands of the occupying power—more closely resemble the behavior of the Christian nationalists now enjoying power in the USA?
As I tried to understand what was happening to my adopted country, the USA, in the hours and days after the new president's inauguration, I proposed the metaphor of being under occupation. Despite the "MAGA" slogan, there is practically nothing recognizably American about the ruthless and vindictive actions of the highest officials of the land, the demands for absolute loyalty to the nation's new monarch, or the spinelessness of most members of our legislature, all of whom have promised with straight faces to defend the Constitution they're all in the process of shredding. In a word, they are occupiers.
The scandal over the renditions of ICE detainees to Venezuela and El Salvador is just one of a whole list of unconstitutional transgressions and abuses of power committed by this administration, some of which will have terrible effects on the impartial management of the Justice Department and the courts, on public health research, on the USA's ability to attract international talent, on our credibility throughout the world. But our leaders' capacity for cruelty has been made particularly vivid by the case of Kilmar Ábrego García as well as the others on those early deportation flights to captivity in El Salvador—flights that had clearly been arranged to avoid judicial intervention.
(And now we are not even granted the certainty that Ábrego García is alive and well. [However, UPDATE.])
It's not just the bizarre contortions that government lawyers and spokespeople have to go through to avoid taking responsibility. The total lack of enthusiasm for making amends is mindblowing. What is even more shocking (and more powerful as proof that our country is slipping away) is summed up in the words "gleeful cruelty."
I don't know how long this term has been circulating, but I first came across it in an article in The Atlantic by Charlie Warzel, "The Gleeful Cruelty of the White House X Account." After reviewing several cases of conspicuous online glee, Warzel continues,
The White House is after something more than just shock value. It’s propaganda, and Trump’s allies are learning the playbook. This week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted a video on X from a prison in El Salvador where deported immigrants are being held. Behind Noem are dozens of men in one jail cell, many shirtless with tattoos; their heads have all been shaved during intake. The prisoners are props, a backdrop for Noem’s message of intimidation to undocumented immigrants: “If you do not leave, we will hunt you down, arrest you, and you could end up in this El Salvadorian prison.” Like the ASMR post or the Ghibli cartoon, the implication is that these deportees are utterly undeserving of any shred of human dignity. There are many other examples, such as FBI Director Kash Patel’s recent posts, one of which features him walking around in camouflage, set to rock music, as FBI agents blow open doors with explosives. Taken together, the posts offer a bracing but useful insight into how the administration sees itself, and the message of casual cruelty and overwhelming force it wants to project to the rest of the world.
Looking back at the first principles I proposed back in November, are they adequate for this era of flagrant and gleeful cruelty? I still feel strongly about not dividing our country into pro- and anti-Trump populations, and resisting the degradation of civil discourse. What other disciplines and practices should we consider? For myself, I'm constantly drawn back to Jesus, who was himself mocked and whipped before being crucified. What can we say to those who proclaim faith in Jesus even as they mock and whip others and look to their MAGA audiences for approval? The case for actual evangelism seems more urgent than ever.
Britain Yearly Meeting's Truth and Integrity Group is facilitating a global online meeting for worship on April 22 at 9 a.m. and again on April 24 at 7 p.m. (British Summer Time).
Timothy Snyder: resistance to the U.S. Supreme Court in the Ábrego García case is evidence that the USA is crossing the line into state terror.
Gordon Haber interviews Jerome Copulsky on the history of efforts toward a "specifically Christian state" in the USA.
On "...Living Together in the Life and Power of God." Earlham School of Religion presents Colin Saxton in the 2025 Perkins Family Lecture Series. April 23 at 7 p.m. Eastern time, online and in person at ESR.
Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (played by Ralph Fiennes) giving his homily on certainty in the film Conclave. Screenshot from source.
Conclave's fictional Cardinal Lawrence, addressing his fellow cardinals as they prepare to elect a new pope, warns them of a dangerous attitude: certainty.
There is one sin which I have come to fear above all others: certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. … Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery and, therefore, no need for faith. Let us pray that God grants us a pope who doubts. [Source.]
I don't totally agree. A personal sense of certainty can be a source of strength and courage. A few years ago, in a blog post inspired by Chris Hedges' When Atheism Becomes Religion, I made a distinction between personal certainty, on the one hand, and assertions of certainty in the social arena—particularly as categorical and coercive action.
I also admitted that ...
Certainty is a slippery quality. In my experience, it comes and goes—and returns. More importantly, it is relational rather than operational: I can be certain that God wants the best for you and me, and that God will be with you and me as we work for that best, but I'm hardly ever certain about what concrete steps to take next. For that decision, I need a mix of intuition, prayer, plain secular fact-checking, the wisdom of others, and a willingness to risk being wrong.
In the film Conclave, part of the context of Lawrence's homily on certainty is his understanding that the late pope, toward his end, had doubts—not about God, but about the church. It is institutionalized certainty that is the greater danger, and the cardinals would be wise to choose a pope who understands this.
This balancing act between personal certainty and socio-political uncertainty seems to me to be the way God set things up in the first place. I'm recalling the words of Anthony Bloom on God's powerlessness that I've quoted several times before. The context: In response to an interviewer's question, Bloom is commenting on the history of church/state relationships in Russia.
No party at all should be able to claim the Church as its own, but at the same time the Church is not non-party, or above parties. She must be the voice of a conscience illuminated by the Light of God. In the ideal state, the Church must be in a condition to speak to any party, any movement: "This is worthy of humanity and of God, and that is not." Of course, this can be done from either of two positions: either from a position of strength, or from a position of complete helplessness. It seems to me—and I'm deeply convinced of this—that the Church must never speak from a position of strength. The Church must not be one of the powers operating in this or that government; she must be, if you like, just as powerless as God, Who does not coerce, Who only calls us and reveals the beauty and truth of things, but doesn't enforce them on us; Who, similarly to the way our consciences work, points out the truth, but leaves us free to listen to truth and beauty—or to refuse them. It seems to me that this is how the Church should be. If the Church takes its place among those organizations that have power, that are able to force and direct events, then there will always be the risk that she would find power desirable; and as soon as the Church begins to dominate, she loses the most profound thing, the love of God, and an understanding of those who need salvation rather than the works of destruction and rebuilding.
For me, it follows that the work of evangelism is to encourage and draw out people's capacity to respond to God's call, God's offer of relationship, which would be reflected in our own offer of relationship, and our truthful testimony of how we have experienced that relationship in our faith community. This work does not depend on a convincing string of logical propositions, because no such string exists objectively apart from relationship. Just as with the turtles, it's relationships all the way down.
Photo: Judy Maurer, April 5.
Maybe God could have designed a more internally consistent and self-interpreting Bible and left manuscripts for it in perfect condition. Maybe God could have given us the ideal template for church government, along with sinless leaders to occupy perfectly-designed roles. And maybe God could have intervened more frequently and forcefully when we humans treated each other with gleeful cruelty. But as Eugene Peterson commented on the "nearly unrelieved mayhem" of the Book of Judges,
Twice in Judges (17:6 and 21:25) there is the telling refrain: “At that time there was no king in Israel. People did whatever they felt like doing.” But we readers know that there was a king in Israel: God was king. And so, while the lack of an earthly king accounts for the moral and political anarchy, the presence of the sovereign God, however obscurely realized, means that the reality of the kingdom is never in doubt.
However strong our faith, no human being ever has the whole picture—and we just make things worse when we pretend otherwise. God has, for reasons that may always remain obscure, chosen to fulfill the promises of God through us and our fractious, fragile communities. In the short run, even if our faith is strong, failure is an option, but then we dust each other off and once again wait for God's pull on our hearts. The next steps might not be clear all at once, and we may disagree any number of ways. But the certainty of God's love shared among us motivates us to keep praying for unity, discernment, perspective, and courage. There are no shortcuts; weaponized certainty and coercion are just dead ends.
Have you seen the second season of the television drama Severance? Beth Felker Jones gives us a theological commentary. (Spoilers. I have just started watching the second season, so I didn't read her commentary to the end....)
It began as a normal afternoon in my schoolyard—no reason for it to stand out in my mind. I was racing around playing with water balloons. We filled them part way and then squirted the water out. No use wasting an entire balloon full of water on the Arizona desert by filling water balloons and breaking them.
It was late spring, when a squirt of water would dry easily in the sun. Squirted children then grabbed a balloon for themselves and joined the race around the schoolyard. I spied one girl walking alone. Her dress was temptingly still dry. I squirted her. She turned around, face full of rage, and tried to pull my hair and scratch me with her fingernails. I dodged her. I was shocked. She turned away.
Later I walked home through the desert, between the trees whose branches my brothers had long ago flagged with plastic ties, so I could follow the ties to find my way home. My brothers were off to boarding school and college by then, and I expected an empty house at the end of the path. I was surprised to find my father writing at the dining room table.
I told him what happened. I asked him why she had lashed out. He grew very serious, and said, “I remember walking up to her house, knowing I had to tell her mother that her husband had died.” My father had been the pastor in that little town with maybe 80 kids in the district’s one grade school. I knew the story—her father had died suddenly, leaving four children and a widow. Nancy was the youngest, two years old at the time.
My father leaned down, looked me in the eye and said, “I want you to take care of her, Judy.”
It’s been sixty years now. She puts messages on Facebook like an image of flag-draped Trump saving our planet, with the tagline “On a mission from God.” Another asks for God’s protection because “with every fiber of his being, Trump is trying to protect our Land.”
I carefully weed out these messages, congratulate her on another grandchild, heart the flowery memes. Occasionally I try to offer facts in her pro-Trump posts. However calmly or kindly I word the facts, it doesn’t seem to make an impact.
It all drives me wild, but I do not unfriend her. Every time I think about it, I remember my father’s words. It’s not that she needs me to take care of her anymore. It’s that I simply cannot cut the connection.
I don’t know if she or anyone else in her family now needs Medicaid or the Obamacare subsidies. I don’t know if they are on food stamps. Did anyone get student loans? Has anyone she loves lost their federal government job? And did Republicans tell her all this would happen if she supported Trump?
Will it all come crashing down at their feet, without warning?
I’ve read posts on X ridiculing Democrats’ “hysteria” that Medicaid will be cut. How silly they are, the posts say. They ignore that the GOP has already passed a plan that will necessitate that. What will happen when their food stamps are cut, when student loan applications can’t be processed, when they have no medical insurance? It pulls at my heart.
The nonpartisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities says the GOP plan just passed requires a minimum of $1.5 trillion in cuts through 2034. Also according to the Center, 45% of the federal budget funds Social Security and health insurance programs, including Medicaid. How could these programs not be cut after a massive tax cut?
Last week I realized with shock that a progressive friend of mine sincerely believed disinformation from the left. The news for the left is bad enough; why make it all worse by spreading lies? Probably for the same reason the top layer of the right-wing purveyors of disinformation do—to gain power and money for themselves.
I’ve been reading Steven Hassan’s book on cults: Combating Cult Mind Control: The #1 Best-selling Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults. I’ve also gotten involved in Indivisible’s Truth Brigade. Their webinar on their grass-roots efforts to counter disinformation was inspiring and well designed. They said their strategies were research-based, but they did not give us sources.
Indivisible pressured us to use a formula for responding to disinformation. It’s hard for me to follow other people's formulas without understanding more of the context. So I searched for the research and best practices on my own. I found a summary of research findings (here) about disinformation that was very helpful. It was well written for an academic piece, but it was the usual thicket of complex sentences, passive verbs, and precise but uncommon English words. I took up my courage and a compass. I navigated my way through the underbrush of words.
I read and re-read a section titled “counter-messaging strategies.” It explained that my factual posts would have little impact on my friend. “There is strong evidence that truthful communications campaigns designed to engage people on a narrative and psychological level are more effective than facts alone.”
Of course. Another word for “narrative” is story. How could I, coming from a long line of story-tellers, have missed that people respond better to story than to a recitation of facts?
Another sentence leapt out at me, too. “Promising techniques include communicating respect and empathy, appealing to prosocial values, and giving the audience a sense of agency.”
Communicate respect and empathy
Of course. Genuine respect and empathy. It’s backed by twenty-first century research, and it’s ancient wisdom as well. Jesus said, ”You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” One can not have empathy without love and respect first. Love and respect opens the way to empathy.
Appeal to prosocial values
I had to look up what “prosocial values” meant. It’s values that “promote the concern and care for the welfare of others.” It’s kindness, helping, sharing, cooperation—that sort of thing. It’s ancient wisdom as well.
Mark Condo, pastor at Reedwood Friends, opened this up for me on a Facebook post, of all places. In the comment section, a friend asked Mark, “How do we follow this scripture in this day and age when thousands are losing the support and sustenance they need because of POTUS?”
The scripture was “Christ is all and in all. As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience."
Mark replied to my friend’s question, “I've often wondered what my role is at this time. For me, what resonates most deeply and clearly within me is universal compassion. I was struck by this scripture today during my quiet time—just how essential compassion and prayer are right now, as both inward and outward practice, to allow them to flow in my own life, toward my family, Meeting, stranger, neighborhood, city.…”
Allowing compassion to flow sounds remarkably prosocial to me. Clothing yourself in humility would help the left, as well.
Give the audience a sense of agency
I love the word “agency.” It means “the power to think, choose, and act for oneself.” A grace-filled faith will in itself encourage choices. Philip Yancey in What's So Amazing About Grace? wrote, “Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more. ... And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less. ... Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.”
We cannot earn God’s love by following a strict list of things to do. The Gospels do not give much in the way of formulas to blindly follow. For example, the Beatitudes are more about opening one’s heart and mind. In Matthew, we are told to “welcome the stranger,” but not a strict formula for standing on street corners finding strangers to welcome.
I admit that we humans have difficulty giving each other—and ourselves—grace, so over the centuries Christians have created complex formulas to follow, instead of choices about how to love one’s particular neighbor.
Quakers are not immune from this. It’s only that the rules for how to be a “good Quaker” are more unspoken—keep quiet about it if you just bought a new Cadillac, don’t bring a side of beef to meeting potlucks, etc.
Still, we can call ourselves back to grace. We can ground ourselves in grace, and incidentally encourage agency.
I point this out because I believe that the progressive church in the US can have a profound effect on the political climate today. With so many changes, people need community more. We can be that trustworthy, grace-filled community.
We know in our bones how to communicate respect and empathy, appeal to prosocial values, and give the audience a sense of agency.
We just have to be louder about it, and follow our own ancient wisdom. It works.
Reposted with permission from the March 30 issue of the Newsletter of Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends. Judy van Wyck Maurer (she, her) lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband Johan and two cats. She is the editor of the Newsletter and clerk of Sierra-Cascades Communications Committee.
From the same issue, here are more ideas on communicating with respect:
Too much disinformation on the menu?
Make a truth sandwich!
Indivisible and other organizations recommend responding to disinformation with a “truth sandwich.” It’s based on the same research referenced above. The graphic is from Indivisible’s Truth Brigade.
First, find and express common ground. “I’m also concerned about…” Or “I agree that ____ is important.”
Second, help engage the person’s critical thinking, perhaps by posing questions with good information.
Third, go positive with a shared sense of a good future.
Here’s a good how-to from the Truth Brigade on making your own truth sandwich.
Here’s a different take on the truth sandwich from National Education Association.
The first Sunday of April is coming up, which means that Bremerton Friends Worship Group, Bremerton, Washington, USA, will be gathering again.
The reality of Starliner's flight to the International Space Station was "far wilder than most of us thought." Eric Berger (ars technica) has the "harrowing" details.
More from space:
Fram2 mission patch (source); Amundsen and team's tent at South Pole (replica); the original Fram.
Stephen Clark reports on the Fram2 mission—the first human spaceflight to orbit over the North Pole and South Pole. The mission is named in honor of the historic ship Fram, used by Norwegian polar explorers. Mission updates.
Rick Estrin is tired of "Living Hand to Mouth." (Rick, don't look to "Liberation Day" for help!)
One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime or offense they may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. —The Bible
We do it every day, every time I find one of these lunatics. —Marco Rubio on cancellation of student visa of Rumeysa Ozturk, arrested Tuesday morning.
Evidence is ever more abundant that, among decisionmakers at the top of the current U.S. government, the law is seen as irrelevant, or even a nuisance, and the emphasis is on aggressive, swift, ruthless, secretive action.
The video of Ozturk's arrest published today in the Washington Post is shocking. A group of men in plain clothes, some hiding their faces, leave an unmarked car, grab her, and whisk her away handcuffed. Her phone has been seized. Before we (or a judge) know it, she is in Louisiana. Her student visa is cancelled. I thought maybe I was growing accustomed to the Trump-era eradication of normal due process, but I guess not, thank God—we should never get used to this. But it's a crushing disenchantment to see this happening in the "Land of Liberty."
It appears that official outrage against international students and green card holders is directed especially at people defending Palestinian human rights. Questioning U.S. support for Israel's treatment of the Gaza Strip (population 2.14 million) has been casually classified as aiding Hamas (membership 20,000?), but there seems to be no interest in making this distinction, or, indeed, proving anything at all. We are supposed to accept whatever Trump, Rubio, and their operatives tell us concerning the alleged misdeeds of the people they grab.
This is the administration for which 82% of the USA's evangelical or born-again Christians voted. For them, I dedicate a brief Bible study:
The qualities many of us usually associate with God are grace and mercy. Grace is God's goodwill to us and the whole creation—it's something we don't have to earn, in fact can't earn, but we can pass it on in the way we treat others. And when we fall short, this grace is expressed as mercy—compassion and restoration instead of punishment.
“But if a wicked person turns away from all the sins they have committed and keeps all my decrees and does what is just and right, that person will surely live; they will not die. None of the offenses they have committed will be remembered against them. Because of the righteous things they have done, they will live. Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” declares the Sovereign Lord. “Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?” —Ezekiel 18:21-23
The Lord is not slow in keeping this promise, as some understand slowness. Instead the Lord is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. —2 Peter 3:9
As with grace, God is the source of mercy, but also as with grace, we are to pass that mercy on.
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings. —Hosea 6:6
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. —Matthew 5:7
There is one specific aspect of mercy that we and our leaders are not at liberty to ignore. We know this aspect as due process. It's a core principle of U.S. constitutional law (see the Fifth Amendment and the Fourteenth), but the Bible witnesses to its antiquity, as in, for example, the quotation at the top of this post: "A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses."—Deuteronomy 19:15.
Concerning the centrality of this principle, jazz critic and commentator Nat Hentoff had the right idea. Back in 1989, he told a story about a visit he made to a conference in Israel:
I ran into a rabbi in Jerusalem, he’s a philosopher, he’s a big macher in many ways, David Hartman. I’d never met him before, and there was a brief respite between the discussions, and I met him in the corridor and he said, “Hentoff, I want you to tell me the most important development in the history of mankind”. And I said, “Due process”. He said, “Right”, and that’s the last I ever heard of him.
The ethic of due process is reflected in several other biblical passages. The Ten Commandments in Exodus chapter 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 5, include this central demand: “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.” This may well be the most violated commandment of our political life.
Other examples:
Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. —Isaiah 1:17
Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly. —Leviticus 19:15
Ecclesiastes has an acid comment on politics without this ethic:
"If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things; for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them both are others higher still." —Ecclesiastes 5:8
The principle comes up in the New Testament, too, as in the dramatic scenes of the gospel of John, chapter 7, when Jesus shows up in Jerusalem halfway through the Festival of Tabernacles, and begins teaching in the temple court, fully aware of the risk. The authorities send guards to seize him, but ...
Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”
“No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards replied.
“You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted. “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.”
Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?”
They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.” —John 7:45-52
As for Marco Rubio calling Rumeysa Ozturk and people like her "lunatics," along with the choice insults he and his colleagues (led by the president) use for judges they don't like, and other targets of convenience, I don't want to push this Bible passage too hard, but it's interesting:
But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment, and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council, and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. —Matthew 5:22; follow link for the footnotes.
Finally:
Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For the judgment you give will be the judgment you get, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. —Matthew 7:1-2
Here's a sobering perspective from Cornel West's presentation last Saturday at Reedwood Friends Church (sponsored by The Cultural Soul Project):
Democracy ain't nothing but a moment of interruption in the history of non-democratic and anti-democratic regimes going back to the beginnings of the species. And it doesn't last forever. You got to fight for it, sacrifice for it, truth-tell, justice-seek for it. And in the end there is still no guarantee.
(Be sure to watch the whole video; there's plenty more about the spiritual resources we draw on to truth-tell and justice-seek. And you'll get occasional glimpses of Judy and me in the third row!)
Heather Cox Richardson looks at some of the words of J.D. Vance (in 2021) and Curtis Yarvin (in 2022) that might help us understand the American future they and their networks are looking forward to: a future without democracy. What do you think: is the current DOGE chainsaw operation a fulfillment of those stated visions?
Andy Olsen at Christianity Today: How are Hispanic churches in Florida dealing with the state's "double immigration crackdown"?
Elizabeth Bruenig asks, "Can Silicon Valley Find Christianity?" As you guessed, it's complicated: "Christianity, they ought to know, is not a life hack: It’s a life-upending surrender to the fact of divine love."
The Council of Europe's Venice Commission provided an amicus curiae brief to Ukraine's Supreme Court on the subject of conscientious objection, particularly in wartime. Page 13 summarizes relevant Quaker experience. (Thanks to Ukrainian Quakers for the link.)
A few days ago, I finished compiling our family's federal and state tax information for 2024 and sent it on to our preparer. These hours of accounting for our income and relevant expenses over the previous year are a chance for reflecting on our stewardship, our evident priorities ... and where our tax money goes.
Over the years, the subject of taxes has come up several times in this blog. Back in 2006, I linked to a post by Julia Ewen of Atlanta Friends Meeting that I republished with her permission. She reframed the issue of conscientious payment or nonpayment of taxes. Among other points, she said:
We have to accept the fact that life—paying or not paying taxes included—is not neat and clean. And take responsibility for our choices—and their fall-out—good and bad together.
The biggest danger, though, lies in getting confused about who in charge of things: Caesar? The religious establishment? or Jesus/God? And that confusion can happen whether Caesar is involved or not (hence the story about the Temple Tax).... [See her full essay for the "Temple Tax" context.]
In fact Caesar is probably the smaller problem. Jesus talks very little about Caesar, but inveighs a great deal against people in the religious establishment: people who like to appear to be good while in fact committing injustice and evil, people who acquire money and power at the expense of those they are supposed help and protect, people who live motivated by fear, greed, selfishness, addiction to power, instead of love and concern for others...
When we get that right, then we will know when to pay taxes and when not to. Neither is wrong. Neither is right. In and of itself. It is like the Torah admonition not to pick grain on the Sabbath ( Matthew 12:1-8). Yes, scripture says not to do it. But scripture also says that we can pull an ox out of the ditch if he has fallen into it on the Sabbath... "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath". Thus the he issue about taxes is not simply about paying or not paying. It is about why we are paying—or not—about being responsible for our choices, and about who we are letting run our lives, our souls!
Here's what I wrote back in 2022, when anti-tax rhetoric was at one of its periodic peaks:
In this political season, both in the USA and in the UK (and no doubt elsewhere), politicians are trading on the dislike of taxes to gain popularity. Republican opposition to Democratic initiatives are routinely blasted with the old "tax and spend" epithet, and the Conservative leadership campaign in the UK has featured competitions for who can cut taxes the most.
A biblical view of taxation might be hard to pin down. We have God's sour view of what a king would do to the people of Israel (1 Samuel chapter 8), but also the attributes of good rulers (Psalm 99:4; Proverbs 16:12). We have examples of the positive uses of taxation (to support the central institutions of the nation, particularly the Temple, and to prepare for drought; more generally, to maintain the nation's leaders so they can protect the people and serve justice). John the Baptist tells tax collectors to collect only the required amount (Luke 3:12-13). Jesus treats tax collectors positively (especially Matthew) and tells his followers to pay Caesar what is Caesar's (Mark 12:17 and parallels).
In the USA and similar democracies, the fundamental functions that governments must do, and pay for, are described in a constitution (written or unwritten) and in subsequent legislation. We vote for the people in the legislature and authorize them to draw up budgets based on the commitments we have made to each other, all based on those authorized purposes of the government. We then have to pay for those commitments that keep our nation viable and livable. The sum total of those costs represents the amount we have to raise, one way or another.
Right now our national conversation seems to be "what commitments can we slash to save money?" A more honest conversation would admit that we're often actually asking "what commitments to others can we slash to save money, while keeping the commitments that benefit people just like us?" A popular variation: "What commitments can we privatize so that we can buy them if we want, and those who can't afford them ... well, we just won't worry about them."
The conversation I truly want to have across political lines is: "Who do we [and who do our critics] want our policies to bless, and who are we willing to leave out?" Once we've decided what we're willing to pay for these blessings to ourselves and our fellow human beings, we can then figure out how to divide the burden with equal attention to fairness. Evading our fair share is not an honest blessing.
Ideally, by paying taxes, we citizens are simply upholding a covenant we have with each other. We have made promises to each other—"to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" (preamble to the U.S. Constitution), setting up a government for these purposes and assigning that government, through our legislature, the practical tasks needed to fulfill those promises. We know that these tasks cost money, so our legislators make a list of those costs and institute sources of revenue, including taxes. That's the covenant: to decide on the tasks needed for the "general Welfare," from which we all benefit, directly or indirectly, and to pay our fair share for those tasks.
Too bad it doesn't end there!
First of all, we rarely have unanimity on the tasks themselves. A huge example: many countries recognize that health care is an inelastic demand that affects every single person—precisely the sort of thing that the marketplace cannot provide equitably—but, in the USA, we don't. We differ as to whether various essential tasks of community maintenance should be federal responsibilities or best left to local governments, the marketplace, or private charity. What is the best balance between governmental provisions for social and economic justice, on the one hand, and entrepreneurial incentives on the other? Even with perfect goodwill on all sides, we are guaranteed some robust debates. And once the commitments have been made and the budgets established, some will still resent paying those costs.
To complicate things further, as the Bible and the Federalist Papers remind us, we are not angels. The collection and disbursement of taxes is subject to corruption. Some of us evade taxes; some of those who spend the people's money find ways to divert it. And even among honest people, inefficiencies can creep in. So ... we have to spend some of our tax money on auditors, prosecutors, and inspectors-general, just so the rest of the money can go to its original purposes, and (hopefully) trust among taxpayers can largely be preserved.
Even with all those complications, the general covenant can prevail as long as we can see that our taxes pay for the promises we have made to each other, with reasonable allowances for audits and safeguards. But it's a vulnerable covenant. All it takes to break it is for enough self-serving demagogues to make enough noise, generate enough cynicism, trigger enough popular resentment, in order to make people forget the covenant altogether. Instead, those manipulators treat "TAXES" [scary music] as a special category of evil that has no connection with those constitutional purposes ... except for those purposes that have taken on exaggerated rhetorical sanctity—most usually, the Military, which is sometimes given even more than it asks for!
Aside from this cynical practice of breaking the connection between promises and taxes for political gain (example: the traditional Republican slogans about those "tax and spend Democrats"), there are at least three other techniques for weakening the essential covenant trust between people and government, and thereby diverting resources from the "general Welfare" to benefit those who resent sharing their wealth. All three are very popular in this current season of chaos.
First: raise an alarm over waste and corruption, without providing for a deliberate process of finding specific instances, or using the facilities already provided for that purpose. The current DOGE chainsaw campaign may accidentally and randomly eliminate some defective corners of the bureaucracy, but there seems to be no corresponding eagerness to find out what promises, honestly made and honestly kept, could end up on the butcher's floor in the process, and what those now-broken promises might cost in human life.
Second: sabotage the promise-making process, namely the work of the legislative branch. Our Constitution explicitly assigns the budgeting task to Congress, which also establishes the major branches of government and has, in the Senate, the "advice and consent" role of approving high officials. The president must not encroach on the legislature's lawmaking responsibility but instead, in the Constitution's words, "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed...." Now these encroachments are made on a daily, sometimes almost hourly basis.
Third: act as if the wealthiest among us should never fear even modest increases in the taxes they pay. Those who arguably benefit the most from the governmental structures that protect their wealth and (by providing infrastructure at taxpayer expense) make that wealth even possible, too often use that wealth to exercise veto power over suggestions of increased taxes. No matter how worthy or urgent our proposed promises to each other might be, revenue must only go down! Best of all, from their point of view, the savings gained by mercilessly degrading "general Welfare" can actually reduce their taxes.
(I recognize that there are ultra-wealthy people who do not agree with this agenda.)
I'm relatively sure that you already know all this, and probably know it in greater depth and detail than I do. I only record it here, and in the framework of a covenant, because I would like to do my tiny part in reinforcing that original connection between promise and payment in a season that, instead, threatens to overwhelm us with a tidal wave of misdirection and cynicism.
How ethics can deteriorate: Cabinet member openly urges television audience to buy Tesla stock. "Danielle] Brian [of Project on Government Oversight] said Lutnick’s comments indicated that Trump’s previous flouting of ethics norms may be affecting how his officials behave." You think?
[I]f we're going to start lying about basic truths like the fate of [astronauts Butch] Wilmore and [Suni] Williams—and let's be real, the only purpose of this lie is to paint the Trump administration as saviors in comparison to the Biden administration—then space is not going to remain apolitical for all that long. And in the long run, that would be bad for NASA.
And now, for a cosmic change of perspective courtesy of the European Space Agency, namely 26 million galaxies and counting. Be sure to watch the extraordinary video.
Can't say I didn't warn you ... "The Hustle Is On." (With the late Little Charlie Baty.)
It's not unusual for people to talk about grandchildren—now (with pictures) or in the future. I've been in such conversations. But I was brought up short the other day when a friend said, "I don't want grandchildren."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Just think. What kind of a world would they be born into?"
I'm embarrassed to admit that I've rarely considered these two things at the same time: what my actual family, friends, and neighbors, and their flesh and blood descendants, will experience, and the macro-scale trends forecast by our economists and ecologists—a future my contemporaries and I might or might not experience firsthand, but what we might reasonably anticipate for our children's children.
Politicians naturally might want us to believe that, with our support, they will help shape that future into a better direction. But I have some questions for them/us:
Will your recommendations benefit some children ("our" children) more than others? If so, what will happen when those other children catch on to your game? And will our children welcome this bias and be infected by your cynicism, or will they be repelled in favor of a more universal blessing?
How will you know when disastrous ecological changes approach a tipping point beyond which we cannot risk going? What risks of miscalculation are you willing to take? When are you going to go public with your own private realization that we have been postponing a true reckoning too long?
When will the dismantling of our (U.S.) constitutional structures and norms reach a similar tipping point? How will you know? How are you responding?
In any realm—political, ecological, economic, or the places where all three merge—can you envision joining a coalition of hope and change of a sufficient scale that it would compensate you for abandoning your personal dreams of political success—a success that honesty might well threaten?
Will you identify, join, or help build such a coalition? Will I?
If by some microscopic chance, our generation's grandchildren see this, my question to them is: well, how did we do?
Political tipping point toolbox: The Federalist #51, "The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments."
Climate change outlook (science and politics) for 2025 and more generally. It seems that the planet itself is not in danger, but how far can we push its capacity to host complex life forms?
Revisiting George Lakey's writings, while assembling the list above, reminded me of the power of telling stories in advocating social justice. I still have vivid memories of Studs Terkel interviewing storyteller John Henry Faulk. (November 1, 1969.) I couldn't believe my ears! In fact, Faulk's argument from absurdity probably helped open me to genuine Christianity, as did the Christmas 1969 issue of Reader's Digest a month later. (I told that story here.)
